ossobuco wrote:Craven has repeatedly said he doesn't want to maintain solvency with donations, and is not interested in a subscription method either. He intends the basic site to aways be without fee. His interest has been if people will pay some small amount for added benefits, such as email capability, photo galleries, and a few other things I can't remember. These options were listed somewhere in the first few pages of this thread.
Not very many people have expressed interest in paying for these specific additions to the basic site use, and he concluded that going in that direction was not a solution (somewhere around page 10, I think).
In the meantime, more and more people find the thread and say they are willing to contribute a little, or to subscribe....neither of which he wants...not to speak for him, but as I understand it. His interest was in people paying for special additions.
I don't know what he is working out now but it sounds like some combo of not-too-intrusive ads and some special site uses, like photo.
In summary, I am glad this is all being thought about and discussed, and that he works out that the site is selfsustaining financially.
Osso, thanks!
Thus far at least one person understands it perfectly. I will make bold the parts that she is 100% right on.
Heehee - I wondered if anyone was actually reading what Craven said.
Ahem.....
Then I'll restate my position.
I would pay happy to pay a fee for 'special services' ~ even if I don't use them.
So there. :wink:
Re: The plan - Please read
Craven de Kere wrote:I've been saying I have a plan ...
I'd like to know if the membership is interested in the plan.
Who would be interested in a subscription service that keeps the site self supporting and ad free? ....
so you want subscriptions? or not?
I've been reading your postings all the way through, and there seems to have been an evolution in your thinking.
<signing out for a bit - where's technoguy? - i may actually log off!>
ehBeth,
Please see ossobuco's post.
As to the weird comment about tehnoguy ask him. It has nothing to do with this topic.
so then, is the subject closed? A simple yes or no will do?
Yes to whatever and for whatever.
I'd give a yes or no answer but worry that even words like yes and no are hard to understand in this context.
The answer to whether donations will be accepted has always been no.
Will there be premium services for which subscriptions will be paid? Yes, there has been for a while and new ones are being considered. There were such services before I posted this topic.
My goal in THIS topic has been to determine one simple thing. Whether people are interested in the ideas for the subscriptions to services i had in mind.
The answer to that has been no, and the answer to whether people would use paypal has been a no.
Since the ideas about middlemen and yearly check payments are completely out of the question it has been determined that despite the goodwill there will be no acceptable medium for most.
Since the services offered don't really interest many I will think of other services. A few good ideas were given here.
I have the information I need and will proceed as planned.
Craven writes: "I have the information I need and will proceed as planned."
I'm not quite sure what that means, particularly the "as planned" part, but I assume that it will become apparent in due course.
I couldn't help but notice that, in the last 17 pages, there were comments from folks with 8000 posts; 5000; 3000; all the way down to my less then 200 posts in 6 months.
Obviously, Craven, this site is a labor of love for you, and it a place that many others enjoy coming to.
I hope that you come up with a "plan" that you are comfortable with. Thanks. -johnboy-
Well said, realjohnboy. Me, too.
Craven - i had already read ossoB's post several times. As i had read your starting post in this thread several times. As i had read most of the rest of this thread more than once, in an effort to follow your thought process. Good luck with whatever it is you decide to do.
I would like to echo ehBeth's comments. Whatever you decide to do, I'll go along with. Because I love this place so much. And I appreciate, more than you'll know, the effort you've put behind it.
Let me not get into explaining Craven's words, and my own are famously hard to parse - there has been a question by many of us if all would pay just to be here, and he never wanted that. And doing that would have been what at least I think of as subscribing.
Craven put forth extra things people could ask for, ok, subscribe to/for, and not many people got excited about them.
Maybe there has been a general misunderstanding of subscribe and subscribe for extras here, which would be understandable, since it looks like subscribe was used as a word to mean subscribe. I don't know, I haven't reviewed the posts.
Bulldozing in where I fear to tread, again, I don't think he wants people to sign up for stuff just to be supportive....he wants the site to actually work by itself.
ehBeth,
Many were confused by my post. Osso's makes it clear.
Let me explain again:
For a host of reasons I will not accept donations.
I wanted to see how many people would be interested in premium services. I said that if there was sufficient interest I'd stop displaying banners.
I found that there is interest, but not yet any services that are "killer apps".
I also noted much trepidation about online payments and that is simply going to be a problem.
So now, I need to think of what is the "killer app" the service that people will be interested, as opposed to just wanting to "pay the gas".
That's where I stand. I still would rather have a service based site rather than Ad based. At the moment that is not viable and I need to work.
Am I still being unclear?
osso, you nailed it again.
Subscriptions for EXTRAS. If the interest in the EXTRAS are minimal then I need better EXTRAS.
The simple use of the forum will ALWAYS be free.
I hope the site Able2"Know" will be able to offer some sort of knowledge database as an extra service (with fee).
satts,
I want to do that in a flatfile database for free. I do not wish people to pay for it.
I am only here sporadically, but appreciate the Site, and am willing to contribute within my means. Confess I haven't read the previous 18 pages already posted, but will check back here to the latest page for developments
I am locking this discussion. The site will support itself shortly through the use of advertisements and the measures discussed herein will not be implemented.
The advertisements will change in the next release of the site. After that the site should be able to sustain itself.
