Discord Make Users Not Turning Away By Providing Producer Services That Can Make Money

The instant messaging application Discord again intends to make users not look away. (photo: Doc. Discord)

JAKARTA - The instant messaging application Discord again intends to keep its users from turning away, by offering them a new way of making money.

In this case, members of the Discord community will be granted access to subscriber-only paid content. The new premium membership offer is one of the most requested features and will bring in a new source of revenue internally.

Discord's goal is also to give communities a choice by streamlining the tools they use to grow. Through a premium membership, the Discord community will be able to place some or all of their content which is only accessible if they have been paid for.

Most servers can remain free and open, only one premium paid channel for the most dedicated members or the entire community can go premium, which requires payment for access.

The company calls the premium membership a very early pilot for now and the feature will roll out first to a small group of communities who will test the paid features and offer feedback.

Communities in small test groups for premium membership include a game boot camp that provides tutorial content and advice, the Trans Community Center, and Stream Professor, a tutorial server on streaming technology.

"It's important to us to make the Discord community that runs more sustainable," said Discord lead product manager for maker products, Derek Yang, quoted by TechCrunch, Wednesday, December 8.

Even so, Yang acknowledged that the company has not set a broad launch date for premium subscriptions as there is still much to be done.

Many Discord communities already use third-party services such as Patreon to manage access to premium content. With the options brought to Discord itself, the community will be able to make their content paid for.

However, if the community doesn't get their money in full, Discord will ask for a 10 percent cut off paid membership subscriptions, although that amount may change in the future depending on how it experiments with content creator monetization.

“As we chat with more and more content creators, we want to make sure that they can not only build, but also nurture and sustain this amazing community,” the company said.

"We've seen that members of this community are willing to pay creators for the value created."