Should a membership fee be implemented?

I don't understand what the big deal is. People stating they don't have good jobs and that they are short on funds. We are talking about $5 per year! What's $5? If people can't afford $5 per year they have some major issues. As for the fee causing membership to fall, who cares? Most of our membership is not active. Anyone remotely serious about Buicks will fork out $5 per year and continue contributing to the site. All of course is IMO.

 

PFFT, heh im not even going to waste my time explaining this to ya. Why would I want the hassle of sending a measley little check of 5 dollars through the mail? I have a life you know, I don't have time to make a donation to any bulletin board, if it was truly that important to me then yes I would take the time to do so, but why do that when I can just go to other boards for free?o No: Just GIT R DONE. Have a good life sir, i be seeins you alls no mores.:gp:

 

I would be willing to pay a $5.00 membership fee. There have been some good points made about active members and guys like me that are just getting into this site that have not posted regularly. I like the idea of T-shirts. If they were made in bulk you could mark them up 5-10-15 dollars each. If you make a decent donation you get a shirt. Or you could make a run on t-shirts or sweatshirts and sell them a couple times per year on a pre paid basis. I belonged to a site call thesabregroup when I had a bike and they seemed to operate on donations and selling a few items on a pre paid basis. I am on this site at least once a day and do not want to see it go away or lose a bunch of members. I will be making a donation following this post. I know it's easy to donate, I gusee I've just been to frickin lazy. Keep up the good work on the site guys.

 

I will gladley pay a 5.00 FEE FOR THIS SITE ALL THE ENFO I GOT FROM THIS SITE FOR MY GS HAS NO PRICE TAG THERE ARE A LOT OF GREAT PEOPLE ON THIS SITE GENO:3gears:

 

i pay 25.00 to a club website a year so 5.00 dollars is really nothing. I know I dont say much on this site but I love to look. So I dont think I have a lot of room to talk but It might help out. But I have found some great parts for my skylark. I would be willing to pay to keep it going. I think wow clubs cost ya money to join to hang out and show your car. I dont think 5.00 is such a killer a year.

 

Guys,

This has been an interesting topic, let me throw my nickels worth in here from an administration standpoint.

First off, as to how many users do we really have. Yes, we have 15,462 registered members, probably about 20% of those visited just a couple times or are duplicate registrations. But usage and member logins are far from as few as some may think.

Just a few quick stats for you.

We had 1052 members login in, in the last 24 hours.

Historically, Saturday is one of our slowest days, as lots of folks are doing something besides sitting in front of their computer. I personally hardly spend any time on the site on Saturday.

Many of those members have no posts. They read and look at pictures, maybe send a PM or two, but don't really want to be involved in the discussions, and that's fine.

In the period from March 11- today, there have been 993,652 individual pages loaded, off this website.

Yes, that's almost a million. At around 30,000-35,000 page views per day, it will be over a million page views a month. This counts total activity, users and guests.

It's not at all uncommon to have 3-400 users on the site, at any one time.

That's why we had to go to thumbnail or outside hosted pictures.. bandwidth use and server space has exploded in the last couple years. It's been difficult (and expensive) to keep the page load times to the quick rate we are all accustom to.

My admin log doesn't show how many individual members log in per month, but I would venture to guess we are talking 3-4000 per month, based on other user activity, such as PM's.. there are over 13,000 users that have at least 1 private message in their PM folders.

Secondly,

As to the subject of charging a user fee, for viewing any section of the board, I am opposed to this. Any forum of this size, is the result of a phenomenon in the internet community. Especially when your talking about such a narrow subject as cars with V8 Buick engines in them. It's not like we have millions of enthusiasts out there anymore.

The phenomenon that created our board here was the result of the previous gathering place on the net going to a paid member only situation, and us coming along at just the right time.

Careful administration and moderation has certainly been a factor in our growth over the years. While some bristle at "censorship" the reality is that what we have done from an admin/moderation standpoint is exactly what folks really want. While some of us like to sit and look at Jerry Springerish internet squabbles, the reality is that they detract tremendously from the board as a whole.

I strongly believe that allowing post bashing of anyone in the community, does no good for the purpose your trying to further with the creation of a board in the first place, whether that be a club, a vendor, or a community.

We saw this with our predecessor, which was the original GSCA board. Abrupt/rude moderation and somebody always bitching about something or someone, really turned a lot of folks off to the experience.

When I originally wrote the posts in the mod forum, way back when, the topic was "moderation light, but no allowing bashing and badmouthing". This has proven to be an effective and successful strategy.

But I am rambling.. sorry..

While I have always thought that those of us who use this board for commerce should help pick up the tab, be that a user selling in the classifieds or a vendor hawking his wares, I have always been adamant that no on will ever have to pay to exchange information on V8 Buick .com. Or to just hang out and chat with their buddies.

Recently, we changed to a new classified system, and imposed a miniscule fee for using it to sell.. that system didn't go over well, but we see now that since the system is now free, and still has little use, it really was not about the money, but about the change, and the hassle of having to go thru the deal to pay. I fear the change and hassle issues, and the resulting loss of users, would outweigh any revenue gained by charging a user fee.

Furthermore, anything I do to impose fees, and require payments will really hurt the board here. As we have seen in this thread, many folks would not be adverse to paying a fee, but the actual administration, and collection of such fees, would require yet another complete revamp of the system. More change for us and more hassle for you, the user.

