is paid membership worth it?

[jbylake]

Waste of money!!! I will not renew. And for those of you that think that you are being nice by supporting the forum.......look around they have advertisements everywhere.......save your money!! I looks like they are making plenty.

mishele, whether you contirbute financially, or not, well, I have no opinion one way or the other. However, your statement ....."look around they have advertisements..." tells me that you really don't have a good grasp on.
A. How much it costs to administer a forum or website of this magnitude and the costs for bandwidth.

B. The rest of the "business" end of it. Also, if you think they are getting the same money for their ad's, as say a cable TV network, or a famous athlete, you really don't have a grasp on the reality of it.

I thought of selling ad space on my commercial websites, until I calculated the amount of money coming in, vs. the annoyance factor to my customers. Although the advertisement dollars would offset some of the costs, and would be directly related to the products we sell, it just wasn't worth it.

These ad's are almost allways "trickle down dollars", if you're not sure what that means, you'll just have to ask someone, to long to explain here.

I'm not saying that it's not profitable, it must be somewhat, but if it's not, or becomes that way, contributions such as tech info, C&C, equipment reviews or whatever, will not maintain it, and it will just get sucked into that big black digital hole of the www.

I've seen this happen before, but to a friend. He owned/administered a forum, much like this one, but related to other interests, and over a period of about 5 -6 years, it became outrageously popular. Problem was, that it was costing him his a$$, to maintain it. So he went the the "contributor route". He was called everything in the books, especially from the older, and the very newb crowd. So he decided to call it quits. Then horror of all horror's, a great number wanted membership to keep it running. He actually laid out a PDF of a spreadsheet, outlining costs, and the "volunteer" mod's were bailing left and right, due to the increasing amount of their time it was consuming. Finally he sold out, and the site is still there, and still growing, but it looks like a zoo there with all the commercial advert's, and pop-up's.

Completely killed my plans for starting a Harley-Davidson niche forum. Will have friends and fans as long as I provide it for free. When I no longer want to pay the price for providing someone else a "niche" forum, they will go away looking for someone else to do it.

Anyway, not trying to make excuses for this forum, or for contributing vs. not, and since contributing is not mandatory here, and it doesn't matter anyway, I thought you might want to know a little about how these things work, before assuming all of those excess advert dollars coming in.

J.:mrgreen:

 

[mishele]

jbylake ..........thanks for trying to educate me.......

"It looks like they are making plenty. " .........to run the site. I dont think they are getting rich.

 

[bigtwinky]

so i guess my contributions of time on this site is more valuable to the actual community here than putting in some actual money, which will go to the owners who are non existant and non interested in photography.

 

[Corry]

Waste of money!!! I will not renew. And for those of you that think that you are being nice by supporting the forum.......look around they have advertisements everywhere.......save your money!! I looks like they are making plenty.

mishele, whether you contirbute financially, or not, well, I have no opinion one way or the other. However, your statement ....."look around they have advertisements..." tells me that you really don't have a good grasp on.
A. How much it costs to administer a forum or website of this magnitude and the costs for bandwidth.

B. The rest of the "business" end of it. Also, if you think they are getting the same money for their ad's, as say a cable TV network, or a famous athlete, you really don't have a grasp on the reality of it.

I thought of selling ad space on my commercial websites, until I calculated the amount of money coming in, vs. the annoyance factor to my customers. Although the advertisement dollars would offset some of the costs, and would be directly related to the products we sell, it just wasn't worth it.

These ad's are almost allways "trickle down dollars", if you're not sure what that means, you'll just have to ask someone, to long to explain here.

I'm not saying that it's not profitable, it must be somewhat, but if it's not, or becomes that way, contributions such as tech info, C&C, equipment reviews or whatever, will not maintain it, and it will just get sucked into that big black digital hole of the www.

I've seen this happen before, but to a friend. He owned/administered a forum, much like this one, but related to other interests, and over a period of about 5 -6 years, it became outrageously popular. Problem was, that it was costing him his a$$, to maintain it. So he went the the "contributor route". He was called everything in the books, especially from the older, and the very newb crowd. So he decided to call it quits. Then horror of all horror's, a great number wanted membership to keep it running. He actually laid out a PDF of a spreadsheet, outlining costs, and the "volunteer" mod's were bailing left and right, due to the increasing amount of their time it was consuming. Finally he sold out, and the site is still there, and still growing, but it looks like a zoo there with all the commercial advert's, and pop-up's.

