Total number of Brave Browser Publishers
batgrowth.com
batgrowth.com
From that... barely $10-20 per month.
I simply don't believe that Brave users are actively topping up BAT so that it's distributed.
Instead I put a PayPal donate button on one of the websites - no target published, no progress, just a dumb button on the home page and to the side.
That single donate button gets ~$500 per month and is enough to cover most of the costs associated with running all of the websites.
I still think the best way to provide a good, ad-free, tracking-free service - is to ask your users to contribute what they feel the value is.
NB: This is not my job, I'm pretty sure I could make a lot more money if I cared to but this is a side project and done with no need for profit. Meeting costs is all I'm going for - BAT is not going to do that and my costs are low for what I serve.
~250k monthly unique users, as well as actively promoting it (to the point where they make up ~15% of users) and it's bringing ~$500/mo.
Slightly unrelated, it's been a bit of a pain to have all the site features - mostly related to Canvas API - work for Brave users, since fair amount of them are absent in Brave due to their fingerprinting potential.
I like the idea of putting in $10 or $20/mo for funding websites I visit, but why should I put in $10 a month if nobody's actually taking the money?
And of course there are two ways to get money into your account: 1) Upload money directly, 2) Look at ads through the Brave ad network.
So far I've only been doing #2, which for me generates between $0.50 and $1 worth of BAT every month.
For the automatic division -- it's not exactly clear to me what happens. Is all of my $0.50 next month going to be divided between those two websites that are registered? Are they only getting their own little share of a few cents each? If so, what's happening to the BAT for the other websites?
At least this is how I think it would be in Europe. But I would imagine similar rules for VAT are in place all around the world.
Obviously, if you plan on doing any of this - talk to your tax accountant.
Is Patreon handling that for you?
I don’t know about the specifics of how payment works on patreon, but there are services that help with the tax issue. Quaderno https://www.quaderno.io/ is one that we have used for selling (remote) trainings. It ties into stripe, so that’s fairly simple to set up. Keep in mind that if you have to do the VAT dance, you’ll most likely need to provide the customer with a suitable receipt as well, so you’ll have to own that part of the checkout process.
Also consider that the VAT rules are less complicated for physical goods - the complicated ruleset mostly applies to digital-only goods. Things may also be less complicated if you’re a private person and use patreon as support for a hobby.
This isn't really a new idea either, Flattr does pretty much the same thing as a chrome add-on so no need for cryptocurrencies or new browsers.
Another thing that comes to mind is if it was possible for a "creator" to reward those that donated.
"Brave browser is asking for donations on behalf of other people" (2018)
https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2019/01/13/brave-web-br...
"Brave browser is hijacking links and inserting affiliate codes" (2020)
https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2020/06/06/the-brave-we...
Link to Brave source code on the Github, inserting affiliate codes into URLs
https://github.com/brave/brave-core/blob/master/components/o...
There's no valid reason to use a product, adopting totally unethical and scammer techniques. One more lesson on topic "If you don't pay, you're the product".
I support the open Web Monetization standard more, so I hope more publishers add a tag. https://coil.com/creator
I forgot about it. Does it work only for people using Brave, right?
I'm wondering what is your overall experience, how much of your ad campaign traffic were bots and how did it fare compared to other ad platforms.
Anyone?
The most recent articles I read on it list a considerable number of advantages, but then conclude against using it, simply considering it an ad company that does not pay content creators.
I'm interested to know your opinions, and if you can point me to some useful resources, I would appreciate it.
Thanks
However, I don't understand their business model. This is what I understood so far, please correct me if I'm wrong:
- They created 1.5M BATs;
- Brave users can fund their wallet, or earn BATs by viewing ads;
- Brave users can also tip the websites they visit;
- Once a month, they will split the BATs I earned accordingly by each website I visited(is there proof this happens?);
- Brave users will eventually be able to withdraw their BATs;
I realize this is very simplified, please correct me if I'm wrong.
How does Brave make money? I've read reports about Brave inserting refferal links in their homepage, but can't confirm this.
