# Derailing Is Not Failing; or, Beeminder Revenue Proportional To User Awesomeness

**URL:** <https://forum.beeminder.com/t/derailing-is-not-failing-or-beeminder-revenue-proportional-to-user-awesomeness/5009>\
**Category:** Akrasia\
**Created:** [February 25, 2019, 4:09am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/derailing-is-not-failing-or-beeminder-revenue-proportional-to-user-awesomeness/5009 "2019-02-25T04:09:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 15

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**Author:** ![dreev](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/dreev/32/4311_2.png) [@dreev](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/dreev)\
**Post date:** [March 1, 2019, 10:54pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/derailing-is-not-failing-or-beeminder-revenue-proportional-to-user-awesomeness/5009/15 "2019-03-01T22:54:55Z")

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Thanks for this analysis! I think we also want to model the phenomenon of making the yellow brick road too easy when the pledge is too high. I think that’s the big reason why “just risk so much you’ll never dare derail” doesn’t work.

But there are definitely cases where it’s more binary: you hit the obvious minimum or you don’t. And those are cases where awesomeness maximization means a huge pledge that you’ll definitely never pay. So max awesomeness at min revenue, sadly for Beeminder. But I guess that’s why we have premium plans! 🙂

I’d actually like to collect more case studies that violate my thesis here. I mean, I’d love to believe they’re rare and that maximizing revenue is unironically the best thing we can do for our users. But loving to believe something is a pretty big red flag so y’all should push back on this!

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