Completely killed my plans for starting a Harley-Davidson niche forum. Will have friends and fans as long as I provide it for free. When I no longer want to pay the price for providing someone else a "niche" forum, they will go away looking for someone else to do it.

Anyway, not trying to make excuses for this forum, or for contributing vs. not, and since contributing is not mandatory here, and it doesn't matter anyway, I thought you might want to know a little about how these things work, before assuming all of those excess advert dollars coming in.

J.:mrgreen:

. . . coming from someone who has actually spent the weekend (with other TPFers) at the founding owner's house, the site does just fine financially.

 

[DennyCrane]

I make it a point to click on the Google ads. The site gets click-through revenues on these things. If everyone did that, there would never be a problem financially maintaining a site. I doubt I'd pay for a "membership" that really doesn't have any perks.

 

[jbylake]

Waste of money!!! I will not renew. And for those of you that think that you are being nice by supporting the forum.......look around they have advertisements everywhere.......save your money!! I looks like they are making plenty.

mishele, whether you contirbute financially, or not, well, I have no opinion one way or the other. However, your statement ....."look around they have advertisements..." tells me that you really don't have a good grasp on.
A. How much it costs to administer a forum or website of this magnitude and the costs for bandwidth.

B. The rest of the "business" end of it. Also, if you think they are getting the same money for their ad's, as say a cable TV network, or a famous athlete, you really don't have a grasp on the reality of it.

I thought of selling ad space on my commercial websites, until I calculated the amount of money coming in, vs. the annoyance factor to my customers. Although the advertisement dollars would offset some of the costs, and would be directly related to the products we sell, it just wasn't worth it.

These ad's are almost allways "trickle down dollars", if you're not sure what that means, you'll just have to ask someone, to long to explain here.

I'm not saying that it's not profitable, it must be somewhat, but if it's not, or becomes that way, contributions such as tech info, C&C, equipment reviews or whatever, will not maintain it, and it will just get sucked into that big black digital hole of the www.

I've seen this happen before, but to a friend. He owned/administered a forum, much like this one, but related to other interests, and over a period of about 5 -6 years, it became outrageously popular. Problem was, that it was costing him his a$$, to maintain it. So he went the the "contributor route". He was called everything in the books, especially from the older, and the very newb crowd. So he decided to call it quits. Then horror of all horror's, a great number wanted membership to keep it running. He actually laid out a PDF of a spreadsheet, outlining costs, and the "volunteer" mod's were bailing left and right, due to the increasing amount of their time it was consuming. Finally he sold out, and the site is still there, and still growing, but it looks like a zoo there with all the commercial advert's, and pop-up's.

Completely killed my plans for starting a Harley-Davidson niche forum. Will have friends and fans as long as I provide it for free. When I no longer want to pay the price for providing someone else a "niche" forum, they will go away looking for someone else to do it.

Anyway, not trying to make excuses for this forum, or for contributing vs. not, and since contributing is not mandatory here, and it doesn't matter anyway, I thought you might want to know a little about how these things work, before assuming all of those excess advert dollars coming in.

J.:mrgreen:

. . . coming from someone who has actually spent the weekend (with other TPFers) at the founding owner's house, the site does just fine financially.

....not caring who actually spent the weekend with anyone...I never implied it didn't....I've just seen these things go south quickly...as they grow. The site that I previously mentioned does very well also, as it is one of the most popular in it's niche, but it also sucks....now.

J.

 

[jbylake]

so i guess my contributions of time on this site is more valuable to the actual community here than putting in some actual money, which will go to the owners who are non existant and non interested in photography.

I tend to agree with you there BT, but my contributions are pretty sparse. Especially in the "digital realm".

J. :mrgreen:

 

[JohnSw]

Being that I live in a very rural area, the lack of brick and mortar photography shops really emphasizes the need for online forums such as this one. In a world where it costs almost $50.00 to go to the movies, for a couple of hours, a small donation helps sustain this site for everyone. Do I care that anyone gives or not, no it's a personal decision. To me the returns far out weigh the small investment.

 

[gsgary]

I won't be a paid member, I could get banned most days

 

[The_Traveler]

zombie file