Changes in forum coming soon.

[fracster]

Is would be worth $15 a year for me, just t laugh at and with some of the characters on here.

Just a thought, Paypal would be a damned site easier for people outside of AUS to contibute.

And yes, move the manuals to a different area.

[BigRAWesty]

Yes you get more for $30 because that is a monthly fee unlike the $50 yearly fee

Right.
Missed that monthly bit.. that changes it.
And does make scottys issues a bit more serious.
The other patrol site who is charging $350 a year for thread based advertising is loosing members all the time. It makes it unviable as a business when the monthly take from forum sales is only sub $50.. you can't tell the impact its having as the corporation now running it doesn't need vendors, its just a silver lining to there packets.
What we disscussed at around $150-200 was more acceptable as I don't care if that little bit doesn't cover its worth, its then a donation to help keep running a top site.
I know $100 sounds bum change to most, but that's 3/4 of your weekly shopping, my wife's montlhy fuel. It makes a bit when your a single income family of 4 on $55000 a year.
But enough winging, ill be joining up, just not gold yet untill we see some better figures.

Kallen Westbrook
Owner of
Westy's Accessories

[cgm]

They are scum of the earth mate and would rather throw them off a bridge!!!!!!!

I'm in a different time zone than most of you lot, so just having another bit of a think out loud before going to bed.

AB, I don't think that you need to be too down on Tapatalk. At the end of the day they are really still a big part of the "success" in terms of site visits. If over 50% are using it (don't know if that translates to 50% of all traffic comes from it), but in any case it's traffic, so it's still important. You can tell that most of the regulars are using it most of the time. It makes sense, people use it in between doing other things coz they have their phone with them. Five minutes here or there. All this interaction, including from Tapatalk, is what helps make the place a good place as well as proves the overall advertising value of the site with the total visitors per month.

So the challenge is how to still translate this traffic into money to make it worth the effort? Some rehash of some of the ideas so far:

- Most people would be willing to pay more Sponsorship from the comments so far. Could you tier this in some way - have two levels or something?? Maybe a base level that gets you to the manuals and more to remove the ads? Or something like that. Can you have internal ads vs external ads? Like one level would get rid of google Adsense, but still see the forum Vendor threads? Can you have separate banner or sidebar ads for the vendors? Some people would actually like to see Vendor/Member ads I reckon? (I'm sure a bunch of people are hanging out to see what Scotty's coming up with) But who wants the google crap? Many of us would be happy to pay more just to have the site still going strong, but I know some find it tough to get any money together for anything and don't want to lock them out.

- What about a "Donate" button? I don't want to make it seem like you are begging, but in the open source software industry lots of people survive by having a "pay what you feel like" approach. Have a what do you think it's worth button of some sort. I'd press it and put in extra. You could potentially put that near the manuals or something? Just having that around not too "in your face" with a small blurb on the front page talking about the cost and effort to run the site, maybe it would work? This would mean you'd need an online payment system though, at very least a Paypal link ready to use.

- Don't think anyone much cares if we have to have adds in Tapatalk. Maybe over time there will be better options with how you can manage those adds? A few people might dummy spit, but for the most people will cope I reckon.

- From my side the other thing that's important is that we can easily distinguish the vendor contributors adds from the pure external vendor advertisers. Need to see this in Tapatalk too somehow. On the web, we'd see the "Vendor Sponsor" logo beside their post, but that wouldn't show in Tapatalk. Most of us are much happier to think about stuff from the Vendors who in some strange way we now feel we know (even though they don't know us) because we've watched their build thread grow, or taken their advice, watched someone else benefit, etc. (We're about ready for a replacement for Roothy I reckon, so one of the guys here might step up to the task - ha ha) They'd have to have clear way to still show, at least with their posts, in Tapatalk. I assume that is through signatures somehow? That way they can prove they are getting their monies worth from the monthly vendor sponsorship. Maybe a bit of cultural push with a few posts, even a sticky on vendor thread, etc. to remind people that visit the vendor sites to say that came to them via the forum?

Now, that's all starting to become a big lot of dribble ... sorry, will go to bed.

Thanks,
Cameron.

[AB]

No mate thats a good reply...

Tappatalk is a great function and I also use it all the time as well. The issue I have is that they have locked out any modification to it unless you pay them $600 and a significant monthly fee for them to allow you to have ads on there. I don't understand why they wouldn't allow the forum owners to put ads on there when their primary business 100% relies on forum owners. Something back to the owners just would of been an obvious way of saying thank you I thought.

Matespace are the only company who have broken through and will hopefully be displaying related automotive ads so we'll give it a try for now.

I can always design a custom app to suit what we need but for now Matespace have been good to us here so I want to give them a try for now. We must have thousands of members who use Tappatalk so I thought it would of been rude to suddenly cancel that and no one can access the forum on their phones until they download a new app which is a huge inconvenience to thousands of people so we'll give it a crack and see what happens.

I had a donate button a while back but really didn't make any money. Unfortunately I got kicked off Paypal because I run this forum through a family trust and Paypal don't allow pty ltd companies for some god knows reason!!!!

I will have a good think about the vendors....I'm thinking of dedicating the forum sidebar for Gold Vendors so it can be seeing by all in a prime location with links to their own site or their own vendors forum.

[BigRAWesty]

I was going to bring up our discussion of banner or adds, as you mentioned loosing the eBay side of things who pay good money to be there.
Do you think if the vendors here take the gold up you would drop the eBay, to entice us more and make the gold more tempting.


Kallen Westbrook
Owner of
Westy's Accessories

[AB]

I was going to bring up our discussion of banner or adds, as you mentioned loosing the eBay side of things who pay good money to be there.
Do you think if the vendors here take the gold up you would drop the eBay, to entice us more and make the gold more tempting.


Kallen Westbrook
Owner of
Westy's Accessories

Yes mate I would be happy to have a square banner possibly 200px x 200px shown above the fold on the side bar and push the ebay ads below the gold sponsors as I don't think there would be a mammoth amount of gold members to fill up the entire column of the forum.

[Yendor]

I agree with Todd and Wayne.

If the manuals are putting a strain on the forum move them to a sponsors only section, remove them totally or put a higher post count on them (100-150 post ) to be able to download.

Increase the forum sponsorship. I think you will find most people will be more then happy to pay more. You can also have a hardship clause for members who might be finding it a bit hard financially, they can contact you and an arrangement can be made.

We are all aware of what happened to a certain mag that become too reliant on advertising and how this dictates content.

[taslucas]

I agree with Todd and Wayne.

If the manuals are putting a strain on the forum move them to a sponsors only section, remove them totally or put a higher post count on them (100-150 post ) to be able to download.

Increase the forum sponsorship. I think you will find most people will be more then happy to pay more. You can also have a hardship clause for members who might be finding it a bit hard financially, they can contact you and an arrangement can be made.

We are all aware of what happened to a certain mag that become too reliant on advertising and how this dictates content.

Good point there

[Bloodyaussie]

I cant stand some one on here posting old threads just to get there 25 posts up..... should be one of the perks for paid up members!!

[AB]

Thanks rod but honestly mate it's not the manuals causing issues. The forum activity (resources) itself was just too big for the shared server that's all.