Seen some people complain about Gumroad so as a modder who uses it (
https://opperslang.gumroad.com/) I figured I give my reasoning.
My biggest reason is that I just wanted a single place where I could upload my work with some pics and details and have it neatly sorted. While I could use Patreon for this I think Gumroad does it a lot better and more clear. The thing is that Gumroad offers a lot of extra stuff that I can appreciate as a modder and a nerd as well. Not only does Gumroad keep track of all downloads, it also tracks where users are from (country) and where they were coming from (link source). While those things may seem useless to you as user, to me as a modder they can provide a lot of motivation. I purely make mods because I want to drive these cars and if other people can enjoy those too that is awesome. My back-end tells me there are quite a few people who download my mods which in turn makes me want to release more.
Some other things for me are simply the fact that I only need to upload my mods to a single place. When I update my mod I only need to update a single file which greatly reduces the chance for errors. The other things I like is the possibility of reviews, as someone who always reads reviews I think they are important.
Finally about emails and money. Like others have said, most mods in Gumroad are free, you can just input $0 everywhere. Sometimes a mod page input box can say "$1+" this DOES NOT MEAN you need to pay 1 or more, it is simply a suggestion put in by the mod author. The email address can be literally anything you want. You could just input
test@test.com and it should be fine.
While as a UX Designer I agree that the extra steps are annoying, for me as a modder the easy access of payment is a real blessing. Of course I do this for fun and because I want to, that doesn't change the fact that I've spent hundreds maybe even thousands of hours doing this so if someone wants do donate me a beer I'd gladly accept it and it is very motivating!
I know there are a lot of greedy modders out there so it's always a bit hard to talk about monetization without coming across like one. I just hope people can understand that all my mods are free but a small donation means a lot. So if a Gumroad page motivates people to donate it only makes sense to make one, not because I do it for the money but it's nice to know people WANT to thank you. Just know that there still are a lot of modders that would never-ever lock anything behind a paywall even if they use Gumroad!
Sorry for the long post but I'd love to hear your guys opinion. Should modders all have a discord (requires account), a patreon (requires account), a facebook page (requires account)? Or should they be posted on sites like GTplanet or Overtake where copyright issues are bound to happen?
"Sorry for the long post but I'd love to hear your guys opinion. Should modders all have a discord (requires account), a patreon (requires account), a facebook page (requires account)? Or should they be posted on sites like GTplanet or Overtake where copyright issues are bound to happen?"
-Discord : Please never mention this again, This is the worst option of all, because not only it requires an account but it also requires you to join their server. And if lot of modders begin their own discord (they want to start a community around their mods), you will find the same people over each server because they all want to download cars, and since it's the same you can't have a community because they all know each other in all servers, they can start talking in a server, and the other day on another because in the end all the servers look alike, same people in, just different cars to download. So in the end these servers becomes empty interaction wise, and having multiple servers fills up your discord server limits for nothing. The only thing that needs a discord servers are for teams. Modding teams having servers makes sense due to the number of cars they produce (more than an individual) and the fanbase associated with their name. Community works in that case.
-Facebook : I did start at first in a Facebook modding page, the UI is horrendous, Facebook never evolved and it's a mess especially the comment section. It's not a pleasant experience needing a personal social network that never evolved since 2015 to download cars, if we can keep things separated it's better. Not mentioning the spyware that Facebook is. And in the end, in both case you end up sharing a download link that is bound to be shared without the discord/facebook group link so people will end up downloading the car without joining the group.
-Overtake : A much better place than the other places, first of all you can get much more traction from there to boost your mod popularity since everyone there is a car lover, and they will spot your mod easier than if they were scrolling facebook. + generally they do articles on mods that are well made (they did one for my 2008 mod). They offer everything we need, a good download services, a good way to do mod description, review section and discussion section so that everyone can interact with you. The only drawback is that you need to do everything scratch to post there. Forget conversion etc etc it won't pass the moderation team if someone report your mod (and there are a lot who do that even if it isn't true, saw rss fanboys reporting mods because they use "rss carbon" when it was just a standard carbon texture not something rss created). And the mod team also can be a pain in the ass and not fair at all when I had a friend who had his liveries deleted from race department because ASR wasn't happy that he made liveries for their cars and it was against their "politics" (which became RD politic for some reason). And in the reason stated for removing the liveries they couldn't even do it correctly. Overtake works as long as admin never fumble with your creation.
goodbye little angel :
https://www.overtake.gg/threads/asr-ferrari-643-marlboro-livery.219450/
-GTplanet : Everything Overtake does, with less coverage and less popularity, but with a less obnoxious mod team. They won't start removing your stuff because one team is wrongfully upset about. And allow conversion as long as it isn't a blatant rip off and some work was done to actually do the mod (pointing at you SDD). In the end the better option. I just find it too bad that this is only a "recent" addition to GTplanet because all the mod shared in here were a post with a download link, and they are gone. Found many stuff I wanted to download here with link expired or buried under 500 post and hard to find.
-Patreon :
-Gumshoe, I mean Gumroad : While it does have a + against the previous two option, that is the possiblity of having your own "website" where you have everything listed there, and only your stuff (ressource tab is kinda ugly while it does do the job) and the ability to "subscribe" with an email to get alerts when an update drop (gtplanet and overtake aren't really good at that point neither), It doesn't have a discussion section nor DM, so if someone wants to ask help for your cars, they can't do it directly and must go to another place. And the website is ugly. The post description doesn't have all the liberty of customization overtake/gtplanet allows, and the extra steps to download are meh. But you don't need an account. I would place it below GTplanet imo but ahead of Overtake. After all, I don't care about money so Gumshoe drawbacks hits me more. And while GTPlanet does have a place to put a donation link, no one really use it (at least no one gave me money from it for the 2008 mod, meanwhile in Overtake I had a donation on a junk paypal account i threw there without caring that much and someone actually gave me 7 euros that locked the junk paypal account. Never expected someone to actually donate lmao). As for the other features, like tracking users countries I don't really care, maybe seeing how many of my countryman are using the mod as a curiosity, but it's like the download count, not really something i need to know to get motivation as ultimately I do mods for myself. Unless maybe
@Famine gives me a medal for toping the download section count
-Telegram :
And that conclude the ranking
EDIT : forgot to address the copyright are bound to happen issue.
Copyright are bound to happen everywhere, SDD did prove that when they closed a youtube channel for absurd reason, closed patreons because they edited their work, gave DMCA on facebook post. And discord server being deleted for rehosting stuff. The advantage of GTPlanet (not overtake though as you won't have time to get a copyright strike that someone already alerted the mod team) is that it isn't a automatic process and there's human beings with brains that will process the copyright strike and see if it's indeed reasonable or the notifer is abusing DMCA.
thracing.de
), compared to GPLaps Jake's line I got it a few tenths faster, although at the cost of some cars not being able to handle it so well, most notably the MkII Ford. I might give it another go but it was pretty quick already with Jake's line anyways.
