I just met you, and this is crazy, but how about we ditch the idea of showing ads altogether and instead try something different. Something crazy. Something that would make voat independent.

Voat needs money to stay online (surprise surprise). For now, this is a small amount, but if we keep growing at this rate, we may need to burn more cash than we can afford. Donations are awesome and we are thankful for each and every one, but donations are not stable.

What if we implemented a paid subscription model which costs, say, $2 per month? The subscription would give you access to features which are not available to non-subscribers (details would have to be discussed and agreed upon by you, the users). You could cancel any time, for whatever reason. Payment would be possible by digital currency and all traditional payment methods.

If we could manage to get a solid amount of paying subscribers, we could completely abandon the advertizing model and never show any ads. Depending on the amount of cash flowing in, we could create a pool of cash which could be distributed to original content creators or users which are appreciated by the voat community.

We could register a company, hire full time developers and take voat far and beyond.

An example: In the last 30 days, 4263 people (unique) logged into their voat account (out of 33563 registered accounts). If only a third of these 4263 people became subscribers, that would bring in $2842/month!

What do you guys/gals think? Does this sound like a good idea? If so, what would you expect from a subscription? I am personally 100% against showing any advertizements. Ads are ineffective, annoying (which is why everyone is blocking them) and I hate them with all my heart.

Unrelated but important:

If you would like to help us test the new voat API, please take a look here.