I work all night, I work all day, to pay the bills I have to pay
Right so.... this one shouldn't come as too much of a surprise, as it's been floated before. I'm seriously considering implementing a Subscription system for the site. Basically, joe punter (i.e. you) donates to thumped.com (i.e. me) a small annual fee in order to fund the upkeep of this site. I'm not doing this because I think anyone 'owes' me / the site anything. To be honest I've held off on doing something like this until now because it represents a shift in why I do this site, in some ways making it more of an obligation than a hobby for me.
The basic idea is a 2 tier structure, with individuals either donating a certain amount each year in return for the respect and admiration of their peers & some extra message board features, or optionally donating more in return for certain premium extras. The functionality to implement this is already built in to vBulletin 3, but there are a few reasons for this coming up now other than "because I can"....
I might as well get straight to the point: THIS IS ABOUT MONEY. When the hosting costs, software subscription costs, phone costs & (fuck it, I don’t care how this sounds) the value of my time are all added up, it's costing me a not-inconsiderable amount of cash to keep the site going. On a month to month basis it's not so bad, but when I think about how much time and money I've spent on this site over the last few years, and all the other things I could be spending it on....
I guess because I work in I.T. for a living I'm constantly aware of the fact that I could be actually getting paid for my evenings spent in front of the computer... or even could be out having a fucking life or something. Anyway, I've tried running 'commercial' ads from eBay, Google etc but have had fuck all success with them. Only TWO people did the eBay signup thing, generating 9 quid (thank you Dudley & Andy), and in the 3 months or so they’ve been running the Google ads have generated $18 (because hardly anyone is clicking the banners). All of this is completely academic because I'll never see any of if due to the minimum payout rules. I'm trying CD Wow at the moment, but 100 "units" need to be sold before they pay, so I'm not holding my breath on this one. (100 units = stg£25 quid commission, incidentally).
Another reason for trying to raise cash is the quality of the existing hosting. The reliability of the shared server we're on now leaves a lot to be desired, and bandwidth usage is increasing every month. If things keep going this way I reckon we'll be exceeding our monthly allowance within 4 months.
We're getting to the stage where I'll have to seriously consider moving everything to a dedicated server. But to do this we'll need to spend even more money and to be blunt, this is money which I can't really justify spending out of my own pocket any more. And apart from the fact that dedicated servers do not come cheap, there's an increased administrative overhead in managing them.... so it would mean even more of my time spent managing things, or getting someone else to do it for me - something I wouldn't be prepared to ask anyone else to do for free.
So what's in it for you? Well, in return for subscribing you'd get to feel all warm inside, knowing that you were doing your bit for the community & helping to keep this show on the road. Ok, as well as that you'd get some other stuff to make you stand out from the crowd, possibly including some or all of the following:
Supporters - €20 donation
Get all of the above, plus
I'm not threatening to close the site down if people don't cough up, and there's no suggestion that people won't be able to use the site if they don't pay or anything like that. But I know the score and I fully expect some people to think I'm a complete prick for even suggesting this. I hope those of you who that think site subscriptions are a fucked up thing to suggest have the decency to tell me here rather than bitch about it / me elsewhere - I really do want to know what people think before I make a decision on this.
But the bottom line is it's time for the site to start paying its own way. In the meantime, you can always go set up your own website, install some forum software, wait 5 years for a community to build & then maybe I can visit and bitch at YOU when you realise that the money to maintain these things don't just fall from the fucking sky.
Opinions, please.
Edit: Here's the links....
Right so.... this one shouldn't come as too much of a surprise, as it's been floated before. I'm seriously considering implementing a Subscription system for the site. Basically, joe punter (i.e. you) donates to thumped.com (i.e. me) a small annual fee in order to fund the upkeep of this site. I'm not doing this because I think anyone 'owes' me / the site anything. To be honest I've held off on doing something like this until now because it represents a shift in why I do this site, in some ways making it more of an obligation than a hobby for me.
The basic idea is a 2 tier structure, with individuals either donating a certain amount each year in return for the respect and admiration of their peers & some extra message board features, or optionally donating more in return for certain premium extras. The functionality to implement this is already built in to vBulletin 3, but there are a few reasons for this coming up now other than "because I can"....
I might as well get straight to the point: THIS IS ABOUT MONEY. When the hosting costs, software subscription costs, phone costs & (fuck it, I don’t care how this sounds) the value of my time are all added up, it's costing me a not-inconsiderable amount of cash to keep the site going. On a month to month basis it's not so bad, but when I think about how much time and money I've spent on this site over the last few years, and all the other things I could be spending it on....
I guess because I work in I.T. for a living I'm constantly aware of the fact that I could be actually getting paid for my evenings spent in front of the computer... or even could be out having a fucking life or something. Anyway, I've tried running 'commercial' ads from eBay, Google etc but have had fuck all success with them. Only TWO people did the eBay signup thing, generating 9 quid (thank you Dudley & Andy), and in the 3 months or so they’ve been running the Google ads have generated $18 (because hardly anyone is clicking the banners). All of this is completely academic because I'll never see any of if due to the minimum payout rules. I'm trying CD Wow at the moment, but 100 "units" need to be sold before they pay, so I'm not holding my breath on this one. (100 units = stg£25 quid commission, incidentally).
Another reason for trying to raise cash is the quality of the existing hosting. The reliability of the shared server we're on now leaves a lot to be desired, and bandwidth usage is increasing every month. If things keep going this way I reckon we'll be exceeding our monthly allowance within 4 months.
We're getting to the stage where I'll have to seriously consider moving everything to a dedicated server. But to do this we'll need to spend even more money and to be blunt, this is money which I can't really justify spending out of my own pocket any more. And apart from the fact that dedicated servers do not come cheap, there's an increased administrative overhead in managing them.... so it would mean even more of my time spent managing things, or getting someone else to do it for me - something I wouldn't be prepared to ask anyone else to do for free.
So what's in it for you? Well, in return for subscribing you'd get to feel all warm inside, knowing that you were doing your bit for the community & helping to keep this show on the road. Ok, as well as that you'd get some other stuff to make you stand out from the crowd, possibly including some or all of the following:
Supporters - €20 donation
- Additional "Subscriber" user title
- Access to a private subscribers forum
- An option to remove banner ads. <-- Not coded yet. Soon
- A thumped.com POP3 email address
- Allow invisible mode
- View who's online
- Post events on the calendar
- Set own custom title
- Use images in signature <-- On hold.
- 250 Private Messages
- 1mb storage for attachments
- Add user notes
- Post user profile pictures
- See who rated you
Get all of the above, plus
- 2mb attachment storage
- Your own banner ad
- Maybe a little webhosting too
I'm not threatening to close the site down if people don't cough up, and there's no suggestion that people won't be able to use the site if they don't pay or anything like that. But I know the score and I fully expect some people to think I'm a complete prick for even suggesting this. I hope those of you who that think site subscriptions are a fucked up thing to suggest have the decency to tell me here rather than bitch about it / me elsewhere - I really do want to know what people think before I make a decision on this.
But the bottom line is it's time for the site to start paying its own way. In the meantime, you can always go set up your own website, install some forum software, wait 5 years for a community to build & then maybe I can visit and bitch at YOU when you realise that the money to maintain these things don't just fall from the fucking sky.
Opinions, please.
Edit: Here's the links....
