GIFs without watermark for a small donation

[nihey]

Nice to see you've grown [and nice to see one of you is from ICMC]!

I've seen you've recently added the Donate via Patreon option on the site, and even though the costs are huge, there would be no real advantage between donators and non-donators of the site.

The way of doing it with less friction that I can think of (right now) is:

• The user enters website
• The user creates his GIF
• Option to donate is displayed, telling a watermark free version of it would be generated if a donation is made
• User donates
• The GIF URL would now return a GIF without watermark, permanently.

I know this is opensource (and those who know programming could do a watermark free version for himself), but most people won't do it for themselves, for most people, it could be easier to just donate a small amount for it.

You have a huge audience! If some 200 people donate an amount like 1 or 2 USD, even with PayPal and/or Patreon fees, you would be able to make this project hold itself.

Good Luck!

[brunolemos]

Interesting. cc @ivanseidel

But the real question is: @nihey would you?

[nihey]

But the real question is: @nihey would you?

You mean, contribute? I must say I would personally love it, but due to some personal stuff I won't be able to code consistently on the next 3-4 weeks - and I believe it would not be good to wait that long.

About a year ago, Star Wars Intro Creator went viral, @dharmeshs suggested me and @BrOrlandi could make a video generator out of it for a reasonable fee, this was the key to make the project's backend cost structure healthy - 99% of the daily visitors may not donate, but that 1% is enough.

[brunolemos]

About a year ago, Star Wars Intro Creator went viral

@nihey Cool!

You mean, contribute? (...) I won't be able to code

No, I meant if you would be one the people that would donate to have watermark-free gifs.

[nihey]

No, I meant if you would be one the people that would donate to have watermark-free gifs.

Oh, I see now, I would probably do at least a one time donation once I find a good word :)

The problem I see with Patreon would be to make a "commitment" to donate every month. Seems to work good for YouTubers and other content producers that are closer to their audience, but in our case, it seems people usually donate (even small amounts) if they at least get something out of it.

[BrOrlandi]

Another idea is to try to reduce costs. As you said at your Patreon, the daily costs are $100 dollars. Are you using some kind of process queue right? Maybe the user will need to wait a little more time to get the gif to be rendered. Any way to do client-side image processing? Maybe with web workers?

Usually content creators on Patreon give something more to users who contribute to their projects. But this project can't give much more than the Gif, or the gif without watermark.
Maybe the hability to give the possibility to write any sentence on the gif, not just "{word} is now illegal".
Just trying to help with some ideas.
BTW awesome project!

[customstickers]

Personally I think I'd be willing to contribute my backend skills to handle this part of development (to reduce the hosting costs), and probably even organize the hosting myself, I mostly just need some confirmation of this project's licensing (see #14).

I understand if the authors may be unwilling to set this project completely free with some license, but IMHO it would be great for the community if it got somehow more open. :)

[nihey]

Hey guys, I've seen the website has gone offline.

I just wanted to give a quick update on a product I've launched as it share some similarities with IsNowIllegal, so it might be an option in case you wanted to bring it up again

I've launched https://ejector.kassellabs.io/ about 3 months ago, it took about 2 weeks to go viral and appear on some other websites and social media channels. Since the initial spike in page views, it has consistently getting about 2.500-2800 page views a week. Some measures were taken to reduce costs as much as possible:

• All GIFs are generated on client side, so we have no costs for it (I don't know if it could be an option for you)
• Videos are generated on client side whenever possible, if the browser does not support it, we fallback to a US$5 VPS server

About 1 month after launching we've added video downloads for a US$3 Payment. We do not make much out of it, but I can say we get about 1 payment every 1-2 days - enough to cover the low costs that we have and yield some profit.

I don't know how long it will last, but at least the payments cover the costs, and it was a fun project to code.