Custom content:Pay sites: Difference between revisions
→Physical content distribution: physical content info, ad-based model info, subscription model detail
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Instead of becoming a pay site, some fan sites have elected to take donations, some even offer a gift in return.
== Paysite Models ==
===Physical content distribution===
One of the first method of financing the costs of running custom content websites that were designed to handle high server loads was to distribute physical copies of the content itself, usually on CD or DVD disks. A cost was charged for these CDs or DVDs, and for a time, it was a win-win situation for several custom content sites: The players could obtain all of the content available from the site on one or two discs, saving themselves hundreds of hours of time spent downloading and installing each piece of content individually. The site owner and custom content provider did not have to use expensive server bandwidth to provide the content shipped on these CDs and DVDs. Several hundred sets of TS1 (The Sims 2000) custom content could be loaded on to one DVD.
However, some other people began compiling their own custom content collections on CD and DVD, and auctioning them off on eBay. Between security concerns, and the increased file size of custom content in [[The Sims 2]], most pay sites switched to other models.
===Ad-based Models===
To finance the increasing cost of server bandwidth and domain maintenance costs, many custom content sites resorted to placing advertisements on the website. Usually these were in the form of ad banners. When ad-blockers became common, third party ad delivery services were used, such as video embedding, Google Ads, ad-fly, or short-est.
===Subscription Models===▼
Ad-fly and Short-est were ad-based models designed to force the player to view five seconds of an advertisement before continuing to the download. Unfortunately, unlike Google Ads, neither Ad-fly nor Short-est screened their advertisers, but relied on the honor system and the ability for people to report ads that violated their terms. Unfortunately, Ad-fly and Short-est quickly became sources of malware, once hackers realized that if the page displayed actually froze the browser and/or the system, they could add a scam warning message advertising a "cure" for the "virus". This is now commonly known as a Trojan horse/ransomware exploit - in downloading the "cure", they actually were infecting computers, then charging users to fix the computers they just infected. When security updates to modern computers became available to automatically report this kind of malware during or after the fact, sites like ad-fly and short-est were quickly marked as known malware hosts and blocked as dangerous sites by updated browser security features.
▲===Subscription Models ===
Subscription models typically locked most or all of the site content behind a pay wall. The player was required to sign in to the custom content web site to access the content. Often both a free membership and a paid membership were offered. The free membership would have metered downloads requiring a wait, and/or a limited custom content selection. The paid membership would offer things like unmetered downloads, the ability to download larger archives or complete sets instead of individual files, banner ad removal, and so on.
The most well-known subscription model sites currently are The Sims Resource, and Patreon. Patreon is a third party subscription hosting site that became available during the development of [[The Sims 3]]. Due to the way Patreon works, most Patreon content is linked to from the content creator's separate blog or public posts. Creators typically set up subscription levels on Patreon for their fans, including a free/public level. Posts and privileges are restricted by tier level. For instance, a public post might show a picture of an upcoming set, but the download link is in another linked post that is pay tier restricted. Other Patreon privileges frequently given to subscribers are Discord invite links, Discord roles, fan polls, exclusive cloud drive folder links, and exclusive YouTube videos.
Historically, Sims Slice, the Well-Dressed Sim, Pandora Sims, and the Eighth Deadly Sim, and Sexy Sims were all subscription sites. Some pay sites began as subscription sites due to mature content. Others started with a free model, then went pay when they attracted enough players to put a strain on server bandwidth from all the downloads. TS1 sites often attracted lots of players when object mods were available on the site, so new object mods were typically locked behind the pay wall.
===Premium Gift Models===
===Curseforge===
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