An article in the New York Times (19 Nov 01)"Paying for Web Content is a Tough Sell"discusses a recent study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
The powers that be should take a good look at the conclusions the study makes before going to a subscription mode.
It’s very in-depth and detailed study. Anyone who is interested in current internet trends should check this report out:
**Pew Internet & American Life Project: The dot-com meltdown and the Web**
Perhaps a version of split-the-baby ? GQ, say, would remain open and free - it also provides fodder for the news column - while the other forums, good as they may be, are more dependent on personal interest.
In this way, anyone choosing to stand upon the soapbox in the Pit or MPSIMS, worthy forums though they may be, would “subsidize” the mere search for information rather than do so on on the Reader’s dime. And if persons didn’t pay, then at least precious server space is freed up for the pure, original intent of the column, que no ? This might require a bit of extra pruning by GQ mods, to prevent “non-GQ creep”.
That said, I would hate to see the potential loss of informative, precise long-term posters who helped bring the board to its current popularity over a fee. Some are mods now, but they stand out for their comments and threads. Leading to the next question: under the fee system, what about a way to reward excellent posting ? A fee refund, or some kind of value credit to be spent online at a Reader advertiser ? Thereby making the expense of the 20$ fee provide the hope/promise of a return ? (Sorta like the stock scheme mentioned above, in a way…)
Very interesting survey, frinkboy. It also had this to say:
So, if we use the numbers estimated by someone (I think it was kabbes) of 1,800 active users here, and only 12% agree to pay, that’s only 216 people. Not only will it get pretty boring pretty fast around here, they’d only have generated $4,320.00 if the fee they agree to is $20.00. That’s only about 1/10 of the estimated cost to run this place, as posted by Ed Zotti in this thread. At that rate, the boards will be closed before the PTP scheme is even past its first month. <sigh>
Very true, very true.
I mean, what is stopping somebody going to Cool Boards, or another free message board provider, creating message boards under the same titles as these ones, and then grouping them in to a single index? It would take less then 5 minutes.
Asking people to pay for something when there is a free, similar alternative is an excellent example of ignorant business sense.
Apparently, even Salon isn’t getting many people to pay for its ‘premium’ access, despite having unique content that they actually pay people to create.
I never know what to say in a post. I probably hit the “post reply” button as often as any of the “regulars”, but I never seem to follow through with it. Thoughts run through my mind faster than a run-on sentence:
“I am not worthy of posting here-no one will respond to me-God, why didnt I pick a clever user name-I can’t flirt, I’m married-What if I make a typo-I don’t know how to code-These people are SO DAMN SMART!” (Clear Fields here)
With that said, I will gladly pay. I might even become a regular poster. I could never afford $50 from a paycheck, but I am the queen when it comes to cutting those easily overlooked (small) luxuries.
Actually Shayna, that’s possibly not quite right. Follow me here:[ul][li]I estimate that about 10% of the registered user base is active enough to potentially want to subscribe.[/li]
[li]That article indicates that about 12% of people who previously used a free resource are willing to pay for it.[/ul]Now what are we to make of this? I’m not sure. On the one hand we could argue that the 12% willing to pay is consistent with my 10% that would be interested and conclude that most of that 10% plus maybe a few more besides will subscribe.[/li]
On the other hand we could argue that one can’t possibly take into account those who only ever posted less than 10 times. Then we’d get rid of 2/3 of the registered posters, and the article would suggest 1/3 x 12% = 4% of all registered posters will subscribe. Note that this is would be 40% of my “10% interested” estimate - less than the 75% or so hoped for.
5% of (currently) 19,000 is 950 subscribers. Call it an even 1000. At that level of take-up, you’d need to charge close to the upper end of the possible fee talked about. But then I’m not so sure that you’d even get the 40% of 10%.
pan
pan
I’m afraid that there are too many posters like me.
I love this board. Reading and posting here occupies at least 80% of my time at work (I work nights and it’s extremely slow). It’s hard to imagine not having the Straight Dope to help me kill time in the long hours between 10 PM and 7 AM.
But it’s even harder to imagine paying for posting rights here. I won’t do it, and it’s not a money issue - even if it was $5 for a lifetime membership, I wouldn’t do it. The internet has always been a free thing for me, and the idea of paying for accessing any part of it is alien to me. When this board starts requiring payment to post, I will post elsewhere. I may still read it occasionally, but being cut off from the community I will soon lose interest in it, especially considering that it will probably only have a couple of dozen people posting regularly.
If all bulletin boards charged for membership, I MIGHT consider paying to use this one, as it’s my favorite by far. But there’s too much competition, there will always be a free board somewhere else. Nothing against the SD, just letting you know how I feel.
