>Where does the line between earning money and making people happy start and end? It's just a huge blurry line, isn't it?
We're not talking about that. We're talking about the line between "getting some money along the way of having fun" and "being an annoying beggar". And I can give you rough outline, I guess:
>[ko-fi vs patreon] Well isn't that the same then?
No, it has an important ideological difference. When subscribe to be a patron, you pay to the guy/team monthly to support their work. When you pay through ko-fi, it's one-time by default, and has meaning of "say thanks to a guy by buying him a cup of coffee". As you see, work is hardly mentioned in this case. Yeah yeah, you can unsubscribe on patreon after 1st month, and you can program coffee machine to give out coffee monthly, but that is details.
Second thing is mostly my own observations. Strangely, guys who had only ko-fi acc, never mentioned it until being pressed with "come on man, I want to reward you, so shut up and take my money" for some time. And the link was hidden somewhere in "about" of their blogs or #info in their discord servers.
About patreonized teams...I haven't been on their servers for a long time, so I can't tell, but you guys mention your patreon on a regular basis on your server.
>i would like it if i could pay the staff to do the work they do ... along the lines of "killing two birds with one stone "
That's a dangerous path to step upon. It's okay when all money you receive go to coffee, melon pans and raws, but if you step into "dividing money among group members", you will get tons of shit with "fair shares", resentment and quarrels. Just don't. The team I worked in never had an option of receiving money, and site hoster always payed from his pocket. I don't know how other money receiving teams deal with it, honestly. But be careful. Better just set as default that "we work for free" to not lift any expectations and not turn hobby into a job.
>I feel that we aren't really pushing the so called monetization
Well, I felt the opposite. just a "hey cool we have this now", repeated 5 times, becomes annoying, and some guys can feel uncomfortable on the server. I don't know why you repeat this, maybe for new guests, but really man, those future patrons would search the link without your announcements. From statistical point of view they are and will be less than 1% of all people in your discord. Do you really think that it's reasonable to announce so often?
>[pleads on credits page] Next, I, as an individual, honestly don't see a problem with this though?
I don't see it a problem too. As I said in my previous message, it's just some ordinary greedy team which are a dime a dozen on mangadex. Sorry if you misunderstood me.
>if I (or any of the other members) cared about money that much, I would have just dropped the team, then went and became an interpreter or something IRL.
Actually, the most dishonest people, the scum of the the earth, who care about money above everything else, they don't work honestly IRL. They send spam, spread malware links, lie and constantly invent new schemes to get gullible people bring money to them on their own. This should hardly be relevant to our conversation. I don't believe you're such man, I haven't seen anything like that in you or your work, but if you feel symptoms of money sickness, drop the whole thing and return IRL.
> You won't believe how happy I was when we had our first patreon
This. Normally, it's alright to be happy, but if it was your goal from the start, then I have bad news for you. Also, don't use this phrase to motivate more people to donate to you, please.
>compared to originally where me and Tsudow were just groping around in the dark in regards to what we actually wanted MelonPan to be while doing whatever we wanted
compared to time when you were just translating kouhai, joking about Tsu being slave and inviting guys to your discord (with broken links) to chat and have fun, now you are in a darker place. I feel like you spend too much time arguing/ranting with me, DirkHardpeck and other guys, heavily recruiting and advertising patreon etc...but that is just my opinion. If you really feel that it's de wey for MelonPan... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
>I didn't want people to feel like they NEED or SHOULD give us money. ... we will take on a much more high profile series when I feel the time is right, not a moment before.
BUT you mentioned a few times that you get those series only when you get money for the raws! That is the essence of drawing money out from readers who want read this series!!! This is huge NO GO!
>(read: I'm the bottleneck, and I don't like feeling that way.) ... (especially the TL side of things aka me ...
Can you, please, stop recruiting new TLs at least in this dialogue with me?! You don't need to mention these things within this conversation, but you do it nonetheless! Man, that's why you are annoying to me! Learn when it's appropriate to recruit stuff, and when it's not, please! Seriously, you apologise for being pushy, and then being pushy right after, in the same message, what the hell! Also, if you are the only TL in the team right now, why it's you who argues with me in the comments?! Leave it to editors, as they " are the personifications of speed and accuracy"!!!
>(Except our patreons and donators, cause thank you for being crazy enough to hand real cash over the internet to what is essentially a group of people blindly following a delusional catboy's orders.) ... as I've said, donations and stuff are purely optional, nothing is paywall locked (unless u have some sort of ungodly fetish for my shitty TL notes
Same for patrons!
...
>BUT that won't affect the amount of free work we publish.
As I said, the amount of free work you published is small, and history of it is sad. Mostly it's arguing with ironon and stupid readers like me. So, in attempt to wrap it up somehow: stop being fixated on it. patreon, commisions, high profile series, all of it. Stop mentioning it, because your future patrons will find you without all that blabbering, but as for now you just scare away normal readers. Stop arguing, because while I don't care about myself and have my fun, you build your reputation right now. And it's not so good already. Focus on your hobby solely: white mage, maybe some other series of which you can get raws for free. Buy raws if you really want to translate those series and have means to buy them raws right now, don't wait for donators. Don't be fixated on "official translations" be true to what you wanted to be. What will really add to your value is how much chapters you will release in next half year. Max it out at the cost of time you spend for ranting and begging for donations. Do the actual job, dammit.
jokes aside, my plan was for it to just cover for any raws we use, or for basically any form of commissions/requests we take. (we are a small team, its pretty obvious we won't reach taco levels of monetization anyways. )
