Premium Memberships?

[Owen]

It's probably a long shot but what about premium memberships? All the big forums have them, like you guys can have a special section for it and have better permissions like advertising and stuff. (Those with businesses can advertise and post in an advertising section). You can also get a swaggy banner thing under your name, if you guys change over to Invision Power self-hosted you can make it so premium members can customize their member name with cool animated things. Just a thought c:

[Brian Altenhofel]

Why? What extra value would I get with a premium membership? Premium content? Who is providing the premium content? Special discounts with service or product providers?

And no, not "all the big forums" have premium memberships. For a premium membership to work, you first need to be in a niche where you own the vast majority of the market share. Even then, it's still not guaranteed. People come to forums for the content - that content will be made available free elsewhere once you put it behind a paywall. So that rules out "premium content". Partnerships with providers for special pricing or rates can work, but you need have a large enough exposure and loyal enough base for those partners to get a return.

Even the act of adding a premium membership doesn't settle well with users. You will see people leave because of a feeling that free users are somehow second class users. You will be lucky to get 5% of your active users to convert, and then you've got much more management on your plate (keeping churn low, deciding whether to market the premium memberships, keeping CLTV:CAC ratio reasonable, ensuring that premium users are getting their desired benefits, etc.) Even on a mid-size forum that sees ~3K active users online during peak hours, there's better return and less investment in straight up selling advertising or marketing packages (such as an opt-in mailing list that sponsors are allowed to send a limited number of reviewed promotions to with anonymized analytics available to them so they can measure their return).

[Fulcrum]

As Brian said, won't work here. The value this forum brings is in the people and not who has access to what. If there was a marketplace here, I have an idea how to minimize spam and create some cash flow; however, I'm not sure how that would be implemented as the membership base is highly diversified and highly transient.

The niche sites with premium memberships only offer the premium to advertisers and manufacturers (usually called sponsorship).

[Harold Mansfield]

Gaming and Adult Industry forums have the flashy banners, alias names, and so on. As for advertising, you can advertise anytime you want. Just contact VanGogh.
As for an advertising section....anything can happen but I'm personally against it. It turns into nothing but a spam section where people are constantly solicited.

Also, I feel as if many of the members here consider this a place to get credible advice and discussions. By allowing people to constantly advertise ( or spam) their services we can't vouch for the credibility of anything posted in that section. There will be rip off artists and scammers posting there, and some people will get screwed by someone they found there, which they will now associate with the forum that they trusted. I don't care how many disclaimers you put up, that's what will happen.

It also lends to the perfect excuse for those same people to spam every post with "I can help you with that, here's a link to my forum post".

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure we have a lot of responsible members that won't over do it, and will follow the rules. Those aren't the people who ruin a forum. It's drive by's and people who search out open areas such as that to spam. Cheap SEO services are the first ones to come to mind. The spam and link dropping will be a moderation nightmare. The web is far more spammy now that it was 5 years ago and that's why most forum (of the ones that are still alive) stopped allowing that.

[Owen]

Gaming and Adult Industry forums have the flashy banners, alias names, and so on. As for advertising, you can advertise anytime you want. Just contact VanGogh.
As for an advertising section....anything can happen but I'm personally against it. It turns into nothing but a spam section where people are constantly solicited.

Also, I feel as if many of the members here consider this a place to get credible advice and discussions. By allowing people to constantly advertise ( or spam) their services we can't vouch for the credibility of anything posted in that section, and it also lends to the perfect excuse for those same people to spam every post with "I can help you with that, here's a link to my forum post".

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure we have a lot of responsible members that won't over do it, and will follow the rules. Those aren't the people who ruin a forum. It's drive by's and people who search out open areas such as that to spam. Cheap SEO services are the first ones to come to mind. The spam and link dropping will be a moderation nightmare. The web is far more spammy now that it was 5 years ago and that's why most forum (of the ones that are still alive) stopped allowing that.

Then make it so you need like 100 posts or 50 posts to post in the advertising section.

[Harold Mansfield]

Then make it so you need like 100 posts or 50 posts to post in the advertising section.

I don't think we're going to put in a free advertising section. It's really not the purpose of the forum to give your company free promotion any more than the sig area that you already have which you can do whatever you want with as long is your aren't posting malware or something illegal.

[MyITGuy]

First question you have to ask - What problem are you trying to solve?

[MamaYard]

How about a section where people get real help to clarify issues? There are people who would not be transient. We are transient because the pressing answers that we need does not jump out at us just because we sign up. I would have already spent 100 hours if I were finding all that I am hunting. There are people here willing and able to share good information. People are here online. There could be some safeguards where everyone remains anon. People could earn for giving quality answers. This means the forum continues to be primarily contents. It could develop into a top class business lab. Take just one person's hand to walk through business from where the person is right now. I have a very interesting situation on hand. I have a lifetime of intellectual property. I just signed asPOA for multi-million assets. How do we put supper on the table tonight?

I need to know. People are interested to read. This would provide quality content. After the content is developed the site could charge a small fee for accessing and reading. This does not matter if the same content is available for free on the internet. The added bonus is that the premium membership promises that some one will hold me hand to help me get where I need to go. As well as many would pay a dime to read content that helps to develop the business. All of this would be legitimate business expense for tax purposes..

I agree with this premium membership thing from the aspect of contents. I disagree about more advertisement. PS who owns the contents posted on this site? Ought to be joint ownership People posting as well as the site.. Maybe we discuss this question in legal issues. We could continue to be anon. We could even proceed to make the site hipaa protected so people post safe. All this would make the site valuable business lab. People would pay to use.Effective business principles are universal. Also since we are holding individual's hands would also make a valuable cultural diversity tool. I read one question posted. That would have been excellent to develop on this site holding the person's hand. I read the earnestness of both person asking the question as well as answers that were posted. That was a missed opportunity when we did not go all the way with the person who asked the question.

[Brian Altenhofel]

How about a section where people get real help to clarify issues?

What is "real help"? The site cannot actively encourage people to give regulated advice without getting into serious liability issues.


hipaa protected

HIPAA is only for medical information and has annual compliance costs of tens of thousands of dollars.

[Fulcrum]

There's a difference between being financially compensated for products, information, and services rendered and charging for the sake of charging. Maybe I'm not following the flow of the conversation, but I don't see how the pro premium membership supporters are staying in the first area I referenced above rather than falling into the trap that is the latter.