in this day and age whenmoney is needed to make a board work What are some features that you think paid members should get? i you subscribe to a forum what are the higher quality features that you think the users should have?

no banners? less banners?
@youforum.com email adress?
vip icon?
special icon?
diff color user name?
special access to certain areas?
which areas?
what options there?
web hosting
notepad
email checking abilities
contest for paid members
custom titles
diary
guestbook
any other ideas?


http://www.extremeforums.org/msg/announce/221.html

Poil--

I have been thinking of this myself.

!. There could be a free course.

2. There could be special reports not available to others.

3. There could be Advance looks at things that will be rolled out to the general public later. (This might be more administration than it is worth).

4. There could be additional forum sections. (How could you keep the conversations there?)

5. There could be discounts on products.

6. You could offer to make a contribution to a charity (their favorite one?) for every X posts.

:-Doug.
[][email protected][/]
www.FootprintsintheWind.com

Here is what I have started a few weeks ago and is working out great: http://coloradok5.com/membership.shtml

Great idea!

How do you make sure you tap people when their dues are due?

And what arrangements are you making to get your sponsors?

And how did you attract your first sponsors?

Thanks for this example.

Thats the part that will suck a little bit, right now I have all the info in a spreadsheet with their expire dates etc, I would like to integrate and automate everything so I don't have to touch it, hell if I make enough I will pay someone to do it for me. I wasn't really ready to do this but my traffic is increasing beyond what the crappy (burstnet) advertising was giving me and my bandwidth is going through the roof so I needed revenue NOW.
I have done quite a few product reviews with vendors so those are the ones I hit up first, I have only called a few with pretty good response, I would like to get 50 or more up there to really sell the memberships.
Membership is really the way the internet is going now, advertising is drying up fast so this looks like a great way to bring in revenue.

I toyed with the idea of a pay site and asked my viewers about it and we came to the conclusion that a pay site would stifle new members because they wouldn't know what they were getting so offer extra perks to support the site seems the way to go. As I bring on board new things like a better chat room, new software etc., I will put that under the membership program, this way I don't have to take anything away from the regular users.
It's funny how most of the members just want their name in orange to be different and show there support, what I like about that is it cost me nothing to do.

Good info. Hope it continues to go well for you.

I have a buddy who has a fountain pen site, where he has lots of sponsors for a very narrow market. Might want to look at www.zoss.com/pens.htm.

OK, back to basics: how do you make their name show up in orange on w3t? []/testimages/icons/crazy.gif[/]

I disagree that membership is the way forward, it's alot of hassle collecting money from loads of people, where you could be collecting alot more money from a few advertisers, and no it's not drying up, if you target companies whom you probably discuss on your site they will be hiting there target audience, alot of companies are going away from specialist magazine ads onto web advertising

Really depends on the site content, for me Membership IS the way to go for someone else maybe not. I have noticed that car sites get much more traffic and advertising than off-road sites that's just the way it is and has been, I deal with a very small market and most of my viewers make their own parts before they would buy them anyway.

Also having an offroad site, I too know what you are saying. With a much smaller niche (especially when you narrow it down to one vehicle type even) you start to limit yourself to who you could use for advertising. To even complicate this even more, having a local site (like we have) provides not a whole lot of constant new user traffic, but more or less the same group of people always on the site.

That isn't what advertisers are looking for, they want mass exposure to new users, not repeated exposure to the same users. So it all really does depend on your site's situation and purpose to decide the best source of income.

posted by coloradok5:

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Really depends on the site content, for me Membership IS the way to go for someone else maybe not. I have noticed that car sites get much more traffic and advertising than off-road sites that's just the way it is and has been, I deal with a very small market and most of my viewers make their own parts before they would buy them anyway.

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colorado5k, very interesting idea, I like it. Just wondering, since that post was about a year ago, can you share any information on the success you have had over the past year. Things you might liked to have done differently, things that worked well and didn't... and how many members you have on your forums and how many have purchased memberships.

And I don't know if you have found a way to handle the renewals, but there are membership type scripts out there that some of the merchant companies have that handle everything from signup, to password protected areas and renewals, all of it pretty fully automated from what I understand.

Thx.

My sites got over 6000 users. Only about 1400 of them login within the last 30 day period.

I have a photo section... (using photopost) which I use iBill for member access. They handle and automate signups.... and rebills etc.... it works fairly well. About 275 users have joined for photo gallery access. Some for simply a month, some for a year, and others for recurring monthly billings.

Then I have "sponsors" on my site... where people who donate (any amount) will get access to a few sponsor only forums, [][email protected][/] email address (with web based interface) and a few other "perks". About 175 users have contributed to this. Some sent a one time donation of $5-$25. Some have sent $100-$500 one time donation. Some send $25-$50/quarter... a vast majority of the "regulars" send $10-20/month. For this I use a PayPal donations button. Some will send a check or money order to our PO Box.

So far <knock on wood> this is working well. We have to sometimes bring the "money issue" up for donations to start pouring in. And each time I add an upgrade, or a bunch of new features... I add "if you like what you see... become a sponsor".

Just what it's like in my little world.

I just checked and I have 7770 registered users, Sept 1st marked the first year I have been doing Memberships and have sold about 650 the first year so not to bad, the nice thing is from this point forward I will sell renewals as well as new Memberships. I am still learning on what and what not to do and always looking for ideas to make it better, if I learned anything it is you can not please everyone, there is always someone wanting something different but that is how it goes.
I love looking at other sites that are a full time operation to see how they are making it, even if the topic is different, a lot of times you can pick up a good idea here and there.

colorado5k, that is awesome, congrats. what do you think the biggest reason (which part of the membership) people sign up for it at your site is?