Paid Subscriptions - What for?

The BBQ Pit
1

My “guest” trial is nearing at StraightDope. Just wanted to say, yes you are a wonderful witty bunch, with a very neat little community here. However, below are some of my decisions for NOT subscribing. No I’m not a tight ass who’s not going to part with $14.95.

I respect the straightdope policy of charging, but I find it pretty contrary that the very place that “fights ignorance” is the same place that is out to make a little on the side. I haven’t seen many posts that directly deal with the whole money thing. They’re either getting deleted as soon as they’re posted, OR folks genuinly think that this is worth $14.95
Sure Ed. Zotti’s post answers questions a new subscriber like myself would have, but $14.95 for is a hefy pricetag. I will address this in this post. Which webhost are you guys using, seriously I get my page hosted for a $1 a month. Again, I won’t post any URL’s cause the moment I do that I’ll have my teeth removed. Yes, I know my personal page doesn’t get a twentieth of the traffic this page does. Still this board is really Slow.** $14.95 ought to buy me more than a fast service, more emotes, avatars, spell check (which SDMB doesn’t even have, and come stadard fitted with other boards) - this message board is a little behind it’s time!** When I say “Message board” I am talking about the software here not the users. vbulletin is a nice board service, but is this an old version? phpbb does a better job, and it’s free. Consider.

philosophyforums.com is very similar to SDMB and the forum users are given rank by how many posts they have made. A seniority thing. IN SDMB you’re asking i fork over money and then get the fancy title of “Charter Member” what the hell is a charter member anyway? ** You’re hardly fighting ignorance here** , you’re giving those credit based on them forking the dollars over. Sure you have the number of posts written down, but some users have more posts than others. Sounding off and voicing an opinion shouldn’t be based on payment. We have moderators to make sure everyone is behaving.

Everything in itallics is from Ed. Zotti’s post
We want to keep this thing going. But we gotta pay the rent.

If you’re charging to pay for the rent, you’re overcharging at $14.95 go to webhostingtalk.com (oh look there’s another forum that doesn’t charge a dime, has minimal ads and has 300 users minimum logged on at one time, go on check it out)
Come now - it’s comparable to what you’d pay for a magazine subscription. <–the 14.95

Nice one you’re comparing apples to grapefruits here. You can’t make such a broad remark. You’re sales technigques may work on some but not on me, a message board is not a magazine, and is not comaparable. This is the first message board I have seen that charges in any case. It’s poor reasoning to say yeah it’s comparable so it’s worth it.

An annual payment of $14.95 works out to about four cents per day.

again the same as the above point. Now you’re selling us health insurance?
If you want money why not stick a donation button on your site. I would donate to that, but you asking me for money even before I am established in here. No thanks. A one month trial was very nice of you, but doesn’t sell me into paying for a 12month service. You may be surprised with the donations you get you’ll get people giving you a dollar or two but that adds up, and there’s no stopping anyone from giving more than $14.95

None provides a steady revenue stream. <–response to donations.

was the idea of putting a paypal donations or something even tried here?

3,800 paid subscribers is a pretty healthy showing

What 3,800 paid subscribers!!! I would too drop the donations idea. Let’s rip people off. 3,800x14.95= $56,810 at this rate you can buy your own hosting company let alone dedicated hosting. Where’s all this money going? So much for promoting fighting ignorance. You’re ripping folks off. I didn’t think fighting ignorance cost $56K plus.

We’re charging what we think is a modest amount of money

I think $56k is very modest. I think next year subscriptions should be $20 per month.

You sound like the red cross, and establishment that bases it values on helping others, yet hundreds of thousands of dollars are used to “run the place” - Yeah Whatever SDMB. I invite you to personally challenge my criticisms. This post ought to be in the BBQ PIT if you ask me!

2

Your wish is granted, I’ve moved your thread to the Pit.

Your comments all come down to the same thing – you’re too cheap to pay $14.95. Your arguments about what other sites do are ludicrous. The READER has spent over $100,000 in the last few years to maintain this site, and they are entitled to some sort of break-even proposition.

This has been said before, many times: contributions to a tax-paying entity are not possible. They would count as taxable income, and the bookkeeping costs would far outweight the value of the contributions… unless you’d like to contribute, say, $10K or $15K, in which case, they’d find a way to handle it.

You waltz in here, and the vast majority of your posts have been berating these Boards. If you don’t like, leave, and don’t let the door hit your arse on the way out.

3

You stole my post! Here is what I was going to say:

Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. Your first day here you started whining about how horrible the board is, and apparently you haven’t stopped since. Bye.

4

Shit! I wanted to be the first poster to show the whiner the door.

Seems to me Pork Chop that if you really didn’t think this place was worth it you would just bail instead of whine.

But rthanks for stopping by. :smiley:

5

It keeps whiny little attention whores from being able to post after 30 days.

6

Your $14.95 wouldn’t make you a Charter Member anyways. Just a “Member”. And we only paid $5.95, so your little math problem is quite a bit off.

Bye-Bye Now!

7

Actually, now that I said that, I think it was only $4.95. Neener-neener.

8

I’d just like to point out that the revenue garnered by the Board is more like a third of $56,810, since the vast majority of our members joined at the reduced price. Considering that Dex says the SDMB has cost over a hundred grand in the past few years, they’re hardly rolling in the coinage yet.

9

NO MERCY FOR SWINE!!

To the meat packing plant with you, pork chop.

<pseudoShakespearean>You were better bacon, ere you ever were a Doper.</pseudoShakespearean> :wally

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Pork Chop

It’s what’s for dinner.

Now fuck off!

11

You misspelled “fucko.”

pork chop, this place doesn’t offer a vital service. It offers a frivolous luxury. The best way to register your discontent with the pricing scheme is to refuse to purchase the product.

