Too many times I see projects say they're not making much money from these sorts of efforts, but when I go to the project I can't even figure out how to give them money! LWN is a prime example of lost opportunities (count how many steps it takes to go from "see subscriber link" to "be subscribed")
Personally, I'd throw something in the footer of every page of this book to link to a payment page. Make it easier for people to give you money after reading something interesting! Nagware might be annoying, but "this book is not free", right?
EDIT: Just went through the LWN subscriber flow. It took me... 10 steps? to get subscribed. I've dropped out of this flow before
As you say, if you make easy for people to pay you, more people will pay.
Ease, I think, is a function of the quality of offering, i.e how good it is such that people will more readily part with their cash, and the actual ease of making a payment.
If you have great content and people want more yet the path to subscribe is tucked away so no one can find it, people won't pay (or can't in extreme cases).
If your content sucks, including devaluation via aggressive pushes for payment, I don't think people will be so keen to pay.
That said, I think more people tend to pay for the latter. Your get rich in 30 days with a pay now button every other paragraph and huge discount-that-isn't-a-discount is a prime example.
https://i.imgur.com/DmPKqhM.png
This is in contrast to something like nytimes.com which is really well designed.
Non-functional and ugly? I'd say this is subjective, but I find this assessment objectively wrong.
It's complete accessible, and totally functional for what it does -- present a series of sections and display code examples. And it's also quite obviously well designed from an aesthetic perspective.
(There's no black box in the actual site in Chrome, but even with the black box, it's a totally fine functional design).
As for the NYT, it looks like a compromise between looking like a print newspaper of yore, a portal of slightly less yore, and a modern news website cramming everything in the same start page.
Yeah, it's a subjective opinion. Something looking good is also an opinion.
What I mean by non-functional is that the attempt at design was non-functional on my browser resulting in dead space and unattractive design.
Since this book is about programming, it already sets a precedent for potentially pretty but non-universally-working solutions. Something I personally try to avoid as much as possible.
Other issues with the design is huge unattractive margins and the main page containing almost no information when first loaded.
Honestly, this all wouldn't normally bother me as there are tons of books whose online sites have OK at best design. And maybe it's a great book, but complimenting it on design specifically seems wrong.
"Huge unattractive margins", or use of ample "negative space", has long been a staple of the design vocabulary. Nothing inherently unattractive about it.
If what you want to say fits in a small space, don't make it take over the screen, and don't try to cram every level of information on a single page.
And it's the opposite of the overly busy, migraine inducing NYT website you mentioned as a good example of web design.
svg {background: rgb(1.0,1.0,1.0)}
