Paid Memberships - webmaster thoughts??

[jamoss]

We've seen many high-traffic boards go to paid memberships, and ours will be doing the same in the near future.

If you have implemented paid memberships, I'd like to know what worked best for your community:

1. Do you have time-limits (i.e. monthly, yearly membership v. one time lifetime membership)?

2. Do you have rights-based memberships (i.e. paid members see no ads or can post graphics)

3. Do you still allow free, basic accounts, and if so what can free accounts do (read, post, etc)

4. What kind of payment do you take (credit card, check, echeck)?

5. Do you manually enable the paid accounts or have you integrated with a payment system?

Thanks! I'm looking forward to hearing your 'war stories' about this type of move!

Jennifer Moss
BabyNames.com

[Chris M]

I dont yet charge, but I am going to within the next few months...

1.) I will have time limits - 1 Year, 2 Years and Lifetime...They obviously increase in cost:)

2.) Yes - Paid Members will get a Free email, Subdomain, and some small webspace, plus probably a few other bits I have yet to implement:)

3.) Yes - Normal Members will be able to do normal stuff - If they want space, email or subdomain, then they will have to either become a Contributing member, or pay seperately:)

4.) I will take Cheque or Credit Card:)

5.) Manually - I dont see the need for Integrated...

War stories eh? Lol...Paying members get more than non-paying ones:)

Satan

[nabeel]

i dont really like the idea of paid, being a webmaster and surfing boards which were once free that are now paid..bleh

i have no steady source of income (allowance :-\), so i cant really afford anything. im hoping that ill keep my site free (and hopefully ad free..if it goes towards ads, then itll be no popups..i hate those), since a friend is hosting it...lol

and doesnt membership drop if people have to pay?

[jamoss]

nabeel,

We are getting to the point where the server is becoming overloaded by the use of our message boards.

Advertising revenue is in the dumps right now-- you're lucky if you get $3 CPM for POPUPS! Other sites are whoring themselves out to ads, popups and email harvesters - something we refuse to do. (We have one popup ad running on our homepage for a one month trial, but that's not paying the bills).

Yes, there will be a huge backlash from the userbase. Yes, there will be attrition. However, it will weed out the trolls and children who are playing around, reduce our traffic to a manageable amount and the loyal members will pay to stay.

This is the way the net is moving -- paid content. You can see that from Napster to the Wall Street Journal.

It is inevitable for content sites to stay in business.

Jennifer.

[Logician]

My own site is not commercial but I applied some paid membership integrations so my 2 cents:

1- It helps to reduce site traffic to close the content to non-payers but it makes harder to get new paying members since guests do not know the site well so dont register.. The best practise is to provide content for non-paying members too, but in a limited basis, like disabling attachment viewing (especially if images are important for board members), disable new thread/pm features etc. It also helps to provide all contents to everybody but put some delays/ads for non paying members. So for example everybody can view an attachment but non payers should go through a delay/ad screen first to get it. etc..

2- One of the most important step of fully automated integration is to choose a good CC transaction company. They should not be very strict about site integration and provide tools to integrate their transaction with vb. This of course does not apply, if you dont care much about automatic membership management and if you are ready to move paying members to their new user groups by hand (this is your only option if you accept Cheque payment)

3- As for timelimits: IMO it makes things easier to have only one membership type. They pay you $X, and get the membership for Y days. Regarding your membership is a board membership IMO it's not necessary to have too many membership options..

Hope this helps a bit..

[nabeel]

ah i see.

man that sucks...i hope i dont get stuck like that :P

[Michelle69]

Originally posted by Logician
2- One of the most important step of fully automated integration is to choose a good CC transaction company.
Logician, can you recommend a good CC transaction company? We're in the process of going this route too, so I'm taking all the notes I can get on this, lol.

[okrogius]

Worldpay if you want something really good (note their setup fee is somewhat high). Revecom for something cheaper.

[dgessler]

Nobody has made such a hack integrating a payment gateway have they? I think it's a good idea if some webmasters want to charge a bit, depends on the forum I guess.

[Chris M]

Some will want to charge, so that they can continue to build their sites up more:)

Satan

[Logician]

Originally posted by dgessler
Nobody has made such a hack integrating a payment gateway have they? I think it's a good idea if some webmasters want to charge a bit, depends on the forum I guess.
No hack can work for every one. Automated integration for CC payment is a complicated process and its coding will highly depend on the CC company you use. (Actually even CC companies provide more than 1 tool to integrate in many cases)So unless 2 sites use the same CC company and have similiar needs for integration, there cant be a miracle hack that will work for everyone. Instead every site would use a custom hack according to its needs and the methods CC company requires you to use..

@Michelle69: Choosing your CC company depends on many factors you may want to consider. I cant advise for most of them since they would be subjective, but if you want suggestions for technical issues, I would suggest using a CC company which:

a) provides you with good manuals/support for integration. (Many gives you a software to integrate and dont support you well if you want to code your own integration script)

b) Have flexible integration methods (in technical terms): Some provides you with different integration methods, which can fit you better than a pre-defined&fixed method.

c) provides your with customizable forms and allows outside variables that will be echod to your site after the transaction.

d) Uses secure mechanisms for information echod from your site to their site and from their site to your site. I'm not talking about SSL here, which they all have. But many of them do not have protection for the outside variables and returned information. They depend on "referer" info in many cases which is not secure enough so actually they are not as secure as they claim to be.

