Why did you sign up for a premium or super premium membership?

Guilt?
Cool Schwag?
Ask the Animals?
Sunday Strips?
Better mileage and reduced knocking and pinging?
Secretly wish to make Jon your loveslave?
Secretly wish Phillip would make you his loveslave?
Secretly wish Neil & Bob would give you a ride in their spaceship?

Me, it was because I wanted more 'perceived' value for my 'donations' than self-satisfaction. But I'm a capitalistic moron about these things.

My first reason is to support the site. The vision of the web as a provider of free content has always been an illusion. I'll not bog down this post with a discussion of basic web economics; I hope everyone here is already aware of the facts.

So, not quite guilt. But as a person who has enjoyed reading Goats for years, I feel a certain responsibility to help out. And beyond any sense of obligation, I want to help out if it increases the chance that Goats will survive and grow, because I think there should be more Goats-ness in the world, not less.

I'd been supporting the site through periodic donations (and probably will continue to make additional donations from time to time). The main reason for scaling back donations in favor of subscription was convenience. There've been months where I'd forget to donate, or forget if I'd donated, and it was just a minor hassle. I could've made one block donation per year anyway, but I'm too stupid to think up things like that on my own.

And yeah, the added content and end-of-year schwag certainly didn't hurt. When you put it all together, this is a pretty brilliant scheme, and here's why:

I'd love to support every comic I read. I can't. Not without a micro-payment scheme. Even then, I'd probably show favoritism, but at least I could do something to pay each artist. As it is, I buy merchandise from time to time and make periodic donations, but my direct support (in cash form) only goes to a few comics.

Well, a micropayment system would be nice -- then in theory every reader could pay a little bit to each comic he reads. The most literal capitalist model for paying for webcomics. But I'm not holding my breath. So the next best thing is to set up the rules so that the system will self-organize into an aproximation of that model.

In the world of dead-tree publishing, the approximation is managed by aggregation. The consumer doesn't pay for a comic; they pay for a subscription to their newspaper, and there are comics in it. It works, but there's a major cost. The individual consumer has little voice in terms of what comics he or she wants to receive. You buy the paper or you don't. Every now and then the paper might "ask the readers" about adding or dropping strips, and then the majority (not the individual) gets a choice. This fine system wants to bring a daily dose of Cathy to my door. Great.

The aggregation model seems present online as well. I'm thinking of Keenspot. So far, much better than what you get from the paper syndicate, but still, I would argue, not ideal, because of the fundamental problem with the aggregation model: limited consumer choice. I can support KS (by buying KS Premium) or not, but if I want to support a subset of their comics, or support a comic outside KS, then I have to resort to conventional means (merchandise, macro-donations, etc).

(Don't get me wrong -- I have nothing against KS. To my understanding it does quite a lot of good for the affiliated comics. I'm just saying that it partially, but incompletely, addresses the problem I'm talking about.)

So now, about the Goats system. Suppose every comic were independent, and each implemented a scheme whereby basic content were free but added content and cool stuff were available in exchange for regular support.

I'd speculate that every online comic that survives has a range of types of readers. Each probably has a small core of serious fans who actively want to support the comic and see it grow. They'll donate even if they don't have to, so surely they'll jump on board if there's a subscription system. And of course you've got the free-loaders who like the strip enough to read it but not enough to pay for it. Sadly, for any given strip those will be the majority.

But there's an in-between group who really like the strip and are willing to pay a bit for it, but they're not necessarily willing to pay for an abstract idea like "support the site" when the majority of readers just read for free. That group...

Read the rest of this comment...

I went Super Premium mostly because i'm a pathetic fanboy who believes in fiscally supporting internet sites for which i'm a consumer. Getting stuff was just sweet, succulent gravy upon the cake of warm fuzzies that donating to Goats gives me.

Besides, it's my understanding that flashing my genuine Certificate of Member-ness should help me land chicks in bars...certainly couldn't hurt...

In Response to luvrhino (#2003):

Landing chicks in bars is relatively easy, that's part of the reason the prison system installed the bars in the first place.

Landing chicks in bras is harder. Landing chicks without bras is even harder, but ultimately more rewarding.

And just because your Certificate of Member-ness is genuine, doesn't mean...