This is where the money making happens, and where actual money enters the BAT economy. Those BATs you get for watching ads have to come from somewhere; advertisers effectively pay for the BATs they give you with real money (I'm not positive whether the advertisers literally buy BAT to give you, or if they just pay Brave and Brave conjures them out of the air). My guess is that they'll make money on service fees on money entering or leaving BAT. Maybe a % service charge on advertisers buying BAT, or the same thing but on websites cashing out.
I imagine they'll diversify and might make some income from referral links or other miscellaneous revenue streams, but I would expect the vast bulk of their revenue to relate directly to advertising and BAT.
"- Once a month, they will split the BATs I earned accordingly by each website I visited(is there proof this happens?);"
Right now if a website is not Brave verified, that donation intent just sits in local storage and re-attempts itself for some period of time.
Brave makes money by being the ad regulator and distributor. If a publisher spends X on ad spend, users get 0.7x distributed back and Brave keeps the delta.
Advertisers can pay in BAT or just send Brave fiat and they'll purchase BAT on the open market as shown here: https://brave.com/transparency/.
(Not affiliated with Brave/BAT, just a satisfied Brave user)
What about withdrawing rewards? Is Uphold still the only option? And is it safe?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich#Appointment_to_CE...
Or maybe you're using curl and a trusty terminal.
Expecting those people to pay up is a pipe dream.
If Brave was fair it would enable publishers to block visitors who don't pay.
Why is it fair to block ads, but unfair to block visitors?
Because the original idea behind the web was "Use your client to view content", meaning that you as a publisher publishes the content, users chose how to digest/view it. Hence browsers are "user-agents".
Users should be able to decide how they want to view the content, that's why we have user css files that override website styling. Blocking visitors depending on how they chose to view the content, is unfair as you have published it on the internet, signalling you're fine with people using their user-agents to digest it.
Edit: Just to be clear, I'm actually not against ad blocking. In fact, I use an ad blocker myself. I just think it's hypocritical to expect it to be okay to block ads without also accepting that sites can choose not to serve you (sometimes at their own business peril).
Ad blocking is not like paywall circumvention. Ad and (what Brave does, don't misdirect or let others who get paid to whitelist ads while not blocking trackers, notably Eyeo who owns AdBlock Plus) tracker blocking is allowed by design of the Web standards, and entails no effective access control mechanism to circumvent.
Script blocking in general is a good idea. Signed, creator of JS.
Signed, an average developer.
I get what you mean: either side of the protocol can do what it wants. Also that the publisher has to cover costs via ads or some kind of payment for content, if they aren’t compensated otherwise (separate business on the side; donations).
But your wording was too broad, as it equates (“no different”) blocking content in browsers, which is allowed by design of web standards for accessibility and any reason the user wishes, and blocking via a server side subscription paywall.
But that wasn’t my point. My point was that Adblock existed before brave because publishers+advertises got stupid greedy and made the UX of their users terrible.
Brave wouldn’t exist without the idiocy of those two first.
If a site wants to block people who block ads, and take the resulting hit to their traffic/rank/"SEO", that's fair enough too.
If you scanned, tracked, and dealt information about visitors to your home, visitors would cease to visit or would defend themselves. If you did this scanning and tracking as a naive proxy, it would be worse.
If I visit your home, you have an interest in receiving me and/or I have an interest in visiting you. The WWW was designed for visiting and sharing.
The advertising surveillance system has become an evil economic anti-pattern that the publishers (in most cases) do not understand and do not control. It is not like printed publicity in its effect. I can choose to read a page or skip it without further risk to me, and my purchase of the publication supported its workers.
If we visit a Web site explicitly (not through re-direct), it is a sign that we are interested in the content. If the site inflicts an unwanted data collection on visitors, people will choose to defend themselves.
In the end, you will discourage people from visiting. This may not be what you want. It certainly is not what T Berners-Lee envisaged.
That's my point. Expecting these users to pay a fee is a pipe dream. It's their sport to get everything they can for free. They have no empathy for content creators.
Go ahead and do it. You will quickly find out how much your quality content is really worth.