I hope this helps and sorry if this information is a bit technical..

[DrkFusion]

My friend did payed membership awhile back, having the same problem with servers, he had over 85kmembers, though I do not know where he got that, he had made specific forums where people had to pay, and these were forums that people wanted, he got enough money to payu 2 months for the server, but ended up closing, members stopped coming due to ads.

I would suggest getting a job, making money off the net is getting hard, maybe some manual labour would help.

Drk

[Chris M]

You just have to proportion it...

Make Contributing/Paid members more popular, by advertising their comittment to the site, and giving them something extra...

Satan

[Michelle69]

Thanks Logician, that's great info and will help alot!

[jamoss]

We've been extremely successful with our paid membership system.

It began on Sept. 1st, and we are getting actually MORE posting traffic than we had when we were free.

We charge $5 for 3 months or $15/year. I created the hacks that integrated with our Merchant account at Wells Fargo through Authorize.net.

Everyone can view messages, but only paid members can post, use priv. msging and go into chat. We have 4 "members-only" boards that are only viewable to paid members.

I am available for hire if anyone wants me to convert their board! :)

Jennifer.

[Caliber]

I have read most of these thread and with no disrespect to anyone here, I think some folks do not have a good sense of what you have to provide in terms of additional features to get your members to pay in a meaningful way.

We run elitefitness.com, the largest site for bodybuilders and one of the largest vBulletin's. A few stats -- we have about 40,000 visitors a day and we serve about a half million pages a day. We have just over 1079 members paying on average $11 per month. That's nice revenue, but we have a monthly ISP bill of over $4,000, so we have to charge -- there's just no way around it. Here's what we offer our "Platinum" members (taken from our sales letter):

______________________________________________

Post as many pictures as you like anywhere! Uploaded from your PC, or using the [IMG] tags.
Access full size pics when you click any thumbnail on all the Picture Boards Including:

Pictures of Gear (Never get fake gear again)
Pictures of Our Members (Check out our members)
Pictures of Men (For the ladies)
Pictures of Women (Hot and sexy!)
Pictures of Competitors (Amazing Pro Physiques)

Access the private Platinum Hardcore discussion board!
Access the private My Training Journal board!
Access the private Best of Elite Fitness archive board!
Platinum Chat -- so you can chat live with all the other members, moderators, and me! Private and Uncensored! We use volano chat.
Become eligible for special Prizes and Contests!
Priority for becoming a Moderator!
Free Telephone and Free Email Support!
Special Stars and 150 free Karma points for supporting the site!
Get 200 PMs (private messages) mailbox size. Regular users only get 50 PMs.
Turbo Code -- this makes the boards run 50% faster -- just for Platinum Members.
Personal Photo Gallery -- Access your own photo gallery of every image you ever posted and see every member's photo gallery -- full size images!
Task Bar Ticker -- Just like the stock exchange -- see the latest posts as they are made scroll by!
Images in Signatures! -- back by popular demand, put a picture in your signature for the whole board to see!
Stealth Web Address -- Does your boss know you surf Elite? Using the stealth address, your boss or company's IT department will think you are checking a PC Technical Support web site, because that's what the web address (URL) will look like to them. In fact, you'll be surfing the elitefitness.com boards at work -- not getting caught!
Get your own Avatar (Profile Picture) right away -- no waiting!
Use the new advanced Spell Checker!
No Advertisements -- NO banner ads and NO pop-up ads!
You save the $40 initiation fee!
You get a permanent 10% discount on all products at MassQuantities.com (on top of any other discount) plus other exclusive discounts and specials. Make your membership pay for itself!
Plus, for signing up before midnight Saturday, December 14, 2002, you get seven free bonus reports -- a $273 value, all for Free! including:
The 7-day DNP Fat Loss Inferno Cycle -- a $39 value, yours FREE!
Modafinil: Science Makes Sleep Obsolete -- a $39 value, yours FREE!
Xyrem -- New Pharmaceutical GHB -- a $39 value, yours FREE!
Why Billy has Breasts -- Understanding and preventing gynocomastia -- a $39 value, yours FREE!
Botox for Bodybuilders -- Do it yourself guide! -- a $39 value, yours FREE!
Engineered viral delivery of IGF-1 for huge muscles -- a $39 value, yours FREE!
Huge GHB busts! And how two athletes beat the system and got off! -- a $39 value, yours FREE!

Only $8.98 per month -- Less than a movie! When you join for three months and get an extra month FREE! And we'll waive the $40 initiation fee.
_______________________________________________

Even with all this, we still have trouble keeping our members paying. Two things we are considering are closing the boards to new non-paying members, and making the search a paid feature.

We spent a small fortune developing this and it runs on 2.6

Click here for our site:
http://www.elitefitness.com

Here for our boards:
http://boards.elitefitness.com/forum/index.php

And here for how we market our Platinum memberships:
http://www.elitefitness.com/reports/platinum/

I would be happy to provide the entirity of our code to someone who could port it over to the new version 3.0 and then we could give it away or sell it as a complete hack.

It would be great to hear from the other sites that have actually implemented a paid membership program and more specifically, hear from sites that have a significant number of paying members.