I also believe in supporting the sites that I use and enjoy. The free stuff was just a bonus. I'm honestly looking forward to the character sketch more than another book I already have that I will just give away.

I honestly hope it works out well for Jon et al. Solving the internet business model is a rough problem.

Of course I'm looking forward to the cool schwag, but did you have to go and list all of my secret wishes?

I sent a check to Goats last year to pay for the entire year for a few reasons:

To support a site I want to see survive
To make sure all of my money went toward supporting Goats rather than a cut to PayPal
So I wouldn't forget to donate regularly

When I asked for the address to send my check to this year, Jon suggested that I wait for the new, snazzy subscription program. Where else can you get that sort of honesty? And with this great system there will be no doubt when it is time to renew my subscription. Well done, guys.

I got it because jon told me quietly that I should.
I remember it clearly.
I was in the elevator and he was mumbling "sometimes you just have to do it, go premium man, you know you want to" behind me and he smelt bad.
I went and signed up and he wasn't there anymore. Best couple a bucks I ever spent.

Although the guy from Need for Speed that sits next to me on the train if I play Midtown Madness and asks questions about the physics model and smells bad scares me more...

note that this last is actually true, some homeless guy has "bonded" with me and seeks me out on the train home, I think he is some kind of "ghost of christmas future" here to warn me that soon the IT business will fail. He smells really bad and feels obliged to discuss tactics for the original Need for speed with me, also of course failings in the physics model on certain corners etc. He scares me quite a bit.

Maybe he is the future me.. I ought to ask him if he has a tattoo on his arm "Wahroonga Train, September 2002, discuss NFS"... ala the empire state guy.

Cause I N*E*E*D my Goats fix. And I hate banner ads. And cause I stole an image of Diablo and made a mouseover jpeg of him sitting on a toilet for my web page.

Ummm, did I say that outloud?

My girlfriend sent me an e-mail 3 years ago, consisting of just this line:

goats.com baby, goats.com

So I went to the URL. I stayed there for the rest of the day. That week I went through all the archives and started to include the page in my 'short list' of webpages. You know, the few that you hit each day at work, to take the edge off.

When the donation jars sprang up, I was glad to give $5 a month to help out with stuff. Sometimes $10-$15 if the counter looked a little anemic.

Books? Sure.

T-shirt? Why not!

Basically, I was willing to go to near fanatical lengths to help keep this site going. But I didn't have to because it has always been pretty easy to fling a few bucks at the drunken monkeys that make this site go.

So when a new method of payment came up, where I could get for me the Sunday strip no matter what, and I could get me the extra free stuff too, I said 'okay.' Really. I did. I'd have paid the $5/month just to get the Sunday strips (I hope Jon no read forum post and take away my things).

So to sum up: I married my girlfriend, didn't get kicked out of school for goats-induced slacking, and signed myself up as a Super Premium member.

The circle of life is complete.

Now I'm gonna go write some more questions for Fish.

I get paid an insane amount of money to sit on my ass surfing the web all day. I don't need the money . . . I do need something to do.

Subscription > Boredom

Off the record: Because I had managed to introduce practically everyone I know to the wonderful world of Goats, and I needed a new way to appear "hip," "cutting-edge," and most of all, "superior" to all of those people. What could be cooler than actually having PAID to be a part of all this, and getting a free shirt to boot?

Officially, though, I did it to support one of the finest, most thought-provoking comics of our time. Oh yeah, and all that stuff the other guy said about "the myth of the internet being free," too.

Why did I do it? Sleep deprevation and a freshly paid-off credit-card.

Well, actually, of the few webcomics I frequent and/or love, all seemed to be making oodles more money than the goats crew. As a student, I am poor and so my donations must be strategically placed*.

I've been on the cusp of giving money here before, but the sales pitch and goodies pushed me over. Greed and all.

So yeah. You made me an offer I couldn't refuse.

On a side note, the only other webcomics I've patronized are Diesel Sweeties (...could ...not ...resist ...Metal Steve shirt) and the nefarious Kurtz's PVP (though, in my defense, I was amused by the site of the comic book while on a huge Gaiman/Moore/Ennis binge, and tossed in the $3 books as a 'eh, why not' ;)

-McGrue
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* Also, as most students, I tend to use the internet for thievery instead of philantrophy... so it's amazing that I paid at all. ;)