1) Advertisements should not be free - Agreed. Nothing in life is free. Someone paid a price for everything.
2) Free versions were gimped - Potentially, but it gives the community an idea of what can be accomplished
3) Having Bossland GmbH open up a "Sell Your Premium Products" - Disagreed
4) Paid Advertisements - Agreed, if they are controlled, and not intrusive to the average user (you already know this Bossland)
5) 3rd party devs get hired - Very few, but for good reason. If you hire a bad programmer you get slow-running projects.
On a different note - I'd like to address Motivating 3rd party devs!
Compensation in other forms for "helpful" 3rd party devs
I have received a small form of compensation, and that was awesome. It made me want to develop a lot more, faster, and better projects for the community.
Not everyone has to be paid, or hired. There are other ways to please your developer community.
Offer those who put in a lot of time/effort an extra Hb key or two (they don't cost much, and if you carefully distribute free keys there would be hardly more strain on your auth servers).
Other forms of compensation are out there, and I know you can think of some if you wanted.
Now this compensation would not be from the users of the project, but from Bossland GmbH on the basis that the 3rd party dev has contributed a large amount of time and effort to create something that they freely distribute for the benefit of all of YOUR users.
The users did not come here to buy our projects, they came here to buy Honorbuddy.
On that line, there should not be Paid versions available on tbf.
Since they already paid they should have access to quality products that work within your product.
Helping to motivate your 3rd party devs will get you much more quality projects available to said users.
Don't go overboard, but at least try to drive and motivate your community to create things for one another.
Users who wish to sell things, can do so, just not here. (Unless you do the paid advertising, but again, non-intrusive)z
Im going to be honest here, I dont mind paying for 70 euros for the bot or more, but Im just saying this I WOULD NEVER PAY for a profile or a CC. They have to be free , is retarded enough we have to configure the bot like fuck. Im here since day one in 2 or 3 accounts that I bought and my gf too. I never sold any gold or sold anything actually in WOW, I just level and get gold for me individualy and this is what I have to say..Want to ask more money I pay np but dont ask me money for ANY CC OR PLUGIN OR WTE ... That is ridiculous, when people buy the bot they dont sign for buying CC OR PLUGINS , this isnt the supermarket.
This user is what I would call average. Not everyone sells gold, so they don't get income out of botting.
They should be able to have a quality botting experience without paying a single cent more.
Those who sell gold, and want that extra stuff to make it easier/faster/better to make income, could find it before, but it's a lot harder for them now.
Again, not saying free advertising, but it's more difficult now for users who want that paid stuff to find.
Along those same lines, I had never heard of Honorbuddy prior to finding a friend in town who sold gold, and I asked him what he used, and then here I was.