Why Wattpad Premium Accounts Are Pointless

If there's one thing that everyone surfing the World Wide Web can agree with, it's that ads suck. When I go on 4chan, reddit, Kissanime, or other "shady" sites, it's the most annoying thing in the world to see a big flashing advertisement saying something along the lines of "You won't last 5 minutes playing this game" or "Don't play this game when your wife is around." Then there's Youtube advertisements - don't even get me started on those. If I had a dollar for every time I saw the Youtube Red ad for music, if I had a dollar every time I heard that terrible six-second dubstep song, I might be able to buy Youtube itself - or at the very least, pay for a Youtube Red account. So, ads are despicable, annoying, and everyone wants to get rid of them. The Wattpad Team knows this all too well. Wattpad is a company. It's not evil nor empathetic - it looks out for itself, like companies do. And for a company to stay in business, it needs to earn profit. That's understandable, and as a free tool that harbors millions of users every day, it needs to make dough somehow. My assumption is that before the Premium feature was recently introduced to Wattpad, that main source of profit was from advertisers. But advertising alone doesn't bring in a lot of revenue. For an expanding company, this is a problem that needs a solution.

Other websites have been doing something that I find despicable: offering "VIP," "Gold," or "Premium" paid accounts that provide more benefits to paying users than to those who use the site for free. I understand that people who put their time and effort into making websites need money too, but paid memberships are not the way to achieve this. It essentially discriminates the users in a capitalist-style setup: paying members being the bourgeoisie, the winners, the loyal followers who are rewarded for their contributions; and non-paying free members, the proletariat, the working class. This is obviously an exaggeration. Websites cannot starve people nor deprive them of education, but they can discriminate. I've seen it before: members who pay for their account are favored more by the community of the site over the users who prefer to save their hard-earned bread. There are sites where paying members automatically have a running chance of being featured on the front cover page, and those who own free accounts have practically no chance of gaining popularity. This turns a site into a race to the top of a mountain - a mountain of cash, to see who can spend the most and become top dog quickest. Consequently, members who refuse to pay may turn and leave the site, as there is nothing to gain from it if nothing is spent on it.

This is an issue that (seemingly) is not and never has been present on Wattpad. However, with the introduction of this new "Premium membership" feature, I am skeptical. It would be a shame if Wattpad turned in that direction, favoring whoever is willing to pay the most, while ignoring the money-conservant users. Hopefully it won't come to that. But alas, the new feature is here, probably to stay. It is a useless addition to an already fantastic tool because advertisements can be removed just as easily with an ad-blocker; the majority of Wattpad writers and readers use the site only casually, so there is no need for one; and even if used professionally, there is absolutely no motivating incentive to purchase a Premium account.

First and foremost, the Wattpad Team tries to appeal to its users by luring them in with the classic "pay a little extra, get rid of those annoying ads" deal. Sounds good to just about anyone, except there is another way to do that exact same thing - and it just happens to be completely free. It's generally called Adblocker, and there are several different versions of it that can be used which all do the same simple thing: remove advertisements from your browser. That does sound a hell of a lot easier - and cheaper - than sucking up Wattpad's new corporate scam. As I said before, advertisements are a primary source of many websites' revenue. One could argue that it is a better decision morally to buy from the company directly, so they earn their pay. However, Wattpad as a company should know that consumers usually don't think about the well-being of a business. Consumers want what the best possible thing they can get, at the lowest possible price. That's why paying to get rid of ads is useless. Anyone can do it for free at any time.

In my experience on Wattpad, what I've seen is that aside from the few die-hard authors who take their work as seriously as they would a funeral, the community is very laid back and casual. By that, I mean not everyone writing on Wattpad aspires to be a professional writer, author, or poet. It's mostly just people expressing their creativity in a fun way in a community with fun people and positive feedback. It's hard to imagine John Steinbeck, J.R.R. Tolkien or Stephen King sitting and writing a masterpiece to upload onto Wattpad. The professional authors are on their own level. They will use their own means to write, and publish, a book. Anyone who is passionate about writing and wants to write professionally should realize that Wattpad is not the place to do that. It is for novice to adept writers, not masterminds. It shouldn't be taken so seriously that one would want to pay for a membership.

That brings me to my third and final point: there are no desirable aspects to owning a paid membership on Wattpad. A good writer or reader should know how to focus on the piece they are working on. If advertisements distract them from the task at hand, they need to train to become more focused, not buy a Premium account to remove distractions. If one truly enjoys the experience of Wattpad, removing advertisements should not be a priority. I also noticed that users who purchase one receive a completely new, complementary theme. A theme, first of all, should not be a concern for anyone who enjoys the content that they are reading or writing. It is but the color that is seen in the corner of a user's eye as they look at the words on the page, and is a poor incentive to spend money on an account.

Overall, the addition of Premium memberships to Wattpad is a foolish idea. It is not beneficial to the writers nor the readers of the site, and is more of a way for the company to lead its blindfolded users to give away their money for useless features. Premium memberships are pointless. The effects of one can be mimicked by simply installing an Adblocker into the browser. The community isn't serious enough to care for a special paid account, and it has nothing worth spending money on.

With all its flaws, Wattpad remains the single best website and community for both casual writers and readers hands-down. I am grateful for the opportunity that Wattpad has given me and all of its users, and although I have been critical of it, the site is irreplaceable and precious to me and many others.

End of essay.

P.S. Please look at my other works as well. It kills me inside knowing that my most popular (by far) published work is an article that I wrote in an hour and a half because I was bored.