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