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. 

 

 

 As the newer trucks age people will be looking for good sources for repair and maintenance. A buddy has a newer Cummins truck, he changes oil but that's about it. It's still under warranty so he doesn't want to void anything. Once out if warranty he has talked about a few mods he want to do. I've mentioned this site to him hoping he would join. 

 Is there any way to maybe arrange some sort of fund raiser? I was sitting here thinking of maybe posting a few little items I have in the classified section and donating the proceeds to the site but the classified section is down at the moment. Any one have any other ideas to save our site?

Let the forum run on fumes, let it make the server sit at %100 useage and put up a donation goal of server cost monthly and if that doesn't come in then call it a day.   

 

Biggest thing is time.   IF you have other stuff going on dont worry about the forum.   Let it be out of date etc etc.

4 minutes ago, Mopar1973Man said:

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. 

 

 

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...

 I've been there Mike, I've had bi-focals for years already, I turn 50 in December. Ugh, where did the years go?

1 minute ago, Me78569 said:

Let it be out of date etc etc.

 

3 months left then all security will be gone. I'm on a outdated version of Linux. Currently I cannot even update the software or OS. This means that the security of the site will be compromised and possibly have hackers and other scams happen. I totally unable to update anything more being the base OS is out of date and no longer supported. Hence why I have to move servers. Then when the software starts to break down then down time will happen randomly and hacker will eventually tear it apart. 

4 minutes ago, Me78569 said:

let it make the server sit at %100 useage

 

Google will drop ranking lower as the page paint speed drops. Then traffic will die as well. That why I was trying to reduce the loading imes nad clean up the things that Google is whining about. But that comes back to the simple problem the server is out of date and no longer capable of serving in a timely manner. Hence why Google has 2,xxx URL it don't like on mobile devices. Then stack on that 75% of the traffic is on mobile devices. Hence why the ranking is slipping to 13 and down to 14. Being the problems are not being handled or fixed. Again time is require to keep this massive thing running. 

 

Quote

cPanel & WHM version 86 will continue to be supported through March 31, 2021. However, current OS will stop providing support for current OS version currently on all systems, including your server, on November 30, 2020. This means at that time they will no longer provide bug, security, or feature updates to OS. We encourage you to migrate to a server using an upgraded OS before November 30, 2020. Information about cPanel deprecation plan is available in our documentation.

 

Remove the OS name for security purpose. But that is the error message I've been looking at for few months now. So I let it hang it will be dead very soon. 

Issue is the site cannot pay you to keep the site in tip top shape.     There just isn;t enough money for that kind of management.  

 

I am guessing the upgrade is going to cost ~3k in time and a year of server bills.  Maybe do some sort of wikipedia thing on page launch and explain to people the cost and that the site needs them money to continue to run.  until that mark is hit then no server update and you just let it run itself into the ground?

 

I'll gladly pay the new fee on a yearly basis, even though I not on here very much anymore , just so I have a to go to if I need help.  Ever thought of selling ad space?

@Mopar1973Man I tried renewing my membership for October  and donating to the vacuum pump rebuild tip jar. Is the PayPal side down? 

3 hours ago, Me78569 said:

Issue is the site cannot pay you to keep the site in tip top shape.     There just isn;t enough money for that kind of management.  

 

I am guessing the upgrade is going to cost ~3k in time and a year of server bills.  Maybe do some sort of wikipedia thing on page launch and explain to people the cost and that the site needs them money to continue to run.  until that mark is hit then no server update and you just let it run itself into the ground?

 

The situation sounds dire here.  I would be more than happy to pitch in a one-time donation towards the necessary  upgrade project above and beyond my annual subscription of $100 or whatever you need it to be for this to work.  If it needs to be $150/year I’m in.  I do feel there should be an easy way to donate to the site at-will as well.

 

I would think this could be crowd funded via the existing membership.

Not that I know being i just dropped in funds 2 days ago. Invoices are still processing last time I looked. I had to more the tip jar because mobile users don't have a sidebar like desktop. Tip jar should fall in the bottom of the page.

 

@leety tip jar is there. It unrestricted and should process fine. Its at the bottom of the page. Again I had to move being mobile users don't have a sidebar like desktop.

 

Edited October 2, 20204 yr by Mopar1973Man

I noticed the tip jar disappeared from the main page. I dropped a 20 in and the next day it was gone. I noticed some other people put some in adding up to 30, but nothing since it went off the main page.

