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Look, Im a member since 2002, and I feel that I am a more intelligent person than most people on this site. You dont understand, Meth what I am saying. You guys had two choices: 1. Host advertisement (just terrible ), keep the site free, and keep all of the annoying 11-14 year olds that go here and contribute NOTHING to the community. ORRRRR
2. Force all the members to pay a small annual fee, thus dismissing all those who do not find Niketalk worthwhile enough to pay money for.
ups will fail - as do most start-ups period - but the subscription-based "leader" will have their user base fractured by the free alternatives. Generally, at that point they'll either be replaced by one or more of the free sites or their business will have diminished to the point where it will simply fold up for lack of subscribers.
Unless you have an indispensable service with exclusive content rights, it's not going to work out.
Imagine if you had to start paying to read stories on ESPN.com. Would you pay $10 a month, or would you just start reading sports news somewhere else for free?
Remember, our users generate our content. If we scare 80% of our users away (and that's conservative) by introducing subscriptions, we lose the majority of our content providers.
The only subscription model that seems viable for sites like ours are those that offer "premium" features to paying users. Ezsupporter is an example of this (though we don't receive that money.) If we started offering subscribers the use of @niketalk.com email accounts, private forums, and other perks... we might be able to generate some supplemental income - but it probably wouldn't be sufficient to replace advertising, which will almost certainly remain our mainstay."
If we ever FORCED our members to pay subscriptions, everyone would just start posting on Crooked Tongues or NikeTalk Jr. Only a handful of people would actually pay for the privilege of posting on NikeTalk. The poor performance of our community chest and ezsupporter subscriptions over the years only underscore this.
80+% of our current users would HATE the prospect of forced subscription costs.
Perhaps 5% of our current users HATE the prospect of advertising. (and, in those cases, you have to wonder WHAT sites they're visiting that dont' offer any ads at all. Most of the larger content sites have pop ups and interstitial ads.) You tell me which loss is more sustainable: 80% or 5%? Clearly, you're in that 5%. We'd hate to lose you, but I'll accept that as consequence sooner than I would driving the overwhelming majority of our members and our CONTENT off of this board.
), keep the site free, and keep all of the annoying 11-14 year olds that go here and contribute NOTHING to the community. ORRRRR
