Subscriptions on the site have been happening. There are things about it that just aren't making the grade. Now after Paypal takes there cut of 2.9% and 30 cents per transaction.

 

SUBSCRIPTIONS ------

Current prices are a month... Total profit monthly -$19.53 (Including inactive total $206.45) 

Silver $1.99 ($1.63) - Currently 7 active 80 inactive - $11.41 profit. (Total $141.81 including inactive)

Gold $2.99 ($2.60)  - Currently 1 active 9 inactive - $2.60 profit. (Total $26.00 including inactive)

Platinum $5.99 ($5.52) - Currently 1 active 6 inactive - $5.52 profit. (Total $38.64 including inactive)

($x.xx) numbers are the paypal adjusted profit.

Just the monthly total will not pay for the main software license fees and update fees. ($360 a year!)

 

Current prices are a year... Total profit yearly -$3,224.28 

Silver $20.00 ($19.12) - Currently 52 active 23 inactive - $994.24 profit.

Gold $25.00 ($23.98)  - Currently 28 active 16 inactive - $671.44 profit.

Platinum $45.00 ($43.40) - Currently 29 active 16 inactive - $1,258.60 profit. (Just close to paying the hosting bill!)

($x.xx) numbers are the paypal adjusted profit.

 

Total yearly --- $3,430.73 (Basically $9.39 a day in subscriptions)

 

 Sorry to say this barely is paying the bills. For just the web site and I need to be paid as well for my time. Just in hosting alone for just the server is $1,300 a year. Then you start adding up everything. Cellphone, phone/internet here at home, keeping my computer in good repair. The bad part is that people are skipping in on the test drive or 1.99 monthly raiding the members and bailing out quickly not to return. So say member X creates a month silver account then calls me up burns my ear for over 3 to 4 hours it doesn't pay for my time at all. The whole low price monthly will have to raised in price. 

 

I'm considering raising the monthly to... Still pretty cheap per month.

Silver for 30 days - $10.49

Gold for 30 days - $16.69

Platinum for 30 days - $25.39

 

Now on the monthly side I adjust the price to include all the paypal processing fees. I shouldn't have to pay for your card fees. for such a low price. Then make it at least profitable to keep the doors open. 

 

Several people have mention to me in phone calls that the yearly is rather low. I've considered raising them as well to give more bonus on the year plans. Then I know my knowledge and all the data here has value. My time has value to doing phone support hours on end. We need to come to agreement on a fair pricing. Then looking at the yearly prices are going to have to raise too. 

 

I'm considering raising the yearly to... 

Silver for 365 days - $50.00

Gold for 365 days - $75.00 

Platinum for 365 days - $100.00 

 

I'm willing to put more into the site and give certain member group free phone support. (Discussion requested) But these long hours helping people on the phone. I know I'm worth much more than 40 cents an hour. This is part of the problem I want to fix here so everyone gets a fair shake. Let work this out so we build a website that gives the best support to Cummins owners but also is fair in paying me for my hard work and efforts. I'm sorry I'm not going to work hours 2 to 3 hours for $1.63...  

 

I'm planning on expanding the store as well. Currently all product purchases automatically give a free year to the site for customer warranty. All members with the group of Customer are in this automatically and will expire after the year is up. Back to the store the I'm already been talking to several vendors about selling products. I will been expanding my store very soon. 

 

One thing I must say... We cannot block view of the site to the free public. If this is done I will loose all Google rank I do have. So all pages and articles must remain available to the free public. Never can be blocked. So any ideas to limit viewing or reading of articles and forums can't be done. 

 

This will become the pricing for the subscriptions, We plan on honoring current subscription prices till your next renewal comes. I want to reconsider which groups are going to get phone support any longer. My thought is only the Yearly Platinum members will get phone support. Because looking at monthly for $10.49 wouldn't even pay 2 hours at minimum wage. Even when I do turn a wrench I do charge $85 an hour for working on a Cummins trucks. I just want a fair shake for my work supporting you guys here and not get short changed. 

