How much should a unpaid member get for access?

[Threadzy]

I just purchased and installed a vacuum pump rebuild kit from you. Just left a review. Hopefully I did it right. ? I quit using Google a few years ago. I use duck duck go. 

Edited October 4, 2020 by Threadzy

[leety]

I say keep it simple.  Pay to play.  Read only unless you contribute $$.

 

If you want to ask a question and get help you have to pay for the month $10 and if you want to be able to store anything in your account like your garage, you have to make a commitment and pay for a full year at $100/year, otherwise if you want to engage in the discussions you have to pay $10/month.

 

I think this is a great idea from @Me78569 "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."

 

The site could also have a top level "About" page and a top level "Contribute" page where there can be a call to action to do any of these things:

1) Give $

2) Write reviews on

• articles
• products
• Mopar1973man.com google business page

3) Help with some of the admin tasks

4) Support us on other social media platforms

 

Edited October 5, 2020 by leety

[Mopar1973Man]

I would like to Welcome a new BoD into the staff. I got a PM from @leety last night and since the evening was early I figure I'd give her a call. After better than hour phone call I was listening to a very intelligent gal that want to see this site succeed. Leety talked about monetizing the site even farther. Perfect... So I waved the magic wand and added her to the BoD's staff. 

 

 Welcome to the staff Leety.

 

So we are working at improving the site as a team. I've got to do a bit of training work to explain some the software and settings. Beyond that she has HTML, CSS, Java knowledge and few other languages. Great news to get help with doing coding work and help watch over the site. 

 

Even with @Wet Vettelistening to the phone call as well she agrees this is what we need to do... 

 

I know I've to @JAG1to quite a extensive amount of time as well. trying to figure out how to make this grow the income of r the site so it does more than just pay its own bills. But to produce even a small income.

[leety]

1 hour ago, Mopar1973Man said:

I would like to Welcome a new BoD into the staff. I got a PM from @leety last night and since the evening was early I figure I'd give her a call. After better than hour phone call I was listening to a very intelligent gal that want to see this site succeed. Leety talked about monetizing the site even farther. Perfect... So I waved the magic wand and added her to the BoD's staff. 

 

 Welcome to the staff Leety.

 

So we are working at improving the site as a team. I've got to do a bit of training work to explain some the software and settings. Beyond that she has HTML, CSS, Java knowledge and few other languages. Great news to get help with doing coding work and help watch over the site. 

 

Even with @Wet Vettelistening to the phone call as well she agrees this is what we need to do... 

 

I know I've to @JAG1to quite a extensive amount of time as well. trying to figure out how to make this grow the income of r the site so it does more than just pay its own bills. But to produce even a small income.

Thank you for the inclusion and allowing me the opportunity to pitch in.  This site is too valuable to me personally and is the most credible resource for support that I personally been able to find.  It would be way too sad for it to vanish.

 

I'm looking forward to learning more about the underpinnings and seeing if we experiment with some new ideas that might make this vast wealth of knowledge both scalable and enduring.  It should also be able to more than pay for itself!

[Me78569]

7 hours ago, leety said:

I say keep it simple.  Pay to play.  Read only unless you contribute $$.

 

If you want to ask a question and get help you have to pay for the month $10 and if you want to be able to store anything in your account like your garage, you have to make a commitment and pay for a full year at $100/year, otherwise if you want to engage in the discussions you have to pay $10/month.

 

 

 

 

 

Be carefull with this path.  We need to be mindful of what that choice's end result will be.   If you block people from posting we will see a sharp drop in users interfacing with each other.  I'd say we have less than 40 members that are truly long term posters and aren't just passer-by's.   This is typical behavor for a website forum, a small % of active posters and then a huge number of 1 topic guests stopping by to get help.   however these 40 people will get bored if no new people are posting.  

 

I'd say less than %1 of our guests will actually pay to post.  That means that over the course of a month we might see 2 new posts.  The articles section won't be effected, but the forums side will turn into tumbleweeds.   The active members are going to leave as time goes on and then no new members are going to be truly active.

 

I don't mind that path, but we need to be aware that the forum side will cease to be used and the articles section will be what is generating %100 of the income.

 

 

[leety]

4 minutes ago, Me78569 said:

 

 

Be carefull with this path.  We need to be mindful of what that choice's end result will be.   If you block people from posting we will see a sharp drop in users interfacing with each other.  I'd say we have less than 40 members that are truly long term posters and aren't just passer-by's.   This is typical behavor for a website forum, a small % of active posters and then a huge number of 1 topic guests stopping by to get help.   however these 40 people will get bored if no new people are posting.  

 

I'd say less than %1 of our guests will actually pay to post.  That means that over the course of a month we might see 2 new posts.  The articles section won't be effected, but the forums side will turn into tumbleweeds.   The active members are going to leave as time goes on and then no new members are going to be truly active.

 

I don't mind that path, but we need to be aware that the forum side will cease to be used and the articles section will be what is generating %100 of the income.

 

 

Thank you for that input.  I guess my question is where is the revenue coming from now?  Is there a graph of this somewhere on he backside?  In situations like this I like to go after the low hanging fruit first.  I'm not sure what that is yet though.  We have a short term problem to keep the thing breathing and converted and then we have to think about the long haul future of this thing.  I'm sure there's been lots of discussions about this before I raised my hand, based on historical data that I'm not knowledgable about yet.  So I'm looking forward to learning more about this world and hopefully I can toss in a few new Ideas and work on some of the back end coding to lighten the load a bit.

