hughwyeth Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 BoardGameGeek have a yearly donation drive. People who donate a certain amount get an advert free experience and a badge under their avatar saying they're a BGG Supporter on something like that. As others have said, I'd be happy to be a monthly/yearly subscriber and a special badge for paid subscribers is a little incentive that really seems to work. This forum is easily the highest quality one I've used for any hobby or profession and I'd hate to start seeing adverts! More merchandise would be a good thing too- the terrain dice are great but adding more might help. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rhellion Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 You could do adds and a member fee. If you pay the member fee the adds are turned off. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tonhel Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 No ads. I prefer a small montly subscription. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NemoVonUtopia Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 Personally I would prefer a place to donate with a lump sum than a subscription. Though if you end up having both subscription and donations it would be nice to let donors have the same perks that subscribers have, though that may be hard to work out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scrollbuilderdude Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 Subscription or yearly pledge drive kind of thing would be my idea. It's a great site and I'd gladly toss you some cash to keep it alive! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WatcherintheWater Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 Congratulations on the success of the site! It's such a great resource for the community. I like the idea of adds, but also giving the option to buy a membership that makes the site add free for paid members. That way people who don't like the adds have a way to get rid of them, and people who don't want to keep up on a subscription have a way to still use the site without any big restrictions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
S133arcanite Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 I would go with the premium That said, that does mean you need to find a way of adding something new and valuable to the experience While Im at it, I would like to congratulate you on the site. I look at it nearly every day and enjoy it every time! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MaxPounder Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 18 hours ago, Arkiham said: a subscriber thing might be good, i don't think the likes an stuff are necessary. this isn't facebook, id rather not create an environment similar to that. i think the subscriber thing might be a good way to try an maybe use your influence? maybe get some subscriber-only content things from games-workshop, this is the most popular aos forum, worldwide im pretty sure a monthly subscriber raffle for prizes? pay via paypal, £1 a strip winner gets a new model/box set etc etc £50 box set, 300 people buy tickets for it, bam £250 profit - postage fees. do a little raffle on youtube or something maybe to show it This is an excellent idea and I would sign up in a heart beat. I would know that my subscription is helping to maintain the clean look of the website and there is a chance of a prize. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
endtransmission Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 To echo everyone else, thanks for the great work and commitment on the site! I've been a long time Dakka user and the single banner add can be unobtrusive, but they have a much wider scope for advertisers. The subscription option would certainly be my preference a couple of dollars a month, or a yearly 30 dollars? I like Arkimad's suggestion of a raffle. You could see if companies would sponsor the raffle in return for that month/year's thing, or provide a membership discount code or something? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SadGlad Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 I think Patreon would be good to try. It’s voluntary, non-intrusive and you can choose how much you would like to support the page with. All content should be free and no VIP rooms. ? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spiky Norman Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 I like the Bolter & Chainswords yearly donation drive as previously mentioned by others the best. If you want to put ads on the site, it would not bother me as I run with full ad and scriptblockers, so I wouldn't be exposed to them. But I wouldn't mind chipping in through other means, preferbly lump sums rather than monthly subscription, though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BunkhouseBuster Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 An option may be to just have a special icon to go on user profiles who are contributing members? If a special "premium" section of the website isn't feasible, then maybe just having something on user profiles would be sufficient? As you mentioned in the first post, only a fraction of a percentage of the members need to contribute a little bit in order to keep things running. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fireymonkeyboy Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 Subs at < $5 would get my money. FMb Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheOtherJosh Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 (edited) 22 hours ago, Ben said: 1. Advertising. This would also be quite labour intensive of chasing advertisers and making sales. 2. Members section. 3. Patreon system. 4. A kickstarter 5. a mixture of all of the above. 6. any other suggestions? 1. Ads feedback: Ads are bad, and have substantial potential to end up as a target for malware attacks, or Cryptocurrency mining. (Edit: And loads of people use ad-blockers) 2. Membership: Not sure about the “off topic chat”... I’m for giving paying members more “Likes” or “special forum tags” (Forum Sponsor). The web browser lets me upload crazy image sizes... (image optimization at some level might help from a data transfer perspective) 6. Other Suggestions: Forum space for vendors that have products they would like to sell to the TGA AoS community. (Like a “verified vendor program” with designated sticky thread space either in the sales/trading or in a custom space.) Edited February 22, 2018 by TheOtherJosh Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheWilddog Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 Thx for the effort to build this place and keep the lights on Ben. I would definitely give a few bucks a month to support the site. That is my vote instead of ads. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barkanaut Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 Allow paying members to have signatures and slightly bigger avatars. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bosmer Nightblade Posted February 23, 2018 Share Posted February 23, 2018 Ask GW to cover the costs tbh. You're already doing the playtesting for them, and this forum generates a lot of hype for them on the rumour thread and just by the amount of community discussion going on on a daily basis. A few hundred a month to represent literally thousands of their community is a nothing cost for them. A total no brainer. 