Your input is requested!

[Justin]

Hi everyone,

I started this forum for you so please give this thread a little thought and tell me what you think! PM if you'd prefer.

What would you like to see on the forum? We've discussed a guides/how to section before, print times etc. and also an extended gallery.

How would you feel about paying a small membership fee to allow access to restricted information areas/certain forum sections? I'm not saying I want to charge but have to look at ways to bring in a little revenue if we're to progress further........

Advertising, how would you feel about the forum having banner adverts from suppliers? These would be in the space to the right of the DSF logo. I'm not keen on advertising but have to look at every avenue, especially if it means no membership charge Adverts would be specifically related to the forum, not just general stuff.

I'll probably run a few polls to get a quick straw poll.

Please let me have your feedback. I'm very pleased with the direction of the forum but have to look to the future.

Any ideas for increasing membership would also be appreciated.

Cheers for now,
Justin

[mrs maggot]

im the newest one on here, but i am involved as admin in a few websites which are motorbike related.

on one, we dont have a membership, we open the comunity chest when we need funds to pay for the next years hosting, we normally limit what members give so a max donation of say £5 this works fine, we dont have any restricted areas, and the information is free to everyone - membership of around 700 active members, we have support from the manufacturer, who regularly ask our members opinions, but they do NOT contribute to the site, as we felt this could lead to complications.

on another one, there is a yearly membership fee, which gives you access to certain areas - at present there are over 750 members each paying £6 per year - its about to go into self destruct mode, as members are starting to ask where the money is going - me included- it certainly does not all go on the forum - inner bickering has started, and a break away group started.

why not approach some of the dye sub companies for banner advertising, im sure this would bring in enough revenue for what you are looking at doing. you can after all set a limit to who is able to look at locked parts of the forum, so you dont get people trawling for information and never coming back, perhaps a new registration period, or 10 posts until you get full access that type of thing, but at the 50th new post asking for pressing times/temps - you may find that an open to all forum is the way to go.

as for increasing membership - if each person on the forum now, googled a certain key word - given by admin then each could send a note to the "contact us" details on websites.

links to some of the suppliers will also increase site traffic

sorry i have a bit to say on the subject, but having seen one site go from hero to zero and another one from zero to hero - i know which way i would be going.

[Justin]

That's great, many thanks for your feedback. I'd sooner keep it free for members if at all possible and would probably prefer the banner ads to this, as long as the content was strictly controlled.

Any feedback regarding the look and feel of the forum would also help.

We've not done anything to spread the word yet other than word of mouth, I think once we get advertising we'll really start to push forward.
I had considered putting an ad in the Printwear & Promotion magazine but it's costly. Just need to look at getting to as many targeted folk as we can.

Thanks again,
Justin

[Flash]

Here's my 2 pence worth
Before I do.......I know nothing about running a Forum and know I wouldn't have the time to!

1) Charging for Membership = Suicide
Restrict the informative sections of the Forum to 'Registered' Users is a great idea and should be done IMO
2) You would do well to target this Forum at a wider audience including all methods of garment decoration & promotional printing.
3) I agree with mrs maggot about getting the Industry to fund the Forum and personally would have no problem with banner ads.

If this helps in any way i'm glad I answered!

Phil

[Justin]

Cheers Phil, appreciate your comments.

The last thing I wanted to do was charge for membership which is why I wanted to look at other ways to raise the revenue. I've said from the start that I wanted it to remain free for registered users.

I will be looking at expanding into other related areas but want to restructure the layout a little to make the baord clearer and possibly in sections.

Banner ads may well be the way to go, just need to speak with the suppliers to see about this.

Thanks again,
Justin

[castlegategiftcreations]

I think the forum is great but agree that charging a membership may put some people off. Supplier banners is a good idea. How about some overseas suppliers?

I know that I have certainly shown interest in other suppliers sites and products. I know that the postage can be a problem with them but you never know - if it helps them gain some more customers then they may be a little nicer with their overseas pricing (probably talking rubbish here but ahh well). This could also help with more people joining the forum as overseas suppliers could inform their customers of it.


Sorry if i am talking c**p but you did ask for feedback.

Keep up the good work guys - paying for membership or not I am here to stay!!!

[Stitch Up]

The bottom line is that to run a forum costs. The more popular the forum gets the more it costs.

We all enjoy this forum and gain a great deal from it. We can't expect one person to fund it unless of course he happens to be a life coach - I don't think Justin's a life coach?

So, how best to share the cost? Always going to be a thorny subject with differing views and opinions.

Personally, I don't think charging for membership or restricting sections is a go'er just now, it'll put off new members and that's the last thing we want.

My idea for now would be to add a DONATION button allowing those who enjoy the forum to voluntarily show their gratitude. If this doesn't work, then we could look at other options.

John

[Justin]

Thanks guys, most members seem to agree on the advertising/membership which is good.

There is a DONATE button available on here, I may enable it until such time we find other revenue streams.

Cheers,
Justin

[JSR]

As I've mentioned before, I run a forum but I'm fortunate enough to be able to run it off the back of my own server. It's also not inundated with hundreds of members clogging up bandwidth. As a result, costs are so negligible that it's not even worth the question.

Personally, I'm against banners and advertising. On the one hand, once you start advertising you lose any attempt at impartiality. Let's say you get revenue from "Supplier X" and someone has a bad experience which they post about - well, that supplier will demand you delete the thread or lose your revenue. Very soon everyone's tippy-toeing around, afraid to speak their mind for fear that the forum will disappear under legal threats and lost revenue.

Also, I use browser tricks and adblockers so that I don't see ads. I'd imagine many clued-in people do the same. Most banners won't even get seen.

The best option would seem to be the voluntary "donate" button for a few months and see how it goes? If it's "PayPal", I'll chip in. If not, probably not... I would recommend you word it correctly, though. The last time I donated to something they said "We'd rather 20 people donate $5 than 5 people decide they can't afford $20". So I donated. After donating, I received a "thank-you" email from the site owner asking for my input. Okay, I didn't hear back from him after I replied, but it was a nice touch.

Perhaps you could also put up a "target" and "amount raised" page so that everyone knows if the funds are low? The last thing you'd want is for people to think it's a bottomless pit and get disillusioned about donating. Some years back, I was a member of a forum that asked for donations to pay for server costs. Everyone chipped in with various amounts, but there were forever posts about "we don't have enough money, and the site will close". It didn't close but it did change. It turned out that the site owner used the funds to pay for 10 years of the domain name (in the days when they were expensive) and paid almost nothing to the server. Within 2 years, the site had been taken over by someone else with the domain name acting merely as a pointer towards the new site. Talk about feeling ripped off..! I know that wouldn't happen here, but I'm sure we all have scare stories that make us hesitant to donate unless we're kept fully clued-in.

There's no easy answer to the question of how to pay for a forum, which is why I only started up mine when I knew I could do it for next to zero cost.

[Justin]

Cheers for that JSR, nice to get an opinion form a different angle. It certainly won't hurt to put the DONATE button up, I'll check this out further.

Justin