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

Should be fine... I don't see a problem in paying. I wouldn't mind a yearly fee, rather than a one-off donation. I would rather veloio made a slight profit/covered his costs than continured to be out of pocket...

id pay. no probs. id go for somewhere between £3 and £10 though.

would it take a bit of policing? what would stop non-donors from posting/pimping onto existing threads?

Velocio you are a legend.

Thanks for the help.

+1

happy to contribute

Interesting. Personally I vote yes, I'd be happy to pay £3, fuck i'd be happy to pay much more, but I am in two minds as to whether or not having a membership fee is a good idea. I understand the forum doesn't pay for itself, but I think that a annual compulsory fee would most definitely change the dynamics of the whole forum, and i'm not sure it'd be for the better. It would probably be discouraging to new members, something I would strongly oppose. I know you have a two tier system, where one group donates and one group doesn't, but then that could open up a whole new set of unpredictable problems. I think any membership fee for classified posters should be proportional to the amount sold, again this is something which is going to be really hard to manage as there isn't a clear line there.

VB, it would be interesting to know how by much we're in the red every month, how long we've been in the red, and how much you're struggling to make ends meet re: the forum. If you want to make to actually make money from this forum .. I dunno, things might change for you, maybe not for the better. Paying members might start wanting to have a bigger say in the running of the forum, or speak with a louder voice than others, a share of the profits .. all sorts of bullshit might crop up. This could all be rubbish, i'm just hypothesizing here. I'm not sure this is the right way forward. I think we're all pretty damn happy with how you're running this place right now.

If your intention is only to make ends meet re: running costs, what about a '£ made, £ needed' for the month, like they have on some torrent websites? I think fostering an environment where donations are more prevalent might be a better idea for the moment. Maybe there could be some kind of league table of donators, or donations are made more public, to make it more of an incentive?

Or what about some kind of league table where we can compare Classifieds made to Donations made for each user. This would encourage high volume sellers to donate which I think would be much fairer. It doesn't have to be a league table though, you could add some graphics to the User CP info that we currently see when someone makes a classified.

Call me a thick twat (Cue flaming), but I never noticed the little donate button till this thread popped into existance. As a result I have donated, maybe a reminder now and again is all that is required?

T....e p..

you have my hard earned £3.:D

Forms, I don't see how an annual fee/ subscription is going to change the dynamic of the forum dramatically.

Registered but non donor users will continue to be able to start new threads in all sections except classifieds.

The other limitations indicated by VB in the first post appear to me irrelevant for the forum dynamic but important to limit the amount of server space used by the forum.

I suggested 5 pounds just in case a higher than expected percentage of active/regular users decide not to pay the subscription.

Velocio

Out of interest Mein Kapitaan, How many hours a week do you think you put in to maintaining the forum?

I'd just finished reading this thread when the site stalled and then crashed. Then when it came back up it said I was the only person using it. Then it crashed again. Got to be worth £3 a year. I vote yes.

Velocio

Out of interest Mein Kapitaan, How many hours a week do you think you put in to maintaining the forum?

Hehe.. ladystardust should answer that!

Would I have joined this forum if there had been a fee?
I don't know. Quite possibly not. It's not the money, but it goes against the altruistic character that I infer from the forum. The very fact that there was an extra paid-for tier might have put me off ever signing up; intimidated me slightly (and it was intimidating enough!) It's all psychological, and maybe I'm weird.

I know I'll happily donate to keep it going, but for that I want precisely nothing over what I already get. I just want it to be a donation. I am also eager for the t-shirts to get voted upon and made, so I can buy one. B3TA.com give you a little 16x16 icon if you donate. I wouldn't even want that.

I like the idea of "£ spent, £ needed" graph/text near the donate button as well. I also like the idea of a sellers commission on classified ads. If this forum brings you customers then it's fair that you kick a little of that back to the forum.

I would pay 3 pounds.