6 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lucio Posted February 23, 2018 Share Posted February 23, 2018 I think a yearly funding drive to try and build up enough to cover a year's costs would be a good idea. There's plenty of approaches to handle that, and you can also open up "fund a feature" point when it becomes relevant. As for adverts, personally I'd include them, and offer a £1 to 2 a month subscription to remove them. Particularly if they sit as a row in the middle of forum posts for non subscribers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aranthir Posted February 23, 2018 Share Posted February 23, 2018 I'd gladly pay some kind of 1$ subscription for premium member (even though I am new here) but don't have a problem with some kind of banner. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 23, 2018 Share Posted February 23, 2018 Firstly, I'd like to echo the sentiments of everyone here thanking @Ben for all of his hard work and personal sacrifice. The fact that TGA is not only such a great community and resource for thousands of AoS players worldwide, but also a largely positive one, is a minor miracle that he should be very proud of. My take on this may not be a popular or widely held one, but I can only speak for myself. For me, a small subscription is an option that I would consider. But unlike many others who have commented that they would be happy to pay a subscription purely to support the site without necessarily even getting access to bonus features, I would need to feel like I'm getting some extra value for my money. I have various subscriptions here and there for a range of different things, and there's always another worthy cause that I feel I want to support financially, be it a podcast, a specialist YouTube channel, or some other passionate content creator. There are also less worthy things that are nonetheless important to me, like my subscriptions to White Dwarf and Netflix. And of course there are the other boring expenses like electricity bills, mortgage, baby stuff, etc. $2 a month isn't much in isolation, but all of these things add up. I'm self-employed on a small, variable income, so I have to be very careful not to overextend my disposable income. The cold, hard reality is that every expense, no matter how small, needs to be weighed in terms of the 'value' it generates for me and the opportunity-cost of not spending that $2 on supporting some other passionate content creator or platform provider. In the past I have made donations to forums expecting nothing in return, but that was many years ago before these 'micro-subscriptions' became such a massive part of everyday life. So while I'm totally open to paying a small subscription for TGA, I can't just do it out of the goodness of my heart - as cynical and mercenary as that may sound. In my financial position, it's hard to justify paying $2 for something I can get for free, or for extra features I will never use, when there are other content creators I care about charging similar fees for access to some really valuable and well-crafted premium content. This brings me to my second point, which is that the majority of the extra features mentioned in Ben's opening post don't appeal to me - I just can't see myself using them or benefiting from them. I come to TGA to discuss, share and debate, so what I'd really be looking for in a premium membership is something that gives me more opportunity to do those things, and/or something that allows me to respond to and interact with my fellow users in more interesting ways. For me, that probably means access to premium sub-forums. This is a tricky one, because I can't think of many sub-forums I'd want that aren't already present and accessible for free. If TGA was being developed from scratch, I'd suggest making the general Age of Sigmar Discussions and Rules Questions open to everyone, and make just about everything else members-only (non-members could still view but not post or reply). But it's almost impossible to take things away from people at this stage without causing a lot of trouble. So this is my dilemma. I want to support Ben and TGA financially, but the site already provides everything I could possibly want for free, so in my financial situation it's near impossible to justify even this small extra expense. The free content and resources are just way too expansive and appealing as they stand. I'm struggling to find a way to reconcile that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AGPO Posted February 23, 2018 Share Posted February 23, 2018 Having been on the breadline myself not so long ago I certainly wouldn't expect every member to chip in, even £2. For those of us who are fortunate enough that this kind of subscription is not noticeable, or just buying one less cup of coffee from a stand, it does feel like more of a responsibility. TGA is not the product of a business, it is a community. Communities don't let one member shoulder all the burden. At the moment @Ben is not only paying for the whole site, but also doing a lot of the work on its upkeep. It's only fair for those of us who can (and if we're honest, it's the majority of us) to take a bit of that off his back. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thundercake Posted February 23, 2018 Share Posted February 23, 2018 Echoing a number of people, thanks for all the work, the site is amazing! In terms of feedback, I think a donation drive that let users customize their profiles on the left of their posts would be a nice reward without taking anything away from other people. Could have different levels that would let you do different things, like choose a rank from a different faction or allegiance, change the background color, add a signature, etc. What about a community shop that lets people sell things where either a portion of the sale goes to TGA (listing fee) or people in the community can use their talent to design scenario packs, tokens, 3d printer terrain files, etc. that are donated to the community store with profits going to TGA. Lastly, I've got the guy below. Anyone that pays 20 bucks towards the running of the site, I'll ship him to you (In the USA). If abroad we can figure out something for shipping. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RoyalDachshund Posted February 23, 2018 Share Posted February 23, 2018 Subscription combined with a little "benefit" like the ability to change your rank name to something non-stormcast and voila. People (including me) will throw money on that 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arkiham Posted February 23, 2018 Share Posted February 23, 2018 (edited) 1 hour ago, RoyalDachshund said: the ability to change your rank name to something non-stormcast you already can, but not that many explore the site i dont think Edited February 23, 2018 by Arkiham Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mDaro Posted February 25, 2018 Share Posted February 25, 2018 I prefer a subscription. No ads PLEASE! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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