UBB.Developers Forums Community Development Promoting Your Community Anyone running a fee membership forum site?

Bandwidth is getting out of control, so I started a paid membership, it's OK, but need to convince the rest of the non members to join, was thinking of making all but one of my forums read only for registered users, most people will not buy a membership if they can read/reply for free and they are the ones using all the bandwidth.
I am seeing more and more of this as advertising is drying up, just wondering if anybody here is doing it?

You might check with michael of extremebikini, I believe a lot of his site/forums are paid areas now. Yes, for particular reasons but the idea is to have something your members want... you might consider a gallery for auto pictures that's paid... etc.

Yep, the gallery is part of the Membership.

there you go then If it's photopost, he's done the work in getting the forum and gallery to generate income

One of my boards got really out of control with bandwidth as well.

Ours is a "support" type of board...which discusses adult content. We started by seeking member donations through PayPal. You can add a "PayPal donate" button at the top of your pages.

Because the members loved our site so much.. they coughed up the dough in a big way. Some $5 some $100 it was incredible. However, each time we were past talking about the crisis, donations would dry up.

We had a couple of furms where members were posting photos. So about halfway each month... we would cry bandwidth troubles and close the photo forums to everyone but those who contributed (used usergroups to set up). This would start the cash flowing again.

Now we have moved the almost 7000 photos to PhotoPost and put it behind a password protected directory with iBill. Photos are paid access now, and funding the site quite nicely.

We still have our donation system in place. But now, those who donated get access to a couple of private forums we have set up. We give them an @ourdomain email address (we've even installed neomail and added a link from MyHome), and our supporters also get to choose their own custom title for their username.

So far this is working well.
The donations are tougher to keep up with, because you have to manually switch their usergroup when they donate. Also, people would send money via paypal, but the email used for that didn't match any emails in our system, so we had a tough time keeping track of who the money was from. And access for them to the member areas didn't happen until we changed the groups. The iBill setup is much easier... (if you've got something like photos to sell access for) and instant gratification for them.

Cool, this is what I offer members: http://coloradok5.com/membership.shtml
Still, some of the members complain that there is not enough division between the members and users becuase users can still post to all the forums like paid members can, I think I am going to restrict write permissions on a few of the forums, the for sale forums will be members only for sure, non members (some small business) are getting targeted ad space for free, let them buy an ad in the local paper if they want to spend more money than a one year membership, the bandwidth is killing me. The big problem with the internet is everyone expects it to be free, they have no idea that bandwidth costs us

Josh - question, if you have photo post (I will use this to as soon as the PHP version is done) set to only allow paid members to view pics will they only show up in the forums to others in that group, or can anyone view them if the address is used in the forums?

I ran a poll on my site on whether users would pay for a photo album system to host pictures, and it was an overwhelming yes, and a lot of "yes if the price is right" and not a single no vote. I probably already have 30 people ready to sign up, even if it was 20 bucks per year.

So, as soon as photopost php final comes out, I'm going to set that up and get things rolling on that. Even if only 20 people sign up for it I've already pretty much paid for hosting costs for the year (20x20=400) So I think it will work beautifully for everyone, I will easily be able to cover everything, plus some extra $$$ for my hard work, and the users are happy.

The photopost isn't "very" integrated with the forums. I think Michael has made advances in this area.. .and the PHP version will take it a step further.

Right now the photopost runs separate.. it uses the threads user database for login.... but its installed in a password protected directory.... which iBill controlls the access to.

They can sign up, and get an ibill login password etc which will get them in for instant access. I can login to iBill and issue free accounts for special members etc...

If the pics appeared in the forums... I don't think iBill would be able to control who has access to them. You can with the threads group system.. but you have to do that by hand. There were too many signups to keep up with it by hand. ibill automates everythign and sends us checks.

By the way, I looked at your site, and what you are offering I think you are definately on the right track.

We too are always looking for benefits to those who donate.... verses those who pay for access.
We're dealing with adult pics... so it's not quite apples vs. apples. But on our site:
They can pay for photo only access through iBill:
- $4.95/first month - $2.95/mo recurring after that.
- $4.95 for one month
- $34.95 for one year

Or they can donate $10/month or $50/year. Those who "donate" not only get photo acccess... but also access to a few private discussion forums. An email address, a custom title, and access to an audio/video clip forum. People still donate more than that. Some give us more than $100/year. Some give less.... some just pay for the photo access.
All in all, I think we're pretty lucky.

Our monthly hosting expenses are $200-$300 dollars. Bandwidth went down when we started charging. Every once in a while, there is an article or a link written about us somewhere, or even some celebrity or comedian joking about us, and the bandwidth goes off the chart. So it's good to have reserves for that huge bandwidth bill.

Also Happy to say threads has handled it with flying colors.