Would you be willing to pay a nominal fee for membership?

[paulcalloway]

Re: Would you be willing to pay a nominal fee for membership?

As I stated earlier:

Originally Posted by mrgrzeskowiak I was wondering, since this is all web based, what costs are there? Besides a new server.. I dont want anyone jumping down my neck about it.. with 5000 members and with a possible $25,000 at 5.00 and $50,000 at 10.00 what could you possibly need anywhere near that much more money to do? Not that you would get everyone to donate.. Please advise

We don't need nearly that much money but we won't get nearly that much participation.

The site has 5,000 members "on paper", but 1,285 of those havent logged in since 2004. I expect to purge those in the next few days. The rest of the numbers whittle down pretty quickly until we're left with about 1,600 who have logged in in the last 30 days. Of those about only about 600 have actually made a post.

The point of that post - and the reason why I'm reposting it here, as that we'll never get the amount of participation that you're suggesting. This poll itself has been up over a week and we have less than 300 votes. Do the math of 300 x $5 and then look up the cost of a dedicated sever and you might get a clearer picture.

I'm not looking to raise $25,000 - and I'm not looking to make an income from this site. I've never tried to make an income from this site and have kept it free to the viewing public since 1999. I'm looking to pay our expenses - which went up 329% on Saturday.

If you don't want to pay to participate and you think its unreasonable, I can respect that. I honestly don't want you to have to pay either... but its either that or I have to have a family meeting and explain to my wife why we're going to be tithing to the church of the AC instead of Wallen Baptist Church.

We can all share this cost, or we can all put this cost on me. I know my vote.

[Matt Woodburn]

Re: Would you be willing to pay a nominal fee for membership?

Mr. Sites,

Your library is not free as you state. Just the capital improvement budget for your New Baltimore branch over the next two years, 2008 and 2009, exceeds $7.3 million dollars. For one branch! And that figure does not include recurring annual operating expenses of your branch. And that's not even all of the branches in your county. You pay for the library in the form of taxes whether you use the library or not. And you can see that it is very expensive. We cannot charge every internet user to pay for our website in the form of taxes the way your county charges you. We can only charge those who come to our site, but they are the ones benefitting. And if the discussion forums, good event updates, preservation information, research articles, Bully Buy savings, good deals in the Buy/Sell/Trade forum, and general comeraderie found among like minded individuals here is not worth $5, $10, or whatever price, I understand your decision to leave.

And now you've got me thinking. Gang, since we're providing a service of discussing American History, I wonder if we could get government funding for the site in the form of a grant every year. Just rip off the common man, hard working, citizen, tax payers like the library system, or school system (I pay huge bucks into that but have no kids nor ever will), or any other "gubment program" that I'll never use. Anyone have some experience in that arena?

And Runyon, TWO beers for $5? Only during Happy Hour in Williamson County. Man, I've got to get back home!

[toptimlrd]

Re: Would you be willing to pay a nominal fee for membership?

Yet people pay $3 for hot water strained through ground up beans, $1.50 for a Coke at the convenience store, $2.50 for an energy drink, $2.00 for an ATM fee, tip a server $2.00 at the all you can eat buffet for bringing a soda to the table, etc. but ask them to give up a couple of these once a year to help keep a good thing going and no way. I'm surprised any money ever makes it to preservation.

I for one rarely pass a Salvation Army kettle without dropping in a few coins, I write a decent sized check to the Boy Scouts each year to help them provide a great program (not to mention volunteeer who knows how many hours), do my part for civil war preservation, give to the Church each Sunday, and give to several other appropriate organizations so I'll just have to add this one to that list. Also I think it was made VERY CLEAR that no one would profit and any excess would either go to preservation or an emergency fund for this site.

[pbhatfield]

Re: Would you be willing to pay a nominal fee for membership?

No one wants to pay more for anything these days for certain, but here, and I make this clear - if we require the humble vendors to begin paying more to advertise on the AC, that will ultimately drive up our costs to purchase clothing, equipage etc. & c. from them out of neccessity for the vendors who will have to pay higher overhead costs to advertise on here. Think on it. This hobby, especially our end, is a small economy in many ways. I do not wish to see vendor prices escalate to support their access to us via this site. I would prefer to pitch in a few bucks per year and not lose the AC or worse, end up paying more for authentic gear. I see it as a pragmatic reality.