 

So then we can discuss how the permissions per each group will work out. Which members can see what. This is not set in gold yet and in discuss mode right now to let the members feed into this with suggestions. 

 

 

Well that lost me once I got out of the first paragraph. I am not techy enough for the rest. As far as a 3 tiered system goes I think you ought to keep it or something similar. If all any one had to choose from was $100 memebership then I believe some will be scared off. While I know the 100 bucks is worth it, alot of folks are just going for what info they can get for free. 

The only thing is if I do keep the tier system it will go up in price from there... Not down. 

 

Monthly $10, $20 and $30 but that means when you times it by 12 months. turns to yearly at $120, $240, $360 a year. That's the problem I cannot go below $10 a month or $100 a year. Because we were at 1.99, 2.99 and 5.99 which turns to 23.88, 34.88, 71.88 a year, which the yearly ($20, $25, and $45) barely could pay the server bill and nothing more. So $10 a month has to be the bottom. Only goes up from there. Just look backwards $100 a year changes back to mere $8.33 a month when divided by 12. So the yearly plan is actually a better deal saving about $1.67 per month for $20.04 savings per year vs. monthly.

 

So... The $100 a year (possibly $200 and $300 a year) but no going down from there. Even $100 a year is $8.33 a month and 27 cents a day. That's it. If I go down in price all anyone will do is like we learned is jump on the $1.99 plan get what they need and bail out. So now the raid the entire site as much as they can and run with downloads of books and any information they can get. Hence why the short fall of paying the bills.

 

Being transparent look at the numbers for yourself. Do the math...Figure the site needs at least $5000.00 a year to function with all bills paid. That doesn't even pay me for my time. Remember the inactive of the yearly is LAST YEARS income. Doesn't count towards this years bills. 

 

Edited September 25, 20204 yr by Mopar1973Man

I was thinking having the 3 tiers of yearly subscriptiions. I never really considered the daily and montly plans. I dont like monthly bills anymore. Paying once a year is better in my feeble mind. 

22 minutes ago, dripley said:

I never really considered the daily and monthly plans.

The only reason I left the monthly so people had a cheaper option than getting $100 a year. Some folks are just on a super limited budget. The only reason I'm breaking down that low is to show how very little amount per day works out. I'm fine with yearly plan too. Just like the server bill... If I pay it monthly its... ($1,668 per year or $4.56 per day)

 

 

Then if I pay it yearly... $1,188 per year (or $3.25 per day). That's a $480 dollar savings per year.

I'm doing the same with $10 a month and $100 a year. Since $10 a month times 12 is $120. You end up with a savings on the yearly plan just like what my hosting company is doing. 

 

The other thing I've got to look at is limiting the FREE side as much as possible. I just can't do this for free any longer. This is the server I will be moving to here in the next few weeks. 

 

Again look at the amount of space I get just a mere 150 GB of hard drive. How do you divide that up per user and give a fair amount of storage for everyone without running out of space? See I've got to figure that out too. I can't compete with Google Drive at $1.99 a 100 GB. It going to cost $1,188 a year for 150 GB. Lots of stuff to figure out. 

Edited September 25, 20204 yr by Mopar1973Man

1 hour ago, Mopar1973Man said:

The only reason I left the monthly so people had a cheaper option than getting $100 a year. Some folks are just on a super limited budget. The only reason I'm breaking down that low is to show how very little amount per day works out. I'm fine with yearly plan too. Just like the server bill... If I pay it monthly its... ($1,668 per year or $4.56 per day)

 

 

Then if I pay it yearly... $1,188 per year (or $3.25 per day). That's a $480 dollar savings per year.

I'm doing the same with $10 a month and $100 a year. Since $10 a month times 12 is $120. You end up with a savings on the yearly plan just like what my hosting company is doing. 

 

The other thing I've got to look at is limiting the FREE side as much as possible. I just can't do this for free any longer. This is the server I will be moving to here in the next few weeks. 

