New Membership Options

DC_DEEP

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I agree that the 500/1000 limit is way too low.
To prevent "random posts" that Jeff mentioned maybe those under 500/1000 could be limited 5/10 posts per day? Or whatever is deemed appropriate.

My current average is 3.4 PPD but I've been more active lately.
I think that's excellent. New joins should have a limited posting privelege, regardless of having paid or not. That would encourage a "think-before-you-post" mindset.

My only quibble, though, is that maybe some sort of dispensation could be made for those of us who actually have large penises?
That wouldn't be terribly fair to the ladies among us, would it?:biggrin1:
 

Cobalt Blue

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MY only concern is that people will fill the site with 500 random posts and then BAM, Silver membership.
The idea is interesting, but at the same time, you might be getting floods of people trying to get to that gold and silver membership. I'd definitely make them higher.
... rather than buy a gold membership people will just bang a load of fake pics on and drivel on endlessly in the threads rather than part with money.
I think rewarding anyone simply on the basis of post numbers is a recipe for disaster, Rob. As someone who has been here since the Yahoo Group days, the influx of posters who as jeff says, fill the site with countless random posts, has been the single most pernicious factor in the deterioration of the LPSG. I have recently been attacked by a troll who joined last year and yet already has amassed a tally of 3,878 posts! If even 10% of his posts were of any interest [which they are not] their total would still be greater than my 317 posts since 2003!
Although I do not have a model for improving revenue at LPSG, and would love to help you formulate one, I do believe that there must be a way of rewarding quality rather than quantity.
 

agnslz

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I think rewarding anyone simply on the basis of post numbers is a recipe for disaster, Rob. As someone who has been here since the Yahoo Group days, the influx of posters who as jeff says, fill the site with countless random posts, has been the single most pernicious factor in the deterioration of the LPSG. I have recently been attacked by a troll who joined last year and yet already has amassed a tally of 3,878 posts! If even 10% of his posts were of any interest [which they are not] their total would still be greater than my 317 posts since 2003!
Although I do not have a model for improving revenue at LPSG, and would love to help you formulate one, I do believe that there must be a way of rewarding quality rather than quantity.
Hilarious! That is the first time anyone has ever accused me of being a troll.:rolleyes: Ooh, now it's 3,879.:eek:
 

Not_Punny

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Hello Rob E -- I'd like to make another suggestion:

Instead of having a "Silver Membership" level, why don't you let people pick and choose the features they WANT to use, and then charge, say, $2.00 a month for those features with price breaks for buying chunks of time.

Here's how it would work:

When it gets right down to it, this site basically has nine features:

Features that could probably always be free:
-- Being able to see the galleries as thumbnails
-- Being able to READ the threads in the forums

Premium features that people would probably pay for:
-- Being able to see the galleries as LARGE pics
-- Being able to post your own pictures in the galleries
-- Being able to send and receive PMs
-- Being able to post replies in the "Large Penis Encounters" forums
-- Being able to post replies in the "Discussion" forums
-- Custom avatar
-- Support (name change, etc.)

Not everybody uses ALL the features, and people would probably prefer to be able to pick and choose features.

And then you have a package deal where they get everything for the Gold membership price as you already laid it out.

*** of course, if this would be a nightmare to program, then skip the idea!

In any case, if I were you I would also....

-- I got what you just posted about "addictive marketing" -- thanks very much for commenting. Yes there are pitfalls. No system is perfect, but it was LOSS of the big pics that kicked me up to getting the Gold membership. I was like, where did it go?!!! I wanna see the big pictures! Maybe give them 7 days run of the mill (with reduced pm/posting capability) and then pull the rug out from under them.

-- Allow people to easily UPGRADE their membership to Gold. In other words, if they bought a Silver Membership (or two-features) for three or six months, and within 45 days they said to themselves, you know, I might as well "go for the Gold", well let them apply what they already paid toward upgrading to a Gold membership. You could also program an email campaign that automatically sends at least three email alerts to people saying, Hey... your 45 days is coming up... do you wanna Go for the Gold?


Long term members:

Putting in a new payment system can sometimes alienate long term loyal members.

Because you do have a lot of long term members who have been enjoying a lot of functions pretty much for free, you COULD give long term and/or high post members a one-time-only price break and/or automatic Gold Status for "x" amount of time.

It's not going to hurt you financially right now as these people haven't been giving you money anyway.