[33rd VA Co. H]

Re: Would you be willing to pay a nominal fee for membership?

Mr. Sites,

Your library is not free as you state. Just the capital improvement budget for your New Baltimore branch over the next two years, 2008 and 2009, exceeds $7.3 million dollars. For one branch! And that figure does not include recurring annual operating expenses of your branch. And that's not even all of the branches in your county. You pay for the library in the form of taxes whether you use the library or not. And you can see that it is very expensive. We cannot charge every internet user to pay for our website in the form of taxes the way your county charges you. We can only charge those who come to our site, but they are the ones benefitting. And if the discussion forums, good event updates, preservation information, research articles, Bully Buy savings, good deals in the Buy/Sell/Trade forum, and general comeraderie found among like minded individuals here is not worth $5, $10, or whatever price, I understand your decision to leave.

Mr Woodburn,
I certainly understand that my taxes pay to keep the roads, schools, library etc. in operation but as far as I'm concerned,... I don't "pay" to use my library every time I choose to check out a book or do research so in essence,... it is free to county residents. I suppose I could be mistaken but I seriously doubt Fauquier County puts anywhere near 7 million dollars into their library system even over several years. Another thing, there is no New Baltimore branch. The closest thing New Baltimore has to a library is the magazine rack at 7-11. Anyone who has ever been through there probably missed the whole "town" if they blinked anyway.

I visit and am a member of many different web forums on many different topics from reenacting and relics to muscle cars. One muscle car forum I'm a member of has over 4500 members and does not charge for membership. Sure they ask for donations to help cover costs but they know full well that to force members to pay for access would cause many folks to head elsewhere. Someone, I believe Paul, brought up Rush Limbaugh's forum earlier.... well I think he's a tool and wouldn't waste my time on his forum if I got PAID to visit. Because Rush does it is a lame argument and doesn't make it acceptable. I still stand behind my statement that SPONSORS should largely cover the costs. If I recall correctly...(correct me if I'm wrong).. I believe it costs a hundred dollars to be an A/C sponsor. That's pretty cheap for getting your business in front of thousands of potential customers over the course of a year. I wish my business advertising costs were that cheap. The argument of Sponsors raising their prices because of increased costs of advertising on the A/C is weak. The Sponsors are the FIRST ones who should pony up some dough. I'm sure many of you will disagree with me and that's fine but aside from the BST forum, they are truly the only ones making money from this site. The fellows who run this place will obviously do what they want regarding this issue and that's fine. I'll just continue to read and contribute when I can. I can only hope I'm not someday soon forced to take a decision to pay or not to pay.

[toptimlrd]

Re: Would you be willing to pay a nominal fee for membership?

Well,

As I said earlier, I'd gladly pay $10 per year, cheaper than any of the periodicals out there and more informative (no offense to the Civil War Historian or other quality periodicals). Too bad we had to stray into modern politics since someone only used that as an example and it had to be bashed based on political views and not anything substantive even though Rush has a multitude of subscribers. Part of the point here is to thin out those who do not post, don't come here any more, etc. along with the bigger issue of keeping the forum alive. I don't know too many people who would put out the money the administrators of this (and other forums) do just to help out the entire hobby and quite frankly wouldn't blame them if they did want some sort of small salary from it. As I've said before I am a mod on another forum, I don't get paid, but I still have to work simply because I enjoy the hobby and like having someplace to go to discuss it. When you break it down, even at the upper end of $10 that's only $0.03 per day. Think about it the next time you order the half caf skinny mocha latte with extra whipped cream (or whatever those blasted drinks are, I'll just stick to my plain old out of the pot coffee I make at home or in my hotel room).