 

Again look at the amount of space I get just a mere 150 GB of hard drive. How do you divide that up per user and give a fair amount of storage for everyone without running out of space? See I've got to figure that out too. I can't compete with Google Drive at $1.99 a 100 GB. It going to cost $1,188 a year for 150 GB. Lots of stuff to figure out. 

I've been using this hosting company forever.  https://123ehost.com/business-hosting/ Solid place seems a bit less expensive than that one you are looking at.  I would readily pay $100/year and then donate more for each time I get help from the forum.  Every time you guys have saved me I have wanted to give $ for the help but had no way to do that.

4 hours ago, Mopar1973Man said:

The 3 tier system will be gone soon. (silver, gold and platinum). I'm going to be rebuilding the permission mask and continue to ask question about about features for the plan. Just the simple fact of more we grow the more it will cost in the long haul. Some people don't even know the database that holds all the post and messages is now nearly 1 GB in total. With over 1.1 million entries to the MySQL database. This is all the text of the forum.

 

 

Then there is a total of 120GB here for storage, after LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) I'm left with 48GB used with the forum included. We have 65 GB left.

 

This is another question to you ALL. How much storage space would be fair per the 10 (mo) /100 (yr). If I've got 7,8xx members. How much storage do you all figure you use in your attachments of photos, garage area, etc. This is a total amount. 

 

The biggest problem is the current hosting company does not migrate for you at all. They do not provide any means for upgrading software. Just to give a clue the first time the update went bad. It left me with a error message saying I needed to make a writable folder. So for me to download a backup copy of the server it took nearly 4 hours to get it downloaded at 27 MBit/Second speed. No bad. But the upload speed here is super slow at 2.2 MBit which now to re-upload all the server data was a bit over 26 hours. This is partially what a migrate is like being the same action is done. The only difference with a bit of Linux skill you can call out scp (Secure CoPy) and it will transfer all the data over a backbone. But this requires two domain names typically. (old mopar1973man.com to mopar1973man.NET) which is how I did it last time. Typically it takes me 3 to 5 days to get this done. (Reconfig the server, etc.)Hence why I'm going to let the new hosting company do it. New company said it would be 15 to 30 minutes of down time. To me that is worth paying extra $200 to have it moved. This why most of the server software is creating issues against the forum software. Just the foundation (LAMP) is out of date. I've never had to migrate cPanel and WHM so this should be interesting... 

 

This is why I'm doing all this being the server is out of date, and all my software is up to date so when I move things should improve ofr performance. Better performance is a better Google Ranking. Yes page load times do impact how we are ranked against other websites. Hence why I do more work in the background trying to shave off another 1 second of load times. 

 

As you can see Google doesn't like us much...

 

I can't do much with an out of date server. Now if I can reduce the load times on pages and get both of these near the green at least or reduce the page loading times I could place better in the Google Search Engine.  Now to show this... Let's to a search for "vp44 pump removal" we are the top entry even beat BlueChip. 

 

 

To keep these kind of ranking up I need a server that is up to date and start working at shaving the load times back. More I do the most my average rank will rise. Right now we are roughly 13.1 for average placement. Means most of our stuff is on the second page of Google where most do not look beyond the first page. 

 

Some people think it just copy and pasting to make articles. Well not really. That part is super easy but the formatting typically is destroy on the pasting to the editor box. So I got to flip to source mode and sort out the raw HTML and get the layout correct again. Then while I'm doing all that add the SEO code to the each article so Google understands what the document is about. This is the important part. Which I need to go back and re-write most of the articles now to freshen the publish date and then add in the missing code. 

 

This is what you see...

 

This is what I work with. Take a look the formatting is clean and proper usage of HTML code. 

 

There is a ton of work for me to do. I've got all the books for 4th gens but need to get them in when there is free time. The copy and paste is easy but proper HTML5 and CSS3 coding it not easy. This points back to the requirements that Google needs to be a good ranking. Takes about hour per article to do right. 

