What would you do if the forum had a subscription fee (to post classifieds, etc)?

another positive is that it will filter out most of the attention seeking bellends.

I'm not going anywhere :-)

I think the fee idea is good. And I also like fruitbats suggestion. Join the LFGSS club and get the forum extras for 'free'.

I'd happily pay whatever and will pay the extra for a 'sellers' membership too.

Action it, David... It's obvious most people are behind the idea... Let's do this thing...

nude calenders

I reckon that could be a winner. We have enough members here to do one of those page a day deskpads. I can think of a few people I'd like to draw moustaches onto.

Action it, David... It's obvious most people are behind the idea... Let's do this thing...

+1

£3 is a very poultry sum. I'd pay £3.75 or even £3.80.

How about forum events that are charged. £1 or £2 to the ride organiser on the day. Money go's to VB for runing/ paying for the site. I would be up for that.

Bad move !

If money was paid for an event it would give it a certain status - I don't know enough to give you the legal term - but paying an 'organizer' would bring all sorts of legal issues.

At the moment it is a bunch people on their bikes meeting up - like friends going for a ride, a kind of autonomous collective. If it was a paid event and someone took a bad fall the organizer might well be liable for all sorts of stuff.

You might need to start looking at things like insurance and tax and so on.

Action it, David...

OOooohhhh . . . .

Get him with his businesses speak.

:P

£3 is a very poultry sum. I'd pay £3.75 or even £3.80.

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What ever the fee , some thought shouild be put into how and when it would be introduced

Marketing people can perhaps offer advice on this

If you do charge a fee or create a club , then you may want legal advice as to what relationship the forum, ie does it become a legal person, has with its members.

Legal people can join in now.

Thankfully, members don't enter into tiresome speculation about people or events that might attract our learned friends. However , this mmight change

Shouldn't be a legal issue if its an option donation?

Just so happens that the majority of people who have made that donation seem to have some extra functionality. How odd, wonder if there is a connection?

No one took notice of me, so I'll say it again: Do we really want to dissuade people from joining the forum to offer us their wares? I've never understood why people get upset when people only post "for sale" threads. I like bike stuff. I buy it some times. The more of it that's posted, the more there is to choose from/deals to be had. If someone's going to have to pay 3 quid before they have the opportunity, are they really going to bother?

I'd go with the advertising all over the place, then offer people £3 a year to not see it.

So this looks like a good thing, but when I bounced it out of the thread yesterday and into a poll I did so without much thought more than... "what's wrong with this idea?" rather than a desire to do it the next day.

It's been pointed out that I should think about it properly. Basically as soon as I take money in return for a service I need to think about how that changes things. Specifically, how I account for the money (register a business) to make sure that what money is received actually covers the costs.

What that actually means is that I haven't done costings with things like the fee to register a company, submit company accounts, have any legal stuff reviewed (insurance against legal fees), how this might affect personal tax stuff (would I be taxed so much that if I set it up to bring in the right amount, that post-tax I ended up paying more than I do now?)... stuff like that.

So I need to speak to an accountant type and basically go into details: What does the forum really cost now, and how is that changed by making it a business with a view to building revenue streams that cover the costs?

What follows that is a feasibility study. Yeah you've all voted in a poll, but as it was pointed out you're the regulars... the vocal minority. It's easy to think that based on 165 yay's the numbers would extrapolate upwards, but it's deceiving as those who have voted and spoken are the most likely to help out and therefore the actual market might be considerably smaller than we expect. We might not even be able to cover costs even with this enthusiasm. It's been suggested that an anonymous poll to all registered members via a mail-out would be a way to get a truer measure of the willingness to support such a scheme.

Finally for the poll to make sense we'd need to really consider what the fee would be for. What are we actually asking people to vote on? Is the fee just for classifieds, groups, + unlimited PM storage? Or will non-donors see adverts (where they don't currently)? Will traders have a separate higher fee and status?

So I need to work out in detail:
1) If all done properly and above-board, what are the true costs now and projected costs?
2) What is the fee for specifically, and how does this affect those who do pay and those who don't pay?
3) What is the potential subscriber base?

All of this is pretty dull stuff, but if it doesn't add up it's not worth pursuing too heavily, and if we do pursue it then it really needs to add up and not land me in a world of tax liability and pain... it has to be above board and manageable.

So I'll see if I can find an accountant willing to help with the first bit, and in the meantime we can talk here about how we would consider splitting the levels and perks such that we don't make the place exclusive, but still provide good reasons to subscribe if you want the extras.

I'd go with the advertising all over the place, then offer people £3 a year to not see it.

The extortion route ;)

The extortion route ;)

The only route.

I'd register it as a religion which would give you some tax relief.

I think anyone who has voted 'Yes' and not made a donation immediately should be ashamed of themselves.

So I'll see if I can find an accountant willing to help with the first bit,

Paging Object.

The extortion route ;)

I don't see it as extortion. The server needs to be paid for. You're just offering users two ways to help out without significantly altering the forum as it is. In fact, forcing people to pay for services which they used to use is more akin (read: akin - not equal to) extortion (imho).

For the record, I'd pay the 3 quid. Still not sure it's a good idea.

The more I think about the trader issue the more I agree with Horatio, it's not like we are overwhelmed by them. And despite the initial impression that they are only here to sell there wares if you look a bit closer you see that although they don't post loads they are part of the community (eg JD comes on rides).

Sponsorship.

A banner from Armourtex.

Fuck the banner, I say coat the entire forum in Armourtex.

It's been pointed out that I should think about it properly. Basically as soon as I take money in return for a service I need to think about how that changes things. Specifically, how I account for the money (register a business) to make sure that what money is received actually covers the costs.

What that actually means is that I haven't done costings with things like the fee to register a company, submit company accounts, have any legal stuff reviewed (insurance against legal fees), how this might affect personal tax stuff (would I be taxed so much that if I set it up to bring in the right amount, that post-tax I ended up paying more than I do now?)... stuff like that.

That's what I was trying to say.

I think if the product reviews ever take off you should try and gain a revenue from that.

And also have 2 parts of the website - review part and forum part. The adverts should stay on the review part. For example have adverts from the manufacturer/shop you are reviewing parts/bikes from.........but the problem with this is trying to stay unbiased..

An idea here then.

Make the donation button bigger (that has come up before on more than one occasion) and put it next to a "server thirst-o-meter" which tracks how close we are to meeting hosting costs for the year/month (as a %). People can then buy the server a beer and contribute once they know the situation.

I don't think anyone would begrudge you being a more forward about the fact that stuff costs money and it avoids the whole multi-tier user thing and potentially lots of paperwork for you.

Run that for a while, see what it does to revenues, and If that doesn't work then you can look at the membership idea again with some additional perspective.

I don't understand this reviewing stuff thing... Who would be interested in that? Forum word-of-mouth reviews take care of it for me...

An idea here then.

Make the donation button bigger (that has come up before on more than one occasion) and put it next to a "server thirst-o-meter" which tracks how close we are to meeting hosting costs for the year/month (as a %). People can then buy the server a beer and contribute once they know the situation.

I don't think anyone would begrudge you being a more forward about the fact that stuff costs money and it avoids the whole multi-tier user thing and potentially lots of paperwork for you.

Run that for a while, see what it does to revenues, and If that doesn't work then you can look at the membership idea again with some additional perspective.

Sounds like a good idea for now. Have to be honest, never noticed the donate button before. LFGSS will now be my charity of choice, regardless of whether we have to pay a fee or not.