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part one: Just a thought.. But would members be interested in.....

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adnedarn

I'm growing CPs in the Desert of Tucson, Az
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EDIT apparently what I have said here is confusing to some. I will start a new topic later rephrasing what I'm talking about... Stay tunned!!
Andrew



Right now this is only a thought and nothing is set in stone yet. But I'm tossing around an idea of a "premium membership" for the forums. With this membership option you would get things like:

for 1 year:
-your name in gold
-Access to buy / sell forum (buying and selling ONLY allowed in this forum, only 1 open topic per person at a time, 6 items listed for sale at a time per topic, and it is NOT for people who have stores (you cannot link to your store etc there may be another option for you guys later down the road though)
-Open/close own threads all over forums (do NOT open a thread that has been closed by a mod for moderation reasons)
-150 MB (157286400 bytes) of upload space where you can upload pictures directly to topics rather than needing to use other hosting services.
-Can store 200 PMs (instead of 75)


Later (if this looks promising) I will open polls for how many of you would be interested in this and get a better idea of what you'd be willing to pay.

So for now are you possibly interested? About how much would you be willing to pay for it? And what other "options" or "features" would you want to have as a premium member?

If there are not many interested people, or the willing pay is not enough to offset the additional costs this would cost me to run (and help pay for the forums already active as that is the actual goal of this :) ) it likely will not happen.

-Andrew
 
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20 bucks a year tops or 5 bucks a month, but Im sure you are more prone to the 5 bucks a month. It depends on how you have to pay. I would pay even then i might not buy it, i don't do a whole lot on the boards, but closing threads would be nice, and its a way to support the forum.

You should let us have bigger siggy's too if we can pay... OR maybe some kind of "tag" under our avatar of a vft or something cool kinda like hey this person paid.
 
I think this is a fantastic idea, and before I read Cody's post I was thinking that 20 bucks per year is the most i'd spend, too. A lot of our younger members (like me!) would like this but our parents would think it's stupid to spend more than 20 or so bucks on extra features. I'd be glad to pay it.

Cash OK? lol
 
Sounds good but I'm not gonna pay for it.....sorry :-(
 
I'd pay $20, even though I don't have any interest in those extras. But I think you'd actually collect more $ if you charged less. Maybe $10?
 
If you ad the extras you should also take away the 60 second waiting period thing. or what ever it is on the PM's.
 
Removing delays for searching, between PMs, between posts etc would be a great addition to this. Since the main idea of these is to prevent spammers and obviously someone paying to be a premium member would not be a spammer :)
 
I think this is a very good Idea. $20 a year or $5 a month sounds good to me.
 
No way am I gonna pay 5 dollars a month. that's 60 bucks!

Andenard (Can i call you andrew of you call me clint? ) I think another good idea is to have the option of not saving sent pm's. That's just wasted space for me (maybe others). I think doing away with time limits is a great idea, too. I do have one question about the buying/selling area, when you say 1 topics open at a time (or whatever number it was that you said, I think it was 1) what does that mean? do you mean when we are done we close it and THEN we can make anothr later? Just wondering.

My mom thinks this is a great idea lol. I have an idea, we could have silver, gold and platinum memberships. Say 5 for silver, 10 for gold and 20 for platinum. You could give certain features to each level, that way everyone could afford something.
 
  • #10
I think that would put allot more work than Andrew wants to do.
 
  • #11
Anyone can call me Andrew LOL When you send a PM you can uncheck the box at the bottom (save copy in sent folder) so it does not save them. OR just delete them every so often.

Yes, once you close your topic and say it is over, you can open another and list your 6 items.

This will help keep the sale/want/buy forum clutter free and current posts up to date.

I dont' think there are enough options to have different levels. As you see the list above... there is barely enough for premium/nonpremium. I wish the list for premium just went on and on forever LOL

I think the main thing is being able to attatch pictures.. It's so quick and easy.
 
  • #12
an annual membership would be much more efficient than a monthly one. so one or the other. i think that members should have like a week long trial. i dont want to pay 20$ then not like it :)
Alex
 
  • #13
Jlap, I like the tiers idea - though it might be a pain to manage for Andrew. Tough tooties, though, eh? ;)

I think there is already the option to no save sent PM's. Now I have to go look. Darn you. :p
 
  • #14
schloaty- the tiers would not be hard.. i just don't see enough features to warrant it. And there is the option to not save the PM you send, I already said how to do it :p
 
  • #15
In order to get a trial you should have to be a member for like 6 months kinda like insurance to make sure you stick around
 
  • #16
wait. so where will this money be going to??

In order to get a trial you should have to be a member for like 6 months kinda like insurance to make sure you stick around
thats a good idea nepenthes_ak

Alex
 
  • #17
To pay for the forum and the time he puts into it.

OMG this is so much fun! I hope this is implemented! (SSSHhhh! I just wanna pay mainly to get a gold name!)
 
  • #18
The trial idea was already in the plans.

The money goes to me. As you all should know by now, I purchased these forums from Phil. I'm also starting a CP business. So, with the monthly costs of buying the forum, the monthly cost of the server that hosts the forum, and all the fees I'm currently paying trying to get my business up and running, I was just looking for an option to help me out. I figure a lot of you have got to have stuff to sale, so this would be a good way to help each other out. Hopefully one day my business will be running smoothly and bringing in some consistant funds to pay for these forums then there will likely be no reason to have paid for service nessasaraly. But for now, all of this coming out of my personal pocket, I was just looking at options that could help me out by paying for the forums while providing extra services to you all. Hope some of that makes sense LOL
Andrew
 
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  • #19
I think its a great idea to help fund the forums. I also think more revenue would be generated if it was a yearly fee at a cheaper price, versus the monthly payment.
 
  • #20
I think its an EXCELLENT idea. Mostly because it DOES cost a lot of money to run a forum like this. We are all enjoying the benefits for free: loads of growing information and help, the trading forum, being able to show off photos of your plants and... best of all, making new friends all over the U.S. and the world and being able to fellowship with likeminded plant nuts.

I would support a premium membership JUST in order to keep the forums going without so much financial burden on Andrew. This forum is good for the entire CP community. Any "extras" you'd get from a premium membership would just be gravy. But I would LOVE to be able to upload photos directly without first having to have it hosted somewhere.

Premium membership is not a new idea. Lots of forums do this. They do it at Geocaching.com in order to support their forum...and Nikon.com as well. Running large forums cost moola and it can't all come out of one person's pocket.

I say absolutely YES! $20-$35 per year. That might sound like a lot to some people...but just think how much money you might drop in just one month on CDs, iTunes, Starbucks, fast food, etc. $20 wouldn't even be $2 a month! And many people pay membership dues to belong to the ICPS for a year without question.

I say, let's help Andrew keep the forums going and have the premium memberships. Maybe you could even make it so TF can take "donations" too.
 
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