Okay yea I was writing HTML script back in 1995 and I still can.  Back then there were no tools for this.  The first tools were as terrible as they were frustrating.  Just because we can write HTML script doesn't mean it's the fastest way to do it.  I'm building all my sites with Wordpress now.  I realize there's a lot more going on the forum but it seems like that copy could be formatted much more quickly with a different tool kit.

 

And thank you so much for all your hard work!!!  I'm happy to hear about the underpinnings of this site.  And if it's gone I will probably have to sell my truck, becuase without this forum, I'm going to be screwed.  I'm in LA and there's literally no one who will work on this without putting their kids through college on my dime.  Not having it!!

Edited September 25, 20204 yr by leety

I have recently found this website and it has much great content.  I have downloaded some factory service manuals and as I was looking to donate I stumbled upon this topic.  I currently am a freeloader (sorry), but I am about to become an annual platinum member.  $100/year seems very reasonable to me for the forum support and bulk of information available.  I hope all goes well with the server change and update. 

I've been side tracked with wrench jobs for the last few days. I'm still trying to work on a few found bugs and get things sorted out. Like I just found out a new setting was messing with people during login. With age verification. I need to find that setting and turn it back off. 

What? I'm gonna be carded when I log in? I hope I'm old enough. Lmao

5 minutes ago, Doubletrouble said:

What? I'm gonna be carded when I log in? I hope I'm old enough. Lmao

There is a defined point in a persons life when they no longer get carded. I'm not quite there yet, but close.

Been long past it. Lol

29 minutes ago, Doubletrouble said:

What? I'm gonna be carded when I log in? I hope I'm old enough. Lmao

 

No... There was new options in the software so when it setup I didn't actally read every option and just let it go with recommended settings. This is now turned off. 

I'm going to spur of a new thread...

 

 

I am a new member and already have found when I ask for information it's comes fast and saves me money and time . This is a great site , one of a kind. Mopar Man Thank you , I'm gonna be around as long as I've a Cummins , raise it to what you need to keep it going.

3 minutes ago, Henrey said:

I am a new member and already have found when I ask for information it's comes fast and saves me money and time . This is a great site , one of a kind. Mopar Man Thank you , I'm gonna be around as long as I've a Cummins , raise it to what you need to keep it going.

 

Thank you! (Really does mean something to me!) Thank you!

 

Still I trying to wrap my brain around a away to provide a free part of the site but it just doesn't work out if I do. Basically if there is a open door where someone can post for free why would they pay in the first place? I'm trying to figure a angle even to provide something special beyond what a free member would. Haven't figure out a way yet. 

 

Donation system didn't work very well either. Only <1% was paying the bills of the site and the +99% ran through the site sucking up anything free. That was bad at one time where they were downloading as fast as they could and wiping out the bandwidth allowance. Hence why the service manuals were for subscribers or donors. That way people that chipped in had full access to the books, info, articles, etc. It was suppose to be the members posting up articles about there 3rd gen, 4th, gen and 5th gen trucks. Hmmm... Didn't happen too much did it? Nope.

 

I've got to Thank @Me78569for chasing all the 4th gen stuff for the site. Now I've got to code it all in the site. 

Maybe the day has come for it to be a total pay website. I would like to think that it could survive but who knows. But l do know many folks want free answers period. I am guilty as charged on that. But what i have received and willingly share here is some of the best  info out there. Wish I had the answer to the problem.

5 minutes ago, dripley said:

Maybe the day has come for it to be a total pay website. I would like to think that it could survive but who knows. But l do know many folks want free answers period. I am guilty as charged on that. But what i have received and willingly share here is some of the best  info out there. Wish I had the answer to the problem.

 

Thank you old friend even though I've never met you we've been talking for YEARS about our truck problems. 

22 minutes ago, Mopar1973Man said:

 

Thank you old friend even though I've never met you we've been talking for YEARS about our truck problems. 