By the way, the organizers are not going "to do whatever they want" or they would not have asked the question in an open forum with a poll. I think it comes down to either we figure out a way to break even on the forum (through a pay site, charging vendors more, allowing more vendors (which there aren't too many that can meet the standards here that aren't already here, anyone want to lower the standards?................Didn't think so.), or shutting it down. Another thing I presume is they gave us a cost rane since the goal is to break even and not make a profit; therefore, if it can be done with $5 from the remaining members great, but if it requires $10, just as well. Once they know what the cost will be for the server, bandwidth, and number who are likely to join then a decision can be made on the cost. Taking the number who have responded positively so far on this issue (almost 200 at the time of this posting) and let's pull a number out of the air ........ say $5000 to keep the site running that comes out to $25 per person at this point. If we get that up to 2000 subscribers then we would be looking at $2.50 per person. Now to be honest if anyone can run a site like this for $5K per year they are incredibly brilliant so count on my numbers being WAY LOW. Oh and this site also has a voluntary donation button, unfortunately it is not used enough apparently and I am as guilty as anyone in my complacency so once the decision is made whether or not to have a pay portion, I will hit it irregardless of that decision; and if it becomes a pay site I may "sponsor" someone by paying additional over and above the standard fee.

Now I don't drink, but I see many people throw down much more than $10 at after work get togethers at the local bars and pubs. Since I work remote, these forums (AC and others) are my after work get together in a lot of cases.

Sorry to rant.

[Justin Runyon]

Re: Would you be willing to pay a nominal fee for membership?

Collet, When I make my millions from all those 5 dollar bills I'll hire you as my PR and simple logic man.:)

Limbaughs site was mentioned merely as a example of an online discussion forum that charged a fee, nothing more. Seems to me that it might not be such a weak argument since it is exactly the thing we are talking about.

[33rd VA Co. H]

Re: Would you be willing to pay a nominal fee for membership?

You guys are still talking in circles trying to justify things. I don't really care how much a bar fly spends on drinks every night or how much coffee costs at Starbucks, ...what you paid for your extra value meal or what a bloated talkshow host does. I know the value of a dollar. It buys 4 pieces of gum from the gumball machine at the grocery store.

I still have not seen anyone put forth ONE valid reason why the SPONSORS should not be footing more of the bill. Like I said before,.... THEY are pretty much the only ones making money from this site so THEY should be the first ones to step up. How much money do you think the sponsors make from this site in return for their one hundred dollar TAX DEDUCTABLE advertising?? I'll tell you that it's darn sure way more than enough to be charged more to advertise so that the guys and girls who truly make this site what it is don't have to pay to keep it running.

[Chad Teasley]

Re: Would you be willing to pay a nominal fee for membership?

Comrades,

Haven't been able to attend an event for a while...

But will happily plunk down a ten-spot to support the A/C.
It is more than worth it. :)

[Matt Woodburn]

Re: Would you be willing to pay a nominal fee for membership?

Mr. Stites, you're getting a branch. It's the cost to build it. Farquier County has all of their budget line items online. And the sources of the funding. 66.3% of the county money comes from property taxes. Next biggest chunk is from state and federal funding. One amount from the state for Farquier was just over $187,000 for your $225,000,000+ county budget. Since you didn't know about the branch that's coming, I can conclude the county government didn't ask you if you wanted a $7.3 million branch in your town. They just took money from your property taxes and did it. You are paying for it whether you think you are, or whether you feel like it's free.

