Thread: POLL: Adding for-pay membership options

Hi Guys and gals.

We are thinking about adding for-pay options to this site to help support it.
Before you get all anxious, let me assure you that the non-paying part of this site will not change in any way. I.e. SRP as it exists today would still be the SRP of tomorrow.

But we are thinking about giving subscription members the opportunity to maintain a personalized blog.
And another thing we are looking at is personal straightrazorplace.com email addresses. This could be used for example by people who would rahter not use their personal email. Or perhaps it could be used for a paypal account dedicated to shaving stuff.
And others would perhaps be interested in a bigger PM box.

We have not yet decided upon amounts yet. We could have several options. For example, 20$ for a year, and 100$ for 50 years. These are just examples on MartialTalk.com, which is why I mention them.

By creating a supportive membership option, we can add extra options to the site, for those who are interested. Adding those options will cost money (software,time , server resources, etc...) which is in part why they are not here now.
It is also not our intention to milk this for money. I am still not going to be paid (except in eternal gratefullness which might come in handy for the afterlife) So even if we would run up a surplus amount of money, I can see that being used for additional features, or perhaps a raffle among subscription members.

Keep in mind that this is still long term stuff. For now I want to know if there is anough interest to warrant the time of setting something up and doing the numbers.
The assumption is that it'll be a couple of tens of $ per year, and substantially less for longer periods.
So please vote, and post any feedback you might have

I appreciate this website enough to contribute to it. Especially with it being an option that members can either take or leave. I don't know how much it would cost to maintain the site as it is and has been but I am sure it ain't free ? So I vote yes.

I support those places that enable me to enjoy my life more. I vote yes.
I'll give you the cash I would blow on one impulse buy in the classifieds!

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

I don't know how much it would cost to maintain the site as it is and has been but I am sure it ain't free ? So I vote yes.

For now we break even. We do have some ads, but that is just enough to keep us afloat since we only allow shaving related ads. Adding things like blogs and email are not essential to the forum part of this site, but they might be useful / fun.

I appreciate the Place enough to spend way too much time here. I can certainly justify helping somehow support it.

Money is real tight here so I labour over spending anything, but I might contribute just because I continue to get a lot from this site.

X

i voted Yes because i think it is a great idea. unfortunately i wouldn't be able to do anything right now but it still sounds really good. i like the blog idea also, as my post tend to turn into blogs anyways

I would do this. That means selling some extra packets of chrome ox to fund it, but I think I can manage. There are other blade related forums that require membership for full bennies and I haven't joined because I don't spend enough time there to justify it. I spend too much time here but contributing sounds good to me.

Maybe if there is every a surplus, contributing members could have an exclusive T-shirt or something.

Chris L

There must be a huge amount of time & work going into this place. It seems fair if certain features require a subscription. Please don't make it too high though!

One thing that I would suggest, on another shaving forum they instituted a voluntary contribution policy that has a pecking order based on the amount contributed. Badges are displayed under the member's screen name that say bronze, silver, gold or whatever.

I think that if some sort of icon is displayed denoting that a member contributed it ought to be the same no matter the amount. To avoid intimidating members into feeling that their contribution isn't as good as another members.

Some members like the mods, BeBerlin, Hoglahoo, Bart and slantbartfest among othes have contributed more to the forum and the Wiki then could be quantified in $. Just my two cent contribution.