I don’t have a problem paying for the site. I think the days of the internet free ride are coming to an end. It’s most apparent as I’m doing my Christmas shopping–only two Christmases ago, coupons for $20 off a $20 purchase at buy.com were not unheard of, and $10 off a $15-$20 purchase was pretty much expected at any online store. Now amazon.com is pissing itself to tell us about their offer of free shipping for orders over $99.
Here’s an idea, though, that I’m sure has come up: some people are simply unable to pay for the membership. What would prevent them from splitting a subscription? A few people could get together, get a free e-mail account somewhere that they could all access, and use it to create a single account. When one of the co-subscribers signs in and posts, he could start his post with “Poster A here…”. They could explain the situation in the account profile.
I don’t think this is bilking the Reader for anything, since these would be subscriptions they wouldn’t have otherwise. The Reader could allow this practice and set rules–say, no more than four co-subscribers to an account–and could even make it easier on them by, say, adding a pull-down menu to the compose post page to select which co-subscriber is posting.
The co-members would not have the same level of service that a full member would have–they would not have unique identities, nor would more than one of them be able to be signed in at a time. Full members might argue that they shouldn’t have to pay the full fee when someone else can post to the board for less; I (who can and will pay the fee) would not have any problem with it.
This probably wouldn’t be a good option to offer in general, as no one would want to get into such an arrangement with just anyone. But the regular posters who either can’t afford it or who don’t post enough for the full membership fee to be worth it could easily form posting groups. The Reader gets the money, the co-members get limited posting privileges, and the rest of us don’t lose out on their contributions.
Just a thought.
Dr. J
Our policy has always been one screen name to a poster, pretty much, though we’ve had at least one situation I can remember where nominally a couple shared an account. (She dropped out pretty quick and he wasn’t too far behind.)
I point out that if we had problems with one poster in a group we would be hard pressed to handle possible banishment unless we threw all of them out and that’s not hardly fair at all.
Provisions will be made for our more impoverished Dopers, exactly what hasn’t been worked out yet.
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
Hey, Badtz. No disrespect here. You’re just the one on the spot when I cared enough to post, okay?
But it’s exactly this attitude that’s killing quality content on the web. Think of how everyone relied on cnn.com and washpost.com during 9/11. Sooner or later that’s going away and pay-for-content will rule the land.
My best guess? Something where you can subscribe to a ‘bundled’ package of content/sites. Not unlike the current AdultCheck system.
One fee and you get access to SD/Washpost/BBCOnline/Etc. I’d lay money on that as the outcome in 10 years.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Anthracite *
How much is it worth to be able to meet, debate, ask, and share knowledge with people from all over the World?
I can honestly say that this message board is one of the top 10 things I’ve ever seen on the Internet. However, if it had been pay-to-post when I found it, I doubt if I would have ever stuck around to find out how great it is. I’ve been trying to talk all my friends into checking it out, and I don’t think any of them have yet. If my raving about it doesn’t convince them it’s worth it, how would you expect to convince random web surfers with the attention span of a hyperactive gnat that it’s worth paying for?
The thing about that is, I’m already paying more for my internet access than I do for cable. However, I can turn on the TV and watch anything I want on any channel, other than pay-per-view.
This is the third site where I’ve been asked to pay a fee. Of course, the other two didn’t bother to ask my opinion, which is one of the things I love about this board. The way things are going, though, it looks like I’ll have to make a choice about a lot of the things I’d like access to. This would be a lot more than $20/year for me. It would be $20/year plus what I pay for DSL, plus what I’m paying for two other sites. I’ve already decided that I won’t renew one of those. I responded to the pre-registration, but I haven’t really decided about SDMB yet.
Here’s another thing for the administration to consider: I’ve read several things on here about the half-life of a doper. If it truly is something like 6 months, I doubt if someone would want to invest in that for a whole year. For this reason, and to lessen the blow to the budget, I would rather see a month-to-month fee that gets charged to your credit card every month.
That’s assuming of course that you HAVE a credit card. I probably never will. I don’t even have a debit card. It’s either cash or cheque, and my cheques are the over the counter type that aren’t personalized.
EXCELLENT point.
As soon as subscription is introduced, it’s goodnight SDMB. There are free alternatives EVERYWHERE. It’s like telling someone that will have to pay to breathe the air over here, but just over there, it’s free.
Heh. It’s pure insanity. I feel like going over to Cool Boards right now and creating a virtual mirror of this site, just to show the absolute stupidity, idiocy and short sightedness of the people behind this pay-per-post idea.
It is sheer lunacy.
You have to stop posting like this, Royal Sampler. You’re making me far too nostalgic for the black and white clarity of my testosterone driven teens. Misty water colour memories…can it be that it was all so simple then, or has time rewritten every line? If we had the chance to do it all again, tell me: would we? could we?