And to everyone, to properly run this site, it would take $50,000 a year. That would pay all of the expenses and provide one full-time, paid technical employee with the time to address everything. It may never be run that way, but it's the best way to run the site. Until then, we'll have volunteers do it until they burn out and we cycle more in (I think we lost another one yesterday, hope not), we'll rely on unchecked backups because we didn't have time (remember the crash of 2006), only update vbulletin when we can get to it (takes forever to apply all the hacks) which leaves the site open to hackers (remember the Egyptian hi-jacker that took the site down and held the whole site at bay), use over extended $50 a month servers (that's why they crash sometimes and you can't get on), check the emails we get that start "vbulletin error" (some days it's hundreds), update versions of cpanel when we can (sometimes it won't talk with ever changing versions of vbulletin or the web hosting company's server software), slowly or never reply to all the questions of why your avatar won't work, why your password won't work, why your PM won't work, why you can't see your post, why you're being Moderated during the first ten posts, why you can't see a certain folder, why your event isn't listed, why your event is in the wrong folder, why you can't post commercially, why an Approved Vendor didn't ship your shoe strings in time for your event, why so-and-so isn't an Approved Vendor, why you don't have a donation icon on your name yet even though you donated, why so-and-so doesn't like you or respond kindly to your posts, why a Moderator changed, edited, or removed your post, or why "fill in the blank of a hundred other things that the Admins and Mods are hit with every week." Some days we actually get to read posts for fun and learn like the rest of you. Some days this thing feels like Rourke's Drift. And it really does hang on by a thread. Really. Especially in the technical arena. If it weren't for the countless hours of Paul Calloway abandoning his wife and children to perform the technical updates, this would have disappeared long ago. And the rest of the Admins and Mods abandon their lives to pour hours into this site as well. Paul got burned out before, and if he gets burned out again, it will only be a matter of time before the technical issues will catch up and the site will crash. We've relied on the sports medicine guy, financial planning guy, and history guy to keep this thing afloat. That make me laugh. And without Moderation this site would become one of the other forums in a month. If it were solely up to me this would be a pay site immediately and $5 wouldn't even get my attention. It would be $10-20 in a heartbeat. I'd have a full-time, technical guru running this thing like an ace. Under the current model, if it ever disappears for good, don't any of you let it come as a surprise.

If anyone doesn't get even $5 of value from this site over the course of an entire year, and you don't want to pay, in the words of Curly Bill, "Well.................bye."

To all of my fellow Administrators and Moderators, THANK YOU for all the work you put into this site! I know it is the best site to serve the hobby and you've helped make it that way. To everyone who has contibuted an article or post that teaches, THANK YOU!

Mods, you may edit any of my post above. I truly would not want to create more work for you, so you have my permission.

Applying for a furlough...

[RudyN]

Re: Would you be willing to pay a nominal fee for membership?

I go to this site quite often so that I can make sure I can do things correctly. It would not bother me to pay up to $15 per year to keep this site going. This site has everything a person needs to be authentic and complaing about paying such a small amount is, as far as I am concerned, ridiculous.

[paulcalloway]

Re: Would you be willing to pay a nominal fee for membership?

Mr. Sites -
If you have further concerns, you may address them to me privately, but otherwise, we're done with this discussion.

[Vuhginyuh]

Re: Would you be willing to pay a nominal fee for membership?

Last year our company, Tidelands Subsurface Imaging and Survey, paid roughly 37% of our operating budget for rights to investigate certain parcels of land. That was just to pull some high tech gadgets across it and then dig square holes in areas we deemed fit. If we were fortunate enough to recover any artifacts we were responsible for documenting and conserving them. Eventually the artifacts will presented to the property owner leaving us with just a paper and electronic record. Again, that’s part of our budget. It’s the price of doing business.

Worthwhile things are seldom free, so why not add something as rewarding as the Authentic Campaigner to your budget?

[paulcalloway]

Re: Would you be willing to pay a nominal fee for membership?

Good point Garrison.

For the edification of all, we're not approaching this from the perspective of just "what we will take away from non-paying viewers".

I think there are things that we can provide here at the AC in the way of additional tools and additional content that will cause people to want to contribute and get the extra stuff, which will only come with paid membership.

And as far as vendors paying more, while I'm not opposed to adding a couple more vendors, I don't really see raising the rates beyond what they are now. Frankly I think our vendors are bearing about as much of the burden as they can, and as much of the burden as they should. I've had long conversations with many of them in reaching that conclusion.

[pbhatfield]

Re: Would you be willing to pay a nominal fee for membership?

Paul et al. -
My comment on vendor prices wasnt meant in any way to be a negative, just trying to raise a thought - I see that outcome as a logical analogue if you and Justin etc. have to continue to support this site on your own. Of course, in any community, when small businesses have to pay more for advertising fees, it has a correlation on market prices. I think it would be great for them not to have to pay higher rates, and keep product costs about where they are now, but it may be impossible if the membership doesnt pitch in. I will pay the fee either way. No one said this end of the hobby would be cheap in price. If they want cheap, there is always the 'mainstream' of the hobby...