I have 250k monthly users who are very addicted to the sites I run, my sites are their #1 destination. I've even encouraged people to use Brave (and Firefox) as I'm for any browser that improves privacy and easily allows a NoScript experience with per-site exceptions built right into the main browser bar (it's even easier than using NoScript in Firefox).
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.
The difference may be those with auto contribute vs those that directly contribute. I have auto contribute off because I don't see much benefit if I can choose to directly contribute to those that I felt created great content, not just happened to have decent SEO.
I m actively promoting brave -- most users are using adblockers anyway, so why not promote a better system. BAT payments are still too small . That's inevitable considering how difficult it is to get started with a crypto wallet compared to paypal where tons of people already have accounts. I am hopeful that crypto payments catch on though.
It might be a little bit of a chicken-and-egg type thing: I just checked my "Brave Rewards" tab and was surprised to find exactly two (2) of all the websites I'd visited in the last month accepted Brave rewards. That's the first time I think I've seen any, after using Brave for almost 9 months.
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?
Does your money get distributed equally? Ie if you put in $10/mo but only visit one site once, does it get all of the $10, or is there some sort of price per-view being negotiated somehow?
FYI there are lots of different ways to contribute money to a website EDIT within the Brave / BAT system. You can manually "tip" a website a fixed amount of BAT; you can set up a monthly donation of BAT to the website; and you can have a fixed amount that automatically gets sent once a month to the websites you've viewed based on how much time you've spent there.
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?
It seems like it's distributed based on % of attention. You can also set the minimum number of visits and minimum page time for a site to start counting.
How does collecting donations via PayPal work? Isn't it that everyone who donates is doing something similar to a purchase, so you would have to collect VAT depending on where you are and where the "customer" is?
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.
I can’t speak for all of Europe, but according to our tax accountant, In Germany, pure donations to a company can be VAT-free. To count as a donation, the money must be freely given, with no expectation of any reward. If you promise swag, sponsor benefits, ... it’s no longer a donation. Benefits can include things like the promise of a prominent logo placement. (Promotion)
Obviously, if you plan on doing any of this - talk to your tax accountant.
I tried visiting several of the websites, youtube channels, github accounts and vimeo accounts listed in the footer, but none of them contained any content.
Brave did everything perfectly imho. You can't improve on the product for their market. If it works it'll establish a new model for funding. If it doesn't, we know there are lots of liars out there who said they'd pay if "some laundry list of unlikely requests".
I'm putting my money on most of them being liars. I don't think they're deliberately lying. It's just that people tend to overestimate their willingness to pay when they don't actually have to put their money where their mouth is.
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.
One thing they could have done better is releasing a Firefox plugin that lets you do the same model but from Firefox... I like the model but I like Firefox more.
Another thing that comes to mind is if it was possible for a "creator" to reward those that donated.
I find it very unlikely that the hundreds of billions currently being spent on internet advertising can be replaced with donations.
I hate ads but there is no question that they pay the bills.
These statistics are fairly useless without knowing how much these creators/publishers are making by signing up. If the median income is close to 0, then what's the point.
Although I do not believe in Brave's model, it is interesting to see their publishers' growth. It is impossible to judge it objectively, but if such change would happen to be organic, I'd start questioning my belief a bit more.
As much as I dislike Brendan Eich's politics, he would probably have been a better leader for Mozilla... At least, that monetization strategy makes more sense and should have been pursued by Mozilla.
I've been actively supporting Brave (and Firefox) exactly until moment I stumbled into very unexpected news about Brave. After that I support Firefox only.
"Brave browser is asking for donations on behalf of other people" (2018)
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 signed up. Basically just put my url into their form and verified my Email. Did it last year and absolutely nothing came of it. Its an email list is all.
Yes. I understand what "publisher" means in the context of the web. But it prepending "Brave Browser" that makes the word hard to comprehend for me in this case.
I'm starting to investigate Brave a little more. I read about it a long time ago but it seemed a "too-good-to-be-true" situation.
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.
I switched from Firefox to Brave about 5 weeks ago, after Firefox released the new Android version that is unusable. I don't want to use different browsers on different platforms - I want my Linux, Windows, and Android all the same browser and synced. So far it's been great. I looked at the cross-platform alternatives, but wasn't happy (Vivaldi on desktop UI is very clunky, for example). I don't even care about BAT or Brave Rewards, the basic Chromium based Brave browser is solid.
Some three years back they used someone's identity to promote their browser. The guy in question is the one beitish person who used to make videos for Computerphile, forgot his name, sorry. The BAT is worthless and I don't believe it's a healthy incentive for anything but that's just my opinion (it is better than the alternative though, that's for sure). Other than that it's a fine browser but it seems conflicted when you look at its apparent goals.
I love it. It's the lightest way to have an ad free experience. And finally, after years of complaining, they added a working sync, so now bookmarks/logins/histories can sync, if that's your thing. To me, it is by far the fastest browser on both mobile(Android) and desktop(Linux).
It’s my daily driver. It’s great on iPhone, too. I recently had to poke around on my wife’s iPhone, and was amazed at how terrible the experience was in a normal browser.
> Brave users can fund their wallet, or earn BATs by viewing ads;
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)
A large amount of people who use Brave installed it for the ad blocker. They have no problem depraving well-meaning publishers of quality content of the only viable way to monetise it.
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?
> 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.
Blocking users who block ads is no different to blocking users who don't have a premium account. Viewing ads is just a method of payment. In an ideal world all information would be free to everyone, but servers cost money. One way or another, servers need to be paid for. Donation models often allow for the most free distribution of info such as for Wikipedia. But it doesn't work for all cases. And in those cases, ads are often a good solution, since the information is still basically free. If you don't want to pay, that's fine. You can always visit another site that doesn't force payment.
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).
False, on facts and law too: DMCA defines "effective access control mechanism" (paywall) and browsers can't hack through those. Anyone who does by exploiting server-side vulns gets in big trouble.
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.
Hello CEO of Brave, I didn't say that blocking ads is the same as circumventing paywalls. I said argued (in essence) that blocking users who block ads is a form of access control. I affirmed that people have the right to block ads, but I also asserted my argument that the owner of a server should have the right to block their access if a user tries to access their content without respecting the terms of access.
“Blocking users who block ads is no different to blocking users who don't have a premium account.”
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.
I'm pretty sure the original idea behind the web was to have a distributed copy of classified information in case of nuclear warfare, so I'm not sure who wrote the manifesto you seem to have read.
We wouldn't have this mess if publishers had actually been reasonable about ads and tracking, but everyone got way too greedy and plastered everything with ads and track their users' every move.
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.
> Why is it fair to block ads, but unfair to block visitors?
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.
Check Brave's forums and search for "block ads". A lot of Brave's users seem unreasonably focussed on blocking all ads, doesn't matter if it has third party tracking, first party tracking or no tracking at all.
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.
Sure you can block users for any reason. Internet is free for all and you can do anything on your own machine. But if you are smaller than a major newspaper from G7 country - you will just disappear if you do that. Almost nobody on the Internet produces irreplaceable content (!= unique content).
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.