[hdpwipmonkey]

Thanks for stepping up @leety.  I agree, this is too good of a thing to just let die because then I'll have to go back to CF...  

 

JK

[leety]

1 minute ago, hdpwipmonkey said:

Thanks for stepping up @leety.  I agree, this is too good of a thing to just let die because then I'll have to go back to CF...  

 

JK

This site is, hands down, the most credible resource for keeping our trucks going and researching and executing upgrades etc.  

[hdpwipmonkey]

Don't get me wrong, I like CF and I still lurk there too but I just didnt like the interaction of some of the folks there.  Its much better here.  When you ask a question, you get an answer (usually lots of answers).

[Mopar1973Man]

The problem I see is there is a current free access point. 98.5% of member use this method of enter the site and post on the limited side of 10 post a day. This creates work load for me and zero income. Current monthly rates do not pay the bills or even come close. Yearly barely covers some of the bills. 

 

Like this morning I stated at 4:30am. By 7am while I was in the bath tub soaking my hips. I managed to sell a high idle kit and do tech support. Might just end up selling a Quadzilla too. As why I started at 4am is because my hip and back pains from cutting firewood so I got winter heat for two houses.

 

Behind the scenes the Google Adsense has a few issues I need to do some configuration and code work for. So ad revnue is down because of this again. 

 

Current stats...

8 monthly subscriptions... (0.01% members) 

113 yearly subscriptions... (1.5% members)

6,465 Free access... (85.2% members) - ZERO INCOME!

 

Total members... 7,588 members

 

Edited October 5, 2020 by Mopar1973Man

[JAG1]

Welcome Leety. You sound so good to be so caring about the site as you do. It's a great resource and I also want to see it grow and prosper.

    With my business and repeating clients I hardly have time to pay it the attention it needs. Thank you so much for your participation.

[leety]

5 minutes ago, JAG1 said:

Welcome Leety. You sound so good to be so caring about the site as you do. It's a great resource and I also want to see it grow and prosper.

    With my business and repeating clients I hardly have time to pay it the attention it needs. Thank you so much for your participation.

Thanks I just hope it's not too little too late.  Just learned how to build and edit pages tonight.  Fun stuff.  Noting too daunting.  We're going to have to do some outreach to the unpaid members as well as the paid members and solicit some funds to subsidize the migration/upgrade to the new server.

[Mopar1973Man]

7 hours ago, leety said:

Just learned how to build and edit pages tonight.  Fun stuff.  Noting too daunting. 

 

Trying to keep it easy on @leety on doing web pages.

 

Like we've been talking about making support a better method. I even found a way to do the phone support without having a ton of phone traffic here. Then found a way to keep profile pages correct and up to date. The new phone support you make a calendar appointment. Once I notice the appointment I'll confirm the time and more or less handshake the deal. Time comes around I call the user. First hour is $40 paid in full all subsequent time is billed in 0.1 intervals (every 6 minutes). Just invoice the member for the time. Now if the member does not pay the bill then his account will banned permanently.

 

Subscriptions we've made so head way but I've got to verify the permission mask yet. But the new subscription is in place. The old silver, gold and platinum is gone. Monthly is $10 and the yearly is $100. I'm going to edit the text on this yet just basic filler stuff right now. 

 

 

 

[Doubletrouble]

 And will the new membership rates apply when we renew then?

 Also, may I suggest the possiblity of paying quarterly? Might be easier for some rather than spend the $100 all at once.

[dave110]

I have the same question. And when do the test drive's go away?

[Mopar1973Man]

I start going through all the paid member and found over 32 freeloaders that had lock accounts as usable. That was only the customer group ive got like 5 or 6 more to go through. Ive been systematically doing a little every morning. My morning typically starts at about 5am and I been working every morning till 8:30am then go to work. I work from 9 am to 5 pm typically come home and work on the website till about 8pm.

 

Today things are twisted. Eileen (Wet Vette) is in the hospital tonight with serve pain and pukey sick. Not sure what happened.

 

So ill be back at it in morning being by the time I get home it will be late. Im hurting, tired, and want to get out of this hard plastic chair.

 

I'll try to get more done tomorrow. 

 

Edited October 7, 2020 by Mopar1973Man

[leety]

30 minutes ago, Mopar1973Man said:

I start going through all the paid member and found over 32 freeloaders that had lock accounts as usable. That was only the customer group ive got like 5 or 6 more to go through. Ive been systematically doing a little every morning. My morning typically starts at about 5am and I been working every morning till 8:30am then go to work. I work from 9 am to 5 pm typically come home and work on the website till about 8pm.

 

Today things are twisted. Eileen (Wet Vette) is in the hospital tonight with serve pain and pukey sick. Not sure what happened.

 

So ill be back at it in morning being by the time I get home it will be late. Im hurting, tired, and want to get out of this hard plastic chair.

 

I'll try to get more done tomorrow. 

 

I should have some time tomorrow to revisit the menu structure.  I can put together a proposal on a new information architecture strategy for that.

[Doubletrouble]

 Prayers to wet Vette, hope she's ok. 

[Mopar1973Man]

Just for info purpose. She will be discharged tonight about 9:30pm and ive got hour trip home with deer running around. Not sure what happen yet but doc thinks she can go home.

[leety]

3 hours ago, Doubletrouble said:

 And will the new membership rates apply when we renew then?

 Also, may I suggest the possiblity of paying quarterly? Might be easier for some rather than spend the $100 all at once.

Perhaps $30/ quarter to keep it simple would be good.