There is no immediate danger of financial trouble here at V8 Buick, what I am more concerned about, is the ability to maintain an operating budget, and be able to keep up with the growth rate and required service upgrades that are in our future. With 6-10 new registrations a day, we are adding thousands of new members a year, and this growth rate has escalated rapidly in the last two years. I am looking down the road here, 3-5 years, when it's going to cost 7-10K to run this website, and provide the level of service we all expect.

Thru nothing more than simple complacency, our donation rate and amount from our core users has declined steadily, since the very first year the board was introduced.

When something new comes along, the average guy says, hey, this is great, here let me kick a few bucks at it.. but when you click on V8Buick every day, and it's always there, that feeling tends to go away. You expect it to be there, and it's easy to forget that someone is paying for it.

Considering the outpouring of support that we have received in the last week, there is no doubt that we have a great core of members here who will help insure the future of V-8 Buick. As we grow, it's my job to make sure we have a viable strategy in place, to meet the needs that will arise.

We have a couple of different things going now, to insure the healthy financial future of the board here. User donations continues to be the number one revenue source, and we have made it as easy as possible for those of us who use and enjoy this resource, to give back a little.


I thank the thread starter, as well as all of you who have posted and offered your opinion in this thread, but I don't see ever imposing a viewing fee for the board. Not for any section, even the classifieds. Doing so will greatly reduce the traffic in the affected section, and render it useless eventually.

I have, and continue to believe that this community both deserves, and will support a board of this quality and size. V8 Buick has helped further the hobby of thousands and thousands of us here, and will continue to do so, long into the future.

Thanks again everyone, and we wish you all a Happy Easter, and hope you spend it enjoying the day with friends and family, both in person, and on our website here.

JW

 

Merchandising

Jim,

Have you ever considered doing merchandising (tshirts, hat, etc) through a place like CafePress.com? I know that handling orders and shipping on stuff like that is a PITA - we had the same problem with our horse org. We set up a store at CafePress, uploaded our logo, chose the products and profit - and CafePress does all the leg work and sends us a check. Basically, it's handsfree after set up.

A basic store there with 1 image is FREE, or for more product choices and multiple images, it's like $6.95/month.

Anyway, it's an easy way to make logo stuff available. Ours is pretty successful, and it doesn't require someone to 'man' it all the time.

 

That's interesting Annie.. I had not seen that option for merchandising, we will definately look into it.

We are also going to be doing an online store, incorporated into the board, selling Restoration, NOS, used and Performance parts.

JW

 

Make some shirts, hats and decals. I will step up and get a couple.

 

If there is a fee. Then I agree with this.

How many of the members have ads on here? Would that really help? Should it be all or none?

 

$ on the way. This is too great a site to lose. I've learned more here than I thought I could (still have decades to learn), AND have met and made friends and friendships through this site.:TU:

 

Merchandising??? Go for it... Mebbe some W.O.T. Shirts..Hats..oh an Buick ones as well.. just kidding:laugh: ..good idea. Where do I send the Buick :dollar:Bucks? I'll support it totally.

"This has been an interesting topic, let me throw my nickel’s worth in here from an administration standpoint."

Jim it makes sense (no pun intended). I've learned a heck of a lot here and I'm still learning. I'll gladly pay $5 to keep this going. Thanks for everything you're doing to make this a success. - SGM

 

Jim W, just sent my $100.00 by paypal. Please include me on the Premier List. Thanks to everybody for a wonderful board.

Mike

 

Will do

Thanks

JW

 

There is strength in numbers, man.

 

Thank you to everyone who responded. Interesting that as of this moment there have been 1460 views of this thread with only 55 replies and 131 "votes". My intention for this thread was to see if we can stabilize the income for the site. The operators of this site (Jim and Mike and ?) shouldn't have to be responsible for all of the operating expenses. Luckily there are enough of us who donate to keep it going. I agree that the information sharing should be free. However, I really like Chris' (cjp69) suggestion that if you want to advertise something for sale you need to be a paid up member. There are many members of this site who use it for commercial purposes. They should have to pay for that service. It was quite a shock to some when the paid ads program was implemented. However, if "membership has its privileges" then one of those privileges may be free ads. If the yearly dues are 5, 10 or 20 dollars per year I will pay it regardless. However for a lot of people they will only pay the dues if they want to advertise something for sale. That's okay too. I just want the site to be funded by a broader base of those who use it or benefit from it. Not the less than 100 who keep it going year after year. I'm a supporter of the board and the owners and will continute to make my donation whether the fee structure changes or not.
I think we can end this thread now. Thank you for your input. Hopefully Jim and Mike will have some input to consider in the future.
Harvey

 

This is a great site, due to active and open participation.
I voted no to add fees and/or any new rules. That being said I think the good work of the board should be supported. If you ask the members will respond. My donation is in today.

 

Should be free.....

 

No, I think a lot of people who don't use the computer very much will suffer. Some people just check boards from time to time.

 

I have to get in on this . I just sent a payment for credits and was using the classifieds . I really think thats a good way to go Jim . Those of us that buy and sell on here should support this board period! The FREE and open discussion should be allowed to continue . If after merchandising the site can be self sufficent then go back to free .
Oh well I guess I am just another donation now that the old system is back or am I still using my credits ? Either way 5$ is easy enough .