Anything else is delusional whining, ineffective as it is discourteous.

Daniel

12

Normally I wouldn’t hijack someone elses thread, but…

We’re the only ones who get to be Charter Members? Really? Im’ma getting me a new tattoo…

13

Thank you for playing. Pick up your parting gifts on the way out.
Next contestant, please.

14

Wow, that’s why you charge. It all makes sense now… :slight_smile:

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Well, I suppose if he wanted to go out with a bang, a moronic thread like this one is a good start.

Piss off twerp. As you’ve deduced, if you don’t like it here you can leave.

16

What the hell, I’ll play along.

We’ll come to that later.

Explain the contradiction, please, and tell me how you know that anyone is making any money off of this board whatsoever. The administration says that this board has been a money-eating black hole for the Chicago Reader, and only now is it beginning to eat away at its debt, so to speak. I have no reason not to believe them.

I’ll take “Genuinely think it’s worth it” for 14.95, Alex. Those that don’t think it is worth it don’t pay. Very simple, really.

Compared to what? A dollar and a quarter per month of unlimited access to some of the most well-informed and articulate people on the internet doesn’t seem too steep to me.

For those who don’t catch the reference, Porky is still steamed over the fact that his/her first thread was a shot at the board, followed by an advertisement for his/her own board, and TubaDiva pretty calmly explained why that wasn’t OK. PorkChop took offense, and apparently the grudge is still borne.

Whence comes this “ought” to? 14.95 does buy you a year’s worth of contact with several thousand ingenious, sarcastic, pedantic motherfuckers who will answer any question under the sun, debate with you about the mysteries of the universe, discuss bowel movements, etc. That’s the price of like a half-tank of gas for your car.

Nobody’s really asking you to do anything, but yeah, that would be your title. The consensus around here was that fancy seniority systems and member titles were kind of snooty and elitist, so they called us Charter Members.

You lost me, to tell the truth. What do post counts have to do with anything? You don’t want to pay. Isn’t that really the crux of the issue?

Being able to enjoy a good walk or a nice round of golf “shouldn’t” be based on payment, either. If you want to exercise or play at the finest country club in town, though, they’re going to expect a little restitution for the use of their facilities. What is so confusing about this?

Again, I’m not sure what you’re so indignant about. They are providing you a service. Doing so costs them money. They would like for you, if you wish to add to their workload, to provide some of that money. Go to the other message boards if you like. Nothing wrong with that. If they get to be as busy as this one, though, it’s going to cost somebody some money to keep it running.

You’re right, it’s not like a magazine- you can only read a magazine. You’re allowed to read these boards for free.

As was already explained, the Chicago Reader can’t take donations.

Well, you would know.

Well, first of all, you probably should’ve just put the fucking thing in the Pit to begin with, shouldn’t you? Anyway, it seems to me that what it comes down to is that you don’t feel you “ought” to have to pay anybody to be a member of a message board. So don’t. It’s a personal choice, and nobody’s saying you don’t have the right to refuse.

Please, though, understand that you aren’t fooling anybody with the indignation. I think you do understand why this board is worth 15 bones, but you have some kind of misguided perception that if it’s on the internet, it “ought” to be free. You are a tightass who won’t part with the money, only you choose to mask your tightassedness with a thin veneer of self-righteous skullduggery. So what the hell, tilt at windmills, rage against the machine, do what you have to do. In the end, though, you “ought” to realize that what it comes down to is you being a stubborn jackass who appreciates the value of the board, but won’t pay the money because that would be a concession.

In conclusion: don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out, motherfucker.

17

I may be wrong, but I believe we’re all going to be “Member” when they get around to changing it. Lynn, if you’re perusing this thread, is that so?

18

Oh no! Some dumbass named after a pork product doesn’t like us! I’m sure the boards will go back to being free now! “Wow,” the admins will say, “we thought all the initial bitching about a payment plan was just sour grapes, but now a moron named after a pig doesn’t like us. THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!”

19

Well, some of us who lucked into finding this place earlier’n you did (June of four years ago, here) only had to pony up $4.95 to keep posting for an entire year, which I believe is something like 1.333 cents per day.

How much traffic do you generate? How many megabytes of information are accessed every day? How many users do you have, how many threads being moved, deleted or merged, how many users being banned? I get my webpage hosted for jack shit, but I also don’t generate huge amounts of traffic.

I’d hazard a guess you could replace that 20 with a 2000 and you’d be closer to the truth, but it’s nice to see you set yourself up with a really nice strawman and then took it down yourself. Make sure you sweep up afterward.

In addition to spellcheck (standard, not stadard) , they really could do with a grammar and punctuation check (its, not it’s), not to mention clarity checks (“buy me more than a fast service, more emotes” … er? It doesn’t buy you more emotes. What you say and what you mean are at odds). By the way, your average word processing app should have spellcheck.

A member who is chartered (has payed to be a charter member). Surely the cause-effect relationship isn’t straining your mind?

So go there. Who’s stopping you?:slight_smile:

For my money, there’s a fuckload more content, and much more variety of content, here than in pretty much any magazine. Your average magazine, in one issue, gets about as much content, I’d wager, as one day here, if not twelve hours or even 8. So that’s 27-30 days of free content for you. Oh, and you can actually respond to stuff here, as opposed to a mag where you write in and maybe they publish your letter, maybe they don’t. So actually, you’re right … this is apples to grapefruits. A mag ain’t near as good as this place.

There are other places that charge (TMF, for one; I’m sure someone els can list a few others).

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I’d gladly pay another $10 to keep more emotes and avatars AWAY from this place. Who the hell wants all that annoying crap? If you need a goddamn smilie face to do your communicating for you, you don’t know how to communicate.