Interview Summary
These purchases have all done online with a credit card, through DeviantArt's website. Of the different packages available, two of my interviewees went for a 3 month premium membership vs. the 1, 6, or 12 month options available (the third did one month). Their primary reasoning is that longer memberships were offered at a cheaper rate, like buying groceries in bulk.
Besides buying their own domain for a website, there really aren't any other art-sharing websites that offer premium features, and none that are social.
The interviewee that bought the one month membership was only interested in the premium feature of changing their username, but did not buy again since they didn't think it was worth it. One interviewee was a professional artist, and valued the premium coding options to make their profile page more visually attractive and inviting. The last interviewee valued the additional organizing functions they could use for their group.
Conclusion
Once again, everything is about the aesthetics! While DeviantArt is extremely outdated, I think they use it in their favor. Taking advantage that they're the only major art website, they know people will pay in order to use modern coding, so why go ahead and update the website for everyone?
Hey there Haley! Deviantart was exactly the competitor I had in mind when commenting on a previous post of yours, and I’m so glad you’re using them as an example to reference what you think an improvement for an artist’s platform would be. You picked the perfect people to interview. If you were to provide something more modern, I have a feeling you could cut into their audience for sure.
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