[TigerLily]

Could you possibly post copies of the email and/or page text which you used to inform your visitors? I think that people's reaction would vary greatly depending on the tone used to request paid-for memberships, and it would be useful to see how you phrased things.

You are exactly right- tone is everything! Everything turns on how that announcement is written. If writing is not your strong point, definitely find someone who is good at it to help you clarify your thoughts and get them down on paper.

I love to write (as you can see by the length of my posts! LOL), so writing an announcement didn't seem hard at first. I kept trying to write a formal "official" sounding announcement, and wound up scrapping it entirely- it was missing something important. I had been talking with my moderating team about how to do the memberships, how much to charge, what to tell them, and found the answer quite by accident.

It was suggested that the price I wanted to charge was way too high, that something like $10 a year would be better. That price seemed like an insult to me. I got upset and spilled my guts to the moderators. I told them how much of a struggle last year was, and how I NEVER wanted to do that again- and I certainly wasn't going to do it for a measley $10! LOL! Even though I work with them closely and I tell them a lot, they really had no clue HOW bad it was, and how hard I hard been working to keep things going.

That was an eye opener, because I'd posted about it before, but they hadn't put the entire picture together. Once they understood, they were incredibly supportive and said I should charge double the amount I was asking for. They told me that I needed to tell the members about the changes in the same way I'd just told them. It was the best advice I could have gotten!

So I would up writing my announcement from the heart. I just let it all hang out, did a lot of editing, and polished it up a bit. The response to that announcement was incredible. It was probably the best Christmas I ever had because the support of the community was just amazing.

You can see the announcement and the reactions from my members here:
http://frugal-moms.com/boards/showth...threadid=70630

This is a VERY long announcement, but it needed to be- there was a lot to say! (Please note that I'm turning guest access off in about a week, but by then I'll have some static pages set up.)

It's been quite an experience and I still have a lot to learn, but I've gotten so much from the vbulletin community and wanted to be able to give something back. I hope this is helpful to some of you! Good luck!
Kim

PS I hope my answers aren't too repetitive and make sense! I've worked some insane hours this month (and I have three kids!) I'm pretty tired and fried!