 

If we have to be a pay to play, so be it. I was wondering if you were planning on doing a dedicated server, but I figured the bandwidth required in your neck of the woods would cost nothing short of your first born. 

44 minutes ago, Mopar1973Man said:

Not that I know being i just dropped in funds 2 days ago. Invoices are still processing last time I looked. I had to more the tip jar because mobile users don't have a sidebar like desktop. Tip jar should fall in the bottom of the page.

 

@leety tip jar is there. It unrestricted and should process fine. Its at the bottom of the page. Again I had to move being mobile users don't have a sidebar like desktop.

 

Perhaps it’s the blond streaks but I cannot find the tip jar.

52 minutes ago, leety said:

Perhaps it’s the blond streaks but I cannot find the tip jar.

Found it and put in $100.  That tip jar is too hard to find, unless you know it’s there.

 

There needs to be a link to that at the top of every page.

@Mopar1973Man it’s working now for me. 

As soon as I'm done with with my eye exam and get home ill work on layout.

 

Trying to read and I can't do it...

 

On 10/2/2020 at 7:07 AM, Me78569 said:

Issue is the site cannot pay you to keep the site in tip top shape.     There just isn;t enough money for that kind of management.  

 

I am guessing the upgrade is going to cost ~3k in time and a year of server bills.  Maybe do some sort of wikipedia thing on page launch and explain to people the cost and that the site needs them money to continue to run.  until that mark is hit then no server update and you just let it run itself into the ground?

 

im just curious...do you think that the site runs itself??? any site for that fact. You have to put time and energy into ANYTHING that you want to be profitable!! I will NOT let Mike run this site "into the ground" NO ONE will be able to advertise for free!!! If you want to do that, go to Craigslist...im sure they have quality parts!!

 

Like right now the tune prices are too low. Being @Me78569has the majority of the tunes and making pretty good income but since the site only get 10% of that is only 25 cents kicked back to M73M.com this has to change. 2.50 doesn't even provide me the fuel money to testing tunes out and tweaking. I will be raising my prices upwards of $30 bucks at least for tune work. I will not longer be selling 2 or 5 dollar tunes. There is no way to make any commission on file sales if everything is only making me CENTS! The site needs to see DOLLARS. In all the time I sold tunes only made $200 total ofr the year. This is absolutely STUPID. Working with a quality tuner and I've got a good knowledge on how to write good tunes again I know I worth more than a few cents an hour. I should have to WAIT YEARS to make a few hundred dollars for my efforts!

 

Here is exactly how much a year of building tunes got me at $2.50. I can no longer build tune at $2.50 a piece. That doesn't even buy me a gallon of fuel for testing. 

 

 

 

Then when you see the commission percent...

 

This isn't even making the website any real money by the time you take the 2.5% that Paypal takes there is even less. This is why prices have to go up. 

 I said that %10 split was too little back when it was setup.   Change it to whatever % split it was never my intention to make $$ off of tunes.  

 

hosted tunes were not ever supposed to be custom tunes they were geared to be starter tunes ( AKA no testing of the tune I just adjusted fueling start points and posted it)   hence the price. and the disclaimer we put up.

 

 

If you want to get into the custom tune market then it should be at least $100 option in the tune download section or in the store.  Someone sends you their specs and you send them back something geared to their setup.       I dont see any reason why you shouldn't be doing this if you want to be in that market.  I don't want to be.  

 

Do you think that some sort of introduction statement should be up for prospective new members to explain why we are becoming a subscription based forum. So many folks are just used to getting free info almost any where you go.

Just now, dripley said:

Do you think that some sort of introduction statement should be up for prospective new members to explain why we are becoming a subscription based forum. So many folks are just used to getting free info almost any where you go.

Thanks for the feedback.  We most definitely MUST have that.  I'll be able to craft some language for that later today.

 

If you have any suggestions on ways to word that please let me know.

18 minutes ago, leety said:

Thanks for the feedback.  We most definitely MUST have that.  I'll be able to craft some language for that later today.

 

If you have any suggestions on ways to word that please let me know.

I will right something up my brain is thinkinng and send it to you. Bit it will be tomorrow.

4 minutes ago, dripley said:

I will right something up my brain is thinkinng and send it to you. Bit it will be tomorrow.

I'll take a crack at it tonight after work and we can always change it.

 

So whatever you come up with today I can certainly include in the page.  It's easy to edit it.