No automatic membership upgrades:

But repeat memberships are a HUGE part of any online business's revenue stream, so I wouldn't do automatic memberships. People DO understand that it costs money to run a site, and they don't usually begrudge you that money.

Also, it might hurt your new memberships - people might hold back paying while they rack up postings. That would harm your finances AND the quality of postings in the forums.

Maybe a reduced price for repeat membership for high-post members.


(Sorry if I'm repeating myself -- I really want the site to do well!)
- - -
 

rodevon10

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I don't know exactly how all of this works, but... Would you have or save more memory or whatever you're looking to achieve, besides the extra revenue, if you deleted members that have had no activity on their account? Say for the last 6 months or so. Would this help with the issue?
 

Rob_E

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No, I think that is a common misconception. Deleting inactive members has almost no effect on the costs of operating the site or performance.
 

IntoxicatingToxin

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I agree with a LOT of what hotmilf has mentioned thus far... I think giving people anywhere from a week to a month free will snag a lot of people... I also like her idea of letting people pick and choose what options they want, then paying for those particular things... but also have a Gold membership option that includes it all. I don't like the idea of post thresholds for people. For one, it limits the amount of income you could possibly have on the site. And two, I think it would lower the post quality. I know you mentioned that people could be banned for trolling if they're just running around the site posting random things to bring their post count up, but wouldn't that just make the job HARDER on you and your mods? I have a feeling there would be a lot of bannings going on... and what would you consider trolling in that situation? If people post one or two word responses to all the current threads that aren't negative in any form or fasion, could you really ban them? That's not necessarily fair... so people could be contributing to the overall post count of the site without contributing much of anything else, but there's a LOT of people on this site that do that already and haven't been banned. So yeah... that's my two cents. Put some thought into hotmilf's ideas.
 

Eva

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I'm going to agree with hotmilf (which is fun to say!) in the "no auto upgrades" thing. If you want to generate some revenue, why allow people the perks of paid membership simply for typing a lot?

I can understand grandfathering in the founding members of this site. I've been here a week or so and I'm pretty impressed with the quality of people on here and I have noticed that the most impressive posters are the ones who have been here ages upon ages. If you wanted to Gold them up for all eternity, I wouldn't have any issue with that whatsoever.

As for me, when I realised I'd have more access to pictures and videos, I kicked down the $10 or whatever it was. I figure I probably throw more than that into a vending machine at work each month so it was worth it. What can I say? I like looking at naked people. (I also pay for my AFF membership for the extra perks, though I don't really hook up through that site at all.)

I guess what I'm saying is this: Don't sell yourself short. And um, pardon the pun. Heh. You should be recovering your operating costs at the very least. You might not ever make millions off the site, but I think those that appreciate the chat, appreciate the posting quality, appreciate the gallery access, and just in general like the site will probably clunk down cash to keep it up and running.

You might be surprised at how much a simple "donate" button would bring in if you had a thread breaking down the costs of the site. And when donations get low and you're lifting a ton from your pockets to cover everything, post about it--I think the core group of people here would kick down when they could. And adding that button is pretty much as simple as inserting some code into the style-sheet, maybe by the logo or something, so it always appears?

Also (and apologies if this has already been recommended), I wouldn't be opposed to "gifting" memberships to other members. I'm one of those "random acts of kindness" kids and I occasionally will pick out a stranger whose photos I like on Flickr and give them a pro membership. I would do the same thing here.
 

D_Tintagel_Demondong

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User Reputations:
User Reputation in its simplest form is a ranking of your user's benefit to your forum. Its basis comes from the opinions of all of your forum users that choose take part in it.

Users gain and lose reputation based on how their posts are scored by other forum participants. Users with the ability to affect reputation, will either give or take aways points by approving or disapproving with a post's content.

User reputation can be a derisive element of your forum so great care should be taken before a decision is made to enable it.

All of the factors that affect a user's reputation score are found in the User Reputation section of the vBulletin Options. Please view that section of the manual for more information on controlling how users are able to affect another user's reputation.

For me, I'ts about quality, not quantity. The peer-reviewing method above would make less work for the moderators since it's automated. Users will be automatically rewarded for each level they achieve... until they become God.

