Major Change In Emporium Use: Please Read!

[Brian Scherzer]

Only Supporting Members (used to be called Contributing Members) are allowed by the software to start threads/ads in the emporium areas. For information about Supporting Membership please click on the link below:

What are subscriptions for Supporting Membership?

[Brian Scherzer]

In preparation for the storm of protest that may or may not happen, I'd like to explain our reasons for such a significant change.

In December I wrote in an announcement that there were big changes ahead due to the substantial growth of our membership. In less than 5 months after writing that, we have added about 6000 new members, which led to a need to double our server capacity and bandwidth. I proposed several ways to raise money back then and the membership stated that they didn't want banner advertising, but felt that a membership fee would be acceptable. We didn't want to impose a mandatory fee just to belong to TGP, but donations failed to meet our costs in 2 of the last 3 months. That led to serious discussions between Scott and myself as to how best to change how we raise money.

The costs of keeping TGP online today are five times what they were in the first year of the website. Yet, our method of raising money remained exactly the same....depend on members to donate. This worked well until the past year. Some of the statistics were alarming to us. In brief, less than 8% of all members have ever donated anything to help TGP meet its costs. In other words, the brunt of the financial burden fell on a relatively small group of people. To assure our future existence, we needed a better "business model". With the membership having voiced their disagreement with us adding banner advertising, we made the decision to look at our data.

We recently reviewed data that showed that more than 2/3rds of all ads placed in the emporiums were by members who have never donated to the website. When we looked further into the data, it became apparent that many of the members placing ads had "0" or very low post counts (posts in the emporiums do not add to a member's post totals). What this said to us is that there are a lot of people who join TGP to sell items, but who have little desire to participate in our online community. It would seem that their membership is based on wanting to sell to our members. This makes sense, since TGP has almost 30,000 gear hounds! Yet, if those members are benefiting financially from joining, but take up bandwidth and add to our costs, it seems fair to ask them to share in meeting those costs.

We waited as long as we could to make changes in how we raise money. Based on recent donation patterns, we needed to act now. None of us like the change, but it is necessary if TGP is going to be on the internet in the future. We looked at subscriptions being charged by other large discussion sites and we found a wide range of prices. Sites that allow advertising were either able to avoid subscriptions, or were fairly reasonable in cost. Other sites charged as much as $35 a year for their subscriptions that allow members to place ads in their "for sale" areas. Scott and I wanted to be as fair as we could. We don't want to gouge members, so we even set up a one month subscription that costs $5 for members who may only have one or two items to sell each year. Annual subscriptions start at $12.....which is equal to $1 a month.

We also took a look at which software functions took up the most bandwidth or put the greatest stress on our servers. The vBulletin search function was the biggest cause of slowing the servers due to the intensity of doing searches on such a large database. The database is made even larger by having to store Private Messages. We decided to offer the TGP Google search (only searches TGP posts) for regular members (this does not cause performance problems for our servers) and to reserve the vBulletin search functions for Supporting Members......having improved the search capabilities of our software. Also, we are allowing Supporting Members to have greater PM box capacities, since they are helping the website meet its costs.

In summary, the changes we have put in place today may not be popular with some members, but they are vital for us to continue to be online. I'll take the brunt of whatever criticisms you might have, since this was a decision that I pushed for.

[jimfog]

Totally cool.....and I think the bulk of us support whatever direction you decided to go with, Brian.

Just a quick question...........are past donation grandfathered in, or are we starting to keep track, as of today?

(edit....never mind...I can see the answer by my new title)

Again.....whatever is totally fine.

Thanks!

[sinner]

Thank you folks for a great forum!

I've been a Contributing Member, but just sent you $50 for Gold Membership via PayPal.

Thank you Brian!

--Rocco

[Elmer]

Great idea, I like it.

[Chuck Snider]

apparently past donators like myself are not grandfathered in..

Edit... My grandfatherness has been located.. I'm reinstated...

[Matt F]

This is a fantastic idea.

Thanks for the great site

[mlongano]

Good decisions Brian...keep up the great work.

[trisonic]

I think it is a good move, Brian.
I must be rather odd being a Contributing Member who's never sold anything on the Emporium since joining (although I have bought exactly one item).

Does this avoid the "ten cent" Contributing Member too?

Best, Pete.

[Trandy]

This is totally reasonable in my opinion.

I support your decision 100%

[lxm]

I get the $ issue. Not being able to search the emporium is not cool IMO.

[bluessyndicate]

The logic is very well laid out....congrat's on the forward momentum.

[bizzwriter]

Protest? No way. GREAT idea! Love it!

:BEER

[decay-o-caster]

Access to TGP members to sell gear has to be worth something - I'm in favor. Thanks again for all you guys do to create and sustain a community despite overwhelming odds!

[slipbeer]

:AOK

Good plan, me likey.