Site Management When your beloved forum starts charging for membership

[joelr]

I suppose it wasn’t *entirely* clear that I was only planning on charging the admin for hosting the site, as opposed to members for access. This runs back to a conversation months ago about building a new forum software, where I was going to go open source and give it away until, well, I was convinced not to.

Though I also would have thought that “trying not to make a business out of it” and “just cover the costs” for what is essentially a hobby project makes it less transactional by nature and returns it to the spirit of old where its not about making a profit, and any money changing hands is necessity.

Have you thought about a model similar to WordPress where you offer the software for free for self hosted clients (arantor.org), but also a paid service for clients who don't worry to worry about hosting (arantor.com)?

That stays true to your mission of building the software for the sake of the software, while also commercializing a portion where clients want to pay for add-on value.

 

[joelr]

What are your biggest expenses? My hosting costs are extremely low but I invest heavily in quality articles (paying my writer) and a bunch of custom development.

Custom development, especially in the IPS ecosystem, gets very expensive very quickly. Just be careful, as custom development requires a lifetime of future upkeep.

Nobody tell IPS, but the software itself is literally one of the cheapest parts of running my community at this point. The software comes out to something like $15 / mo which is ... Nothing, and its exceptional value. I blow more money on afternoon coffee, random Amazon shopping, and chocolates for my office (for my real world job).

 

[Arantor]

Have you thought about a model similar to WordPress where you offer the software for free for self hosted clients (arantor.org), but also a paid service for clients who don't worry to worry about hosting (arantor.com)?

That stays true to your mission of building the software for the sake of the software, while also commercializing a portion where clients want to pay for add-on value.

Nope, you and Tracy fully convinced (broke) me of the utter unsustainability of that model. It’s fine, because the target user base doesn’t want to do self hosting anyway, they just want it to work. And I suppose in a way that’s a good thing, because I don’t have to care about writing a plug-in system this time around.

But I have other battles to fight, like how their model is that they get a forum service and pay $9.99/month for 6 hosted forum sites, I’m only looking at $7/month for 1, but I can offer features the other hosting cannot possibly compete with. Not even with Cory’s help.

As I said, I’m fine with this being a service doesn’t have to turn a huge profit (because it never will), as long as it covers the costs of running it. It’ll never compensate me for my time, and I’m OK with that. Not everything is about profit, it’s perfectly reasonable to offer things to a space for little more than cost - and, actually, once I factor in Stripe or PayPal and the server costs for how it’s envisaged to work, $7 is about break even.

I know full well that the people envisaged to use said service won’t be monetising their communities (at least in general, a few might, but even those will be doing it for hobby money levels)

 

[Arantor]

Custom development, especially in the IPS ecosystem, gets very expensive very quickly. Just be careful, as custom development requires a lifetime of future upkeep.

Nobody tell IPS, but the software itself is literally one of the cheapest parts of running my community at this point. The software comes out to something like $15 / mo which is ... Nothing, and its exceptional value. I blow more money on afternoon coffee, random Amazon shopping, and chocolates for my office (for my real world job).

I’m sure they know just fine, especially after the licence consolidation into the single big licence.

 

[Aussie]

If there are existing members that have been around for ages and very active you could grandfather in some of the incentives that are provided with paying members, specifically when it comes to access to content (maybe some of the bells and whistles not so much)

 

[Mike30]

Reading through posts, seems that making a profit or doing it for business is a crime. Why can't I make a profit or a business doing what I like?
I have no problem to pay for a subscription If I like the site or what they are doing in general. I paid here my subscription and I don't even know "my perks". I did it to support what the forum was doing and it was pretty new. Of curse, I can't just get subscriptions on every new forum. But those creators and maintainers of communities should be rewarded by it's community and get profit from it too. Man, keeping up a forum its a lot of work and frustrations. So, @Arantor, charge even more if it's useful what you do. I can be your client just for the heck of helping.