Quote:
Originally Posted by yeloowtang
I know it's too late now, your decision is made and I understand the why.
I'll still go back to what I said in the past messages even if I know the answer..
It's just the way things are, the 25$ is not a huge price to pay for the information we get here and totally worth it BUT I think , in the end it's too much !!!! facebook sure as hell didn't help and many realize now how that platform s##ks.. but people won't send 25$ for what they can get for free, except the BOI everything else can be found elsewhere.. That's not where I'm going, where I'm going is..... I am a member on over 60 forums, from reptiles, salt water reefs, fresh water aquariums, model planes, radio control helicopters/planes, Halloween, wooden ship building etc etc etc.... all of which I visit on and off.. most of them ask for donations too..
Manny forums have lots of advertising, PAID advertising.. with the members here and visits per day.. for free non supporting members, posts should be plastered with them. The members who don't wish to see them pay a membership.. should be the same for posting in the for sale adds, posting there should require a member to be a paying member, BUT make it 10$ instead.. I know , I know how you feel about the 10$ versus 25$.
with over 141k members and only a handful of them supporting members, by making the for sale section and participating section in the BOI part of the advantages with no pop up adds for members.. getting a lot of 10$ members would probably be way more of an advantage financially .. I've seen places take a % from sales too, but just making the users selling here pay 10$ per year for that visibility and sales is a low price to pay, and THAT I think could make the difference you would need to make it worth it..
It's surely too late now, but I think anything is possible .. the last I mentioned the price, I knew it wouldn't work at 25$, to most sending 25$ for something they only use for entertainment is a lot, but 10$ many wouldn't even think about it and do it..seen it way too often, tried explaining it in a way to suggest a dif. way of approaching it.. your mind was set on the 25$ and again I agree it's a small price to pay just not when people are members in countless other sites, if I were to send 25$ to all of the forums I follow !!!! starts getting expensive. All of my other forums are just as worthy of donations, this site has a potential of getting many hits for advertisers, for sale / buy section paying members only . leave everything else free/read only but only paying members get to post in the BOI and for sale sections.. this could work !!!!!
if not, wishing all the best and a huge thank you for the years you have invested in making this a wonderful place to meet and talk about a passion that we all share.
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Well, I tried making the classifieds available only to paying members a while back, and it failed miserably. Almost resulted in the demise of this site. I can't see anything that has changed that would make the results any different if tried again. Matter of fact, I think the sinking of this entire site would just happen much more quickly today than it was headed for before. People just like *free*. Well, actually people
demand *free*, for the most part. And it is usually a case of "*free* or else", with the "else" being they go "else"where. Most people are not going to just give their money away. They want to get at least something for their money. Apparently most people didn't realize that the BOI won't be here if in the future you found you needed it without that support today.
I have tried to keep the advertising on this site down to what I consider the bare minimum in order to keep the site relatively viewer friendly, yet have some advertising that will help with an income stream. Google Adsense ads are way down from what they were a few years ago, and honestly they barely bring in what even one Contributor level membership per day would bring in. Yeah, I could put in more ad zones or even make some intrusive popups (which I HATE when I go to other sites, btw), but going overboard with such things would likely trigger a diminishing returns effect, I suspect. A viewer's choice might really be nothing more than, (1) put up with the aggravating ads, (2) pay the membership fee, or (3) just leave and go elsewhere. Personally, I have usually chosen #3 myself when placed in such a position, so I suspect a lot of others do the same thing. I suspect most people don't like to be forced to take out their wallet, and even if they might have felt what they were getting was worthwhile, would resent being FORCED to make that sort of decision.
As for the ads I have running through my FaunaAds.com front end for paying advertisers, I hope that they aren't all that intrusive. Honestly, allowing paid memberships to avoid seeing such ads would likely create another case of diminishing returns, as I would suspect that paying members are actually the people such advertisers most want to reach with their advertising. In my opinion, they are the people who seem to know something worth paying for, and likely would be the ones best reached to offer animals, goods or services for sale. They would be the people most likely to have disposable income to spend, I would think. Let's face it, very few, if any, people really NEED to buy animals and the supporting merchandise. Every expenditure they make is usually optional and subject to being prioritized.
I have tried to strike a balance with all aspects of running this site. And there are always compromises to be made. I actually set up the $10 membership group back when I was trying to make the BOI pay for itself with membership requirements, and provide some verifiable ID credibility at the same time. But again, that failed to fly too. I can't recall why I actually discontinued that membership level, however. I probably just figured that the $10 membership was just more headaches than it was worth, figuring the tax stuff through PayPal and such. There is such a thing as not getting enough money for something to make it not worth while even doing.
Heck, I looked at inflation figures recently and figured that the $25 membership level was really only worth $17 in 2002 dollars. Truth be known, if I raised the cost of the $25 Contributor level membership to account for inflation, I should be asking $35 right now for it. So the conundrum here is that even though what I am asking now for the $25 memberships has actually become more affordable for people because of inflation, but the fact of the matter is even less are paying for it. So again, we apparently are bumping our heads against that desired *free* zone that people prefer for everything.
So with those inflation figures in mind, even if I did resume the $10 membership levels, we are really talking about just $7.00 (in 2002 $) even before PayPal takes it's cut. Man, I dunno. Maybe thinking about things in this manner just makes it seem worse to me. Even with the paid membership numbers remaining the same, and my expenses certainly not getting cheaper every year, simply standing still means I am losing ground hand over fist. At what point is it reached that the time and effort spent is just not worth what you are getting for it? Well, obviously, the point here is that it has already been reached whereby running the BOI is no longer worth it to me.
Honestly, my gut feeling is that if I did resume the $10 membership level, a substantial number of people now paying for the $25 level would switch over to the $10 level come renewal time. And I'm not really convinced all that many people who feel they cannot afford $25 would find affording $10 any easier to do.
Heck, I am seeing people who could do nothing more than just log in and visit this site, much less make posts here, on a notable downturn. So I really think that the paid membership issue is not as indicative of the direction this site is headed as just the raw visits statistics are to me. Websites like this always have been, and likely always will be, completely dependent on raw traffic numbers. Advertisers will follow the larger numbers of viewers, and abandon the sites with smaller numbers, as they know what their business needs concerning eyeballs seeing the ads they are paying for. They just want to get the most for their advertising dollars, and I certainly cannot blame them one bit for trying to spend wisely.
Sites that don't make the numbers feasible, simply die. Some will be missed, others won't even be noticed that they are gone.