For my use case to be practical, I really need some way for users to purchase usage for my chatbot that provides me a paid token for their account with some level of usage.
A way to buy a “ChatGPT Card” or “Gift Code” in the form of a token that once it is issued can only be used by my service alone and is signed by my app private key. Something a user can DM a chatbot privately to make it work and use it, without me having to pay up front for usage. Or at least a way for a user to purchase usage in some form.
In fact, I’d like to take a cut of that purchase if possible as revenue.
I think the only way to do it now is to set up an API/DB for this. Track users and the amount of tokens they have. It could be a login or some other way to track them. Whenever someone makes an API call, you’d subtract their tokens from their account. You can monetize via currency conversions - a call might cost $0.13, but you charge them $0.19 worth of tokens for it taking into account the cost of payment.
@Foxabilo, it’s correct that OpenAI’s policies are restrictive about payment. However, I have no shame in saying that many of our customers are monetizing their plugins using our solution.
We don’t show a paywall to the users when they install the plugin. In fact, we do the exact same thing as plugins like Zapier do.
You can create a generous free tier with some usage quotas and then provide your users a way to upgrade their accounts if they want to.
So @benjcooley feel free to reach out if you wanna know more about our monetization feature
I am developing a website and Discord Bot not a plugin. Would be happy to develop a plugin but the OpenAI chat is AFAIK not really a flexible enough env to support the product I am building. It doesn’t support multiple chat participants for example or other more complex requirements.
Not a plugin… Discord Bot (for now). Potentially integrated into a separate web site if that makes sense.
Looks like a solution. Will do.
I’m assuming I can integrate with discord auth and then sync this up. This seems like it will work. I know everybody thinks their AI app is pretty fun and neat - groundbreaking, etc, but of course mine actually is ;-).
I’m happy you found a solution, I don’t think you violated any rules, I believe @Foxabilo is correct, but this shouldn’t apply to you since you aren’t developing a chatGPT plugins
Discord and Patreon seems to work great together, that might be an easy way of solving your problem.
Quite crazy considering it’s resources used, and a dependency for ChatGPT+. Grey area ftw
A non-intrusive method to have paywalled content (such as Zapier as you’ve mentioned) is much different than being immediately asked to pay to even try the plugin.
A non-intrusive method to have paywalled content (such as Zapier as you’ve mentioned) is much different than being immediately asked to pay to even try the plugin.
Yeah, that’s why at PluginLab we provide a Quotas-based solution, and we strongly advise all creators to set high limits on their free plan.
In the end, it’s not even only about respecting the rules. It’s more about being clever and providing a great user experience.
When you provide a web service, you have to get some retention on your product to charge people because only a few of them are willing to pay upfront without testing your service.
So even if we forget about OpenAI, it’s just the interest of plugin creators to:
provide the best service ever
provide the best user experience and not redirect to a paywall on installation
PluginLab helps you to get your user’s email and to setup monetization.
(Direct quote from the pluginlab site)
If you create a Plugin on behalf of another person or entity, you represent that you have the authority to agree to these Terms on their behalf.
This mean that you can be held fully responsible, if you’re involved in actively helping people develop plugins that circumvent the terms and guidelines.
Source:
That’s great to hear, remember that the rules and guidelines are the minimum requirements, not the gold standard of good behaviour.
I hope this clarifies OpenAI’s stance on plugin monetization. Remember, guidelines are there to be followed. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
To be precise: OpenAI’s policies are not mentioning monetization at all.
The FAQ section is just saying:
Can I charge people money for my plugin?
Not at this time.
This sentence is extracted from an FAQ where technical questions such as Timeout or Domain are discussed.
To me, it provides no context; it’s not legally reliable, and it’s misleading.
It might be just interpreted as, “do you plan to provide a payment feature? Not at this time”.
So we are waiting for more information from the OpenAI team. On the other hand, we know that many plugins, such as Zapier are monetizing their platform, which sounds fair.
If you have more information than we do, please share them. But at this stage it seems all of us are clueless
Can I charge people money for my plugin?
Not at this time.
This means that you cannot charge money for plugins. No further information is needed, as this already answers the question.
I fully understand that you have a monetary interest in pushing a different narrative, but the faq section is pretty clear and concise, you cannot charge money for plugins at this time.
I hope this helps clarify the FAQ section, remember that this forum is for developers, if you need more information from OpenAI specifically, you should contact either help.openai.com or OpenAI’s sales department at sales@openai.com