My trip out your has been delayed time and again. It still is going to be made. The wife wants to come all I have to do is convince that the trip will be made in the Cummins and not the Equinox. Thats going to be alot a fun. But the trip will be made.

 I would be ok with a total pay website. I was ok with the $100/year if that's what is needed. I have learned alot on this site and will continue to learn as long as the site is still around.

 By being a total pay site that would keep the riff raff out I suppose but would it cover the expenses?

  Mike, if I knew anything at all about what your doing with coding and the like I would gladly volunteer some time to help out. With my knowledge of that stuff I would basically be a concrete life preserver.......useless.

 

On 9/25/2020 at 9:57 AM, leety said:

've been using this hosting company forever.  https://123ehost.com/business-hosting/ Solid place seems a bit less expensive than that one you are looking at. 

 

None of the plans are big enough. 

 

Minimum Required... (What I'm currently using)

• 4 CPU cores of processors
• 150 GB of hard drive SSD
• 8 GB of Memory.

 

None of the plan come close. I'm on my way of being on a dedicated server soon (within like 4 years). I'm on the biggest VPS server now with iPage. When I switch to Liquid Web it will be nearly largest plan there too. Look at the morning status... I'm using nearly a single core now just with the quiet of the morning. I've only got 404 MB of RAM left. I've got 65 GB of hard drive left. By the busy part of the day I'm consuming closer to 3 cores. With server loads reaching 2.50 and 3.00.

 

9 hours ago, Doubletrouble said:

 I would be ok with a total pay website. I was ok with the $100/year if that's what is needed. I have learned alot on this site and will continue to learn as long as the site is still around.

 By being a total pay site that would keep the riff raff out I suppose but would it cover the expenses?

  Mike, if I knew anything at all about what your doing with coding and the like I would gladly volunteer some time to help out. With my knowledge of that stuff I would basically be a concrete life preserver.......useless.

 

 

Just depends if the price hike turns everyone away and the traffic goes away, then it dead anyways. Like back with donations there was random few that made the donation for the information. But it was always less than <1% holding the bills. No fair for the 99% walk through. Went to subscriptions now we are only getting 1.5% paying (117 currently out of 7,569 total members) the bills while the other 98.5% walk through on limiting posting. This is why I can't find a another way but make it pay to post. I know there is over 2,000 people on per day. I've been studying the traffic... The long dip was the server errors I created with the software. 

 

 

Then when you look at it we are taking in at least 20 to 40 new members a week. 

 

But when you look at income...  Timbos apps is 170 dollars, high idle kit is 150 dollars, etc. I don't see any sales much few donations. That last tall peek is a Timbo's APPS that was sold.

Edited October 2, 20204 yr by Mopar1973Man

If you take a look at the 4th gen articles you can see them starting to gain steam, most of them in the error section are over 1000 views.

 

 

Now look at the 2nd gen stuff and the number of views really isn't that much more even though they have been active for ~4 years longer.

 

 

 

 

Here is the 4th gen headlight articles.  they are a little slower to gain, but we didn't push the 4th gen stuff as hard.

 

Vs 2nd gen created late 2015

 

 

So the newer stuff is still bringing traffic, but all of this takes time.  Time is something we are all short on.  

Remember views... That is counting all the numbers of bots looking too. When there is newer dated material it will be walked by bots and take up to 90 days before it scored and place on Google. Bots are drawn to new post and articles. Again codeing work to do it is more than just copy and paste. Being the SEO part requires a bit of extra coding. Google requires use of header tags ans sectional design of information. 

 

4 minutes ago, Me78569 said:

Time is something we are all short on. 

 

Yup being I'm turning wrenches, trying to get winters firewood in, repair my own truck, take care of server that need updating and then a move servers. Yup... Not a lot of time left in a day. Even today I've gotta pack to go south to doctors appointments for both of us. (7 hours of driving -minimum) @Wet Vette and myself both. Me so I can see. Like right now the screen is blurry and difficult to even see. Yup I need new glasses and heading to bi-vocal. turning 50 this month and already over the hill...