Paid Memberships - webmaster thoughts??

[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.