Vote***financing Fauna***vote

Rich might even think about using the site as a escrow for people that arent sure about the sellers,meaning the buyers could pay thier money to a escrow account run by Rich and upon delivery of the animals he would release the money to the seller,

-Good idea, however I wouldn’t go with that. I know Rich is a good guy. After all he does own this website But its not him I would be worried about. What is to stop a “sellers beware buyer” to use that system as a one way ticket to free animals. What I am trying to say is, if Jack little emailed you and inquired on your snake. So he sent the money to the escrow. You then immediately shipped the snake out to him. Upon its arrival, he declares it to be unhealthy, bad...or whatever else. Now you know that you sent out a perfect snake to him. However since he did not pay, he could always email Rich and tell him, his FAKE sob story. Rich can then give him a refund. I guess you can see it in two lights. It would be bad and good for both parties. It would be good for the sellers because they have someone else reviewing the matter, and bad because you never know who you are selling to. That is just my thought on it. If you look thru fauna, you can find allot of “sellers beware” types along with allot of scammer’s who will sell you anything just to make a quick dollar. I think if Rich banned the “bad guys” from selling ti would be much more beneficial.

Thanks, Jim
Just my two cents

I would think the best method of charging people would be one based on the amount of members using teh site. I have no clue how much bandwidth Fauna uses nor the amount of traffic to the site. As the price of membership increases, the amount of members will decrease. This, in my opinion, is terrible for the BOI. There will be people that won't post bad experiences just because they don't want to pay $35 (or whatever the fee is) to become a member. And the flipside is that good guy posts would probably never occur. After all, people only really take the time to post here when things go bad for them.

If it was $5 or $10 I would think basically everyone would pay to use the site. As I said earlier, I have no idea the amount of money spent maintaining Fauna so I don't know if fees this small would pay for the site. Perhaps you could have membership tiers of which people could sign up to. Light users that rarely psot and rarely browse pay a small fee. Heavier users could pay more. I don't know how much of a headache this would be for Rich to do but it may help.

I think (hope) the majority of people using this site would be willing to pay to keep it going.

. . . everybody has opinions.

You need to make the decision. Are you competing to be a competition to KS or are you willing to settle for a lot less but great value in just a BOI?

There has to be business models out there. Lots of other people are making money at this . . .

How about Fauna periodically (say annually, for example) reminding the members that this site takes money to run and it would be appreciated if those who use it contribute by sending a donation to help cover the cost of running this site. It is much easier for me to part with my cash when I'm reminded that I am returning the favor.....they helped me so I help them. And the payment coud be sent by....maybe PayPal for convenience. Or money orders could be mailed to a P.O. Box or something. Just a suggestion. Might sound familiar to some of you, and it definitely works with me.

Would I pay to use this site? Yes. Would I have signed up in the first place if it was a pay site? NO! I was registered for over a year before I really understood what this place was all about. What really got me into reading here was reading posts on OTHER forums about the importance of the BOI!

I have been reading and thinking about the posts each of you has written here, and looking at the votes. I appreciate the votes but would like to request more, a significant number of people looking are not voting and I do think y'all have opinions, and I would like to hear them...

Originally Posted by KelliH

I vote that all the forums, including the Board of Inquiry, remain free to read and post in, but that members must pay to post ads in the classifieds.

Dead on.

I think that the BOI NEEDS to remain free to the public. If you charge to utilize this tool then I think that people that have had misdealing, would tend to shy away from this media. There are other ways to generate revenue for this site.

1. Charge a 25$/Year fee to post in the classifieds section. Give those who pay this fee access to Members only Discussion areas. Anything other than being able to post to the BOI and Reading the classifieds would require this 25 Dollar yearly fee.

Another Idea would be to have "Search this Dealer" link in the Classified section that would allow the potential buyer to search easily the BOI and sellers history. This would make the BOI more user friendly and a stronger tool.

As far as fines being raised, well I don't think that is necessary. They seem to deter the lowlifes already.

The Escrow Idea would be a great Idea! I don't know what goes into that process, therefore I don't know if it's feasible.

Let me start this off by first saying, I agree that we should help to deter the cost of running this site.But I was under the impression that when myself and others became contributing "Members" thats what we were doing .When I first got here, I hung out for a couple of months before giving up the cash for the coin.but in my opinion if you start charging for a member ship you might lose alot of people ......JMHO

Bill, you do have a membership and I appreciate that you did that. This poll is about non members and just a way to scope out future possibilities, different ways to raise revenue; but your membership is active and appreciated.

When I first got here, I hung out for a couple of months before giving up the cash for the coin.but in my opinion if you start charging for a member ship you might lose alot of people

This is the part about charging for the BOI and other forums that I have a problem with. You don't find a site in the search engines or through a recommendation and put money into it unless your getting photos and movies It takes people a while in visiting this site to decide on whether it's worthy or not. Charging a fee across the board will lower the influx of new members. If that is OK with the powers to be that's fine. As an advertiser I like that the numbers are increasing and has a lot to do with my advertising dollar (above the fact that it supports the site).