If you're not keen to, though, how about just cranking up the advertising? IIRC there are only a couple of ads per page for non-members - are you already at the max allowed for Google? How about showing ads for members as well? Could you do something with cookies so that a registered user only sees an ad once per month (using a 30 day cookie on their machine)? I'd happily see an ad or two.

Out of interest, how much do you expect to make at 3 pounds a head? Front page says we've had 5.5k active in last 180 days. Maybe 5% of those pay, netting 875 pounds. What are the monthly server costs? Other fixed costs?

Hehe.. ladystardust should answer that!

Ha! Like I can separate V Bulletin stuff from browsing the threads. Seriously, a lot, because the site means a lot to him. He's an angel.

In fact, right now, he's looking at why the site crashed earlier. You've got bloody jet-lag you idiot. Night. xx

I see it as you can't be in the red every month, that's ridiculous, and I hate ads. Unless you could specifically choose what ads you wanted to host, a la most of the web comics I read. £3/yr is totally acceptable.

I think £3 a year is a bargain so would happily pay that (or more).

Can I also pay £3 to ban someone though? :-)

As with others, I'd be willing to pay more..

Meh,I'm trying to type whilst drunk.
I'd be happy to pay £3 per month...

And, off to bed.

BANG!

My suggestions.

£3.oo; 4.ooEuro; $5.oo = Standard Subcription

Even with fluctuating exchange rates, those who don't pay via PayPal, will still easily make up their mind about the cost. I think Five Bucks to an American would seem reasonable for a place like this.

Due to the popularity of this forum, maybe an enhanced rate subcription for those who are mainly wish to sell, but are not true contributors to the forum? Scott_not_Scot would be an obvious exemption, due to his long term social contributions.

As for the fee - I think its a great idea.

To slightly contradict my earlier post, I wouldn't mind getting ads, and there being the option to pay £3 or so to make the ads go away. That way you make your server money either way. I'd still prefer it if that was the only thing that you got for paying. Having enhanced privileges or functionality seems like 'Rep Mk2'.

Can I donate 3 Aussie dollars a year ?

And as for costs... I answered that elsewhere:
http://www.londonfgss.com/thread20053-2.html#post639578

We'll now be paying somewhere between (exchange rate dependent) £220 and £240 per month in hosting costs. And each year we have additional costs like software (£60), SSL certificates (£100 per 2 years), remote backup (£30 per month), domains (£40 per year).

In all that equates to currently costing: (230 * 12) + 60 + (100 / 2) + (30 * 12) + 40 = £3,270 per year total. To date I've only been charging back hosting, the extra £510 in other stuff I've just covered out of my pocket, and in the early days when there was zero revenue I covered the other stuff too.

Anyhow, the annual goal should be around £3,300. And the monthly goal is therefore £275.

BTW, That's the first time I've written it all down, it's the monthly hosting that gives me headaches, not the other stuff that I generally regard as just donations from me throughout the year.

The adverts bring in around £60 > £70 per month on average... one out of 6 months spikes higher for reasons I cannot determine (other than the obvious... more people click through).

So the difference that the pot has to cover each month is currently just over £200.

The pot was bulging from T-Shirts last year, donations at Christmas, and excess from the CDN donations... however it currently stands at £329.11 (not including what was donated today as I update the accounts monthly)... which is basically 6 weeks.

So there you are, money laid bare.

But that's by the by... the original suggestion was donations to put up adverts in the classifieds and for features, by way of stemming the tide of classifieds and giving regulars more involvement and reducing the amount of other stuff coming in... with the side effect of it funding stuff.

So let's not lose focus on the fact that whilst it could possibly stand a chance of funding the forum, it wasn't thought up by me to do that, it was proposed to help out the classifieds. It just so happens that actually it could fund the forum if done right, hence me thinking shit, why the hell not?

And me being a programmer, when I say why the hell not? I mean it. I mean... what's wrong with this? Find the faults... because if we can't find faults then I'll do it.

Sounds all good to me.

Although I'd like to suggest a charge of £3000 for the use of animated GIFs.