For example:

Level 1 - increase private messages stored from 10 to 20
Level 2 - increase private messages stored from 20 to 30
Level 3 - increase technical support from Limited to Priority support
Level 4 - increase private messages stored from 30 to 40
Level 5 - increase avatar size from 100x100 to 150x150
Level 6 - increase private messages stored from 40 to 50
Level 7 - allow user to have signature
Level 8 - increase private messages stored from 50 to 60
Level 9 - allow user to set custom title under username
Level 10 - limited gallery access (say, 10 images per day)

This system will also allow moderators/admins to punish users by bumping them down a level.

vBulletin's User Reputation Manager currently only allows names to be applied to each level, but the script can be modified to allow priviledges also.
 

dongalong

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I have a few suggestions borrowed from other sites which would be useful here.

At Thunder's Place, Newbies cannot start new threads in the main forum until they have posted 40 posts in existing threads - this teaches them how to use the search function. There is however a newbie section where they can start threads, this newbie section has a long list of stickies to answer FAQs (Am I big? etc.). This makes the site cleaner and easier to navigate.

Unwanted PMs could be controlled with a silver or gold membership by offering filtres to only accept PMs from everyone or only from other silver/gold members.
 

Principessa

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Sounds good because as I understand it I'd automatically get Gold Membership, however my conscience forces me to say that's going to lose you money, rather than buy a gold membership people will just bang a load of fake pics on and drivel on endlessly in the threads rather than part with money.
As I am in the same category as you SP I was thinking the exact same thing.

All this sounds good to me!
My only quibble, though, is that maybe some sort of dispensation could be made for those of us who actually have large penises? Who has the final say on where big starts? Rob_E? He and the mods? A consensus or quorum of Size Queens? I see your point and don't want to shoot you down; so instead I offer a suggestion I want LPSG to pay for my transportation to fly/drive/ride a yak to wherever these large penii reside. I will provide my own tape measure and digital camera. I am fairly confident in my abilities to fluff if needed. :naughty: :05: I can take pics and send them to Rob_E via laptop computer. I haven't read the whole thread, so please let me know if this has already been brought up, but under the proposed new system rewards are given (and justly so) to those who pay or post a certain amount of posts. Again, that's as it should be. But those of us who actually are well endowed and who have been posting for a while (albeit in my case sporadically throughout the years) and are looking for advice and support, should hopefully receive something--a few extra pm's or something, no? After all, to paraphrase the immortal words of Starship, we built this city on cock and balls :tongue: That's cute I like that.
Anyway, I'm just kind of musing aloud before I jet off to work. Thanks for everything you do, Rob.

 

jumbo747jet

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I like that we're having a open discussion about the future of LPSG and I want to have my say aswell.

Qualifying to a higher level of membership by making a lot of posts is a very bad idea, in my view. It would only lead to countless messages of very little value. I am far happier reading one really thought through post than hundreds of so called brain farts.

Another suggesting I would like to make is that we make photos in the gallery "unclickable", impossible to copy. I think this would make more members willing to contribute to the gallery.

Here is an idea for how the different levels of membership could be done ;

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Bronze - Free membership
Makes it possible to view and contribute to the different forums but does not enable access to the chat and the PM feature.
Enables viewing of thumbnails in the gallery

Silver - Basic membership $5 / year
Makes it possible to view and contribute to the different forums and enables access to the chat and the PM function ( with limited storage of messages ).
Enables viewing of thumbnails in the gallery (and possibly a maximum of 1 full size image per day)

Gold - All access membership $25 / year
Allows unlimited access to the entire site.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


Cheers
 

SteveHd

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Some of the recent user-submitted schemes have been much too complicated. I'm not going be specific so as to not diss anyone.

Note about PM accumulation: if you haven't looked at your sent folder in a while, check it. I looked at mine today and deleted a big wad. *Oops innuendo managed to sneak in.*

Irreverent observation: today Rob_E reached 500 posts which is the Silver threshold in the proposed scheme.:biggrin:
 

monstro

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If you post a photo with a verification sign, then you would get free Gold Membership (under the new plan).


Ok, 10-4, I must have missed where that was presented. Then sign me up :smile:

And your plan works for me, NJ! I'll be waiting for you and the yak :)
 

Yorkie

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Qualifying to a higher level of membership by making a lot of posts is a very bad idea, in my view. It would only lead to countless messages of very little value.I am far happier reading one really thought through post than hundreds of so called brain farts.

Another suggesting I would like to make is that we make photos in the gallery "unclickable", impossible to copy. I think this would make more members willing to contribute to the gallery.
I don't think there are many people with that much spare time on their hands.I think the "no trolling" rule in the ToS should deal with any offenders.
Once a photo is online there's no such thing as "impossible to copy".No technology can prevent someone from taking a photo of their screen.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Quote