[sky]

Out of morbid curiousity, as there are no real plans, at the moment, would you be prepared to stump a few beer tokens per annum to continue as a member of the Pumapeople forum?

I was thinking the other week about the costs involved in allowing lurkers to eat away at the bandwidth this forum creates, against all the other regulars that post and contribute towards the forum. How much cash is generated from kind folk good enough to donate towards the running of the site is quite aside from an annual fee, but, it did make me think that perhaps if a fee was charged, then the lurkers could do as they please without being made to feel guilty because they don't contribute (obviously there are a multitude of reasons why they don't).

Click a poll option at what you would consider paying...

[kahless]

I voted £5 a year, but personally I would charge whatever to cover the cost of the site (bandwidth etc) if it's less then so be it, or if it's more then so be that. Also it might be interesting to Charge a little more and then have a Pumapeople bash in the middle of the country every May(ish).


Regards

Robert.

PS. Keep up the good work.

[kahless]

OK who with the £8K plus car just said they don't want to pay? Seems to me that Jason has set this site up and dedicated much of his time and money to it. It cost money to run a site like this, you have to pay for bandwidth, you have to pay for somone to host it. Think of it as an investment, if you pay somthing like 1/5 of a tank of fuel (£5) now and then you find a fix like the hego sensor covered in here and it saves you £50 a month on petrol then its a small price to pay.

Re think it mate.

Robert

[Mantamad]

Just figured out what the bandwidth donor thing is all about!

Anyway - yes I voted £5 as well for the same reason as Robert says - there is some fantastic information on this site, only this weekend, due to information on the site I was able to figure out what was wrong with my door lock and also found my 'spare' key was not coded to the car - now both fixed today for free by the dealer.

[R5CPD]

I'd more than happy to pay a sensible amount (up to £10) for the information you can get out of the group. Given that some other Ford clubs have membership fees of up to £20, then charging anything less would prove be very good value. :wink:

[stash772]

£5 a year for me to .
Seems like a well informed bunch on here so the price
of a couple pints of beer in exchange for all the info flying
around seems like excelent value to me .

[Edward]

Yes - would be happy to pay up to £10 per year. What can £10 buy you these days? Almost a CD? Half a takeaway Indian Meal.... a third of a tank of petrol... an espresso in Starbucks... :wink:

If this was ever needed to keep this site running then it would be the bargain of the year.

Keep up the good work Jason.

Oops :oops: ... just thought of something £10 would buy you.... A cool keyring and still have change for a bag of chips....

[kahless]

Sell the keyring on ebay for £40 and then donate £30 Erm joking

[kahless]

Wouldnt mind knowing what the people who posted that they didnt want to pay's reasons are. This is a discussion forum after all and all views are valid.

[sky]

Wouldnt mind knowing what the people who posted that they didnt want to pay's reasons are. This is a discussion forum after all and all views are valid.

That info is a mere three clicks away with me mouse :wink:

[kahless]

Wouldnt mind knowing what the people who posted that they didnt want to pay's reasons are. This is a discussion forum after all and all views are valid.

That info is a mere three clicks away with me mouse :wink:

Lol I know you can view poll's etc but these polls are annonamouse to us lot and I would preffere to keep it that way. If the two people so far wish to out in the open and give their reasons to why then fair enough I for one might discuss it with them but I wont be flaming them.

Lol see how good I can be. Don't need any more admins do you

[sky]

I reckon that if you keep it such that its "bandwidth" payment only, its ok, you just need to be sure that you publish the costs that the site entails, and any excess goes to Maverik sponsor fund.

True, to a large extent...although I'm not overly sure how well Maverick would fair out of the equation....

To give you an idea, bandwidth costs £12 per 5Gbytes of data shifted... We're *easily* exceeding that a month, no problems, not taking into account growth of the membership (that actually posts). With all of April and a fair chunk of May's stats data being damaged it's sort of difficult to forecast that levels of usage for year end. I wouldn't imagine we'd be far off 10 to 12Gb/mth :shock:

Disk quota's on the other hand is a completely different matter - that can be curtailed to a smallish site (circa 200Megs) or allowed to grow as needs dictate... We're using the better part of 130Megs at the moment, so we have a lil while before things start falling off the end...Off the top of my head the disk quota works out around £50+VAT for 100Megs...

All of a sudden, it kinda works out to a couple of bob*, doesn't it :wink:

Before any mention of asking people to dip into their pockets, the above poll seriously needs a majority vote... My connection speed poll is still nowhere near 50% membership, and that was even with me sending out a mass mail to all members asking that they take a few moments to vote...

*5 old pence, 1 shilling, pre 1971.

[sky]

£2.50 per year. Reason is I'm a tight-wad!!

I think that the value in this community is that it's free; free to join, free to post, free to lurk, free to poll, etc.

"Free"??? Remember what I said earlier in this thread, there's no such thing as a free lunch. You may like to think so, but there isn't :wink:

What value would you place on the likes of www.friendsreunited.co.uk then? They introduced a £5.00 annual fee to try and keep tossers off and they also advertise on the site... The actual amount charged is a pittance (in the general scheme of things) yet the site holds an amazing value to the end user because of the USP* they have. They also have millions of users and dedicated servers on fat pipes and real people to pay for, but, the principal is the same. With Pumapeople, the USP is all of the above you mentioned, yet someone, i.e. *me* (with a lil help from donors) is the operation behind the scenes putting it all there for you to use.

I would hate to see this go the way of so many other good online communties  :(

At least you voted, that's the main thing...

*Unique selling proposition

[kahless]

Another idea would be to do somthing special for people who donate say £10 a year. Shame the keyrings are on sale, they are fantastic and I would of donated £10 just to be able to buy one. Is there any other thing that could be produced that would be such a draw as these?

Am I being daft voting for £5, if enough people put £2.50 per year then it may be enough to keep the site going on it's own now without you having to shell out for it Jason.

I am all for a free forum, but I dont know of any except this one, all the other forums I visit are either run by bands (which you could argue are free but it is a little different when it is the fans posting in their forums and the fans have allready contributed with album sales etc) or I visit forums with damn pop up advertisments or big banners saying that I need to buy this t shirt or whatever. I love Pumapeople being banner free.

There is also the disk space question as well, I love that I can look through old pics from ages ago, when the disk space runs out then so does the old pic's one by one.

It's a can of worms allright but I just don't like the fact that I visit this site so much and Jason pays for it, that's why I donated, and that is why I plan to donate next april (once a year). Keep discussing people....

[sky]

Another idea would be to do somthing special for people who donate say £10 a year.  Shame the keyrings are on sale, they are fantastic and I would of donated £10 just to be able to buy one. Is there any other thing that could be produced that would be such a draw as these?

Absolutely, unquivocally YES!

I'm just waiting for my damned supplier to pull their collective thumbs outta their arses to send me my shipment of Pumapeople stainless steel replacement Ford badges!!!

They are now two weeks overdue Moreso, they'll look awesome fitted

[kahless]

Is this what happens to free web sites when the owner can't afford to run it anymore?

http://www.puma-web.co.uk/

[kahless]

I suppose my idea of having a party once a year is a bit daft. I think the idea of being completely open with the accounts is a good one, and I think the idea of giving to charity is a good one (excluding 2 complete years ahead of bandwidth monry which you could keep just in case membership fell drastically for some reason and one year there were's enough people.

I also like the idea that the extra money be used to purchase more disk space.

[RobK]

I suppose my idea of having a party once a year is a bit daft.

Not daft, just a bit unfeasable. What about us lot on the far side of the pond. Plus there's lads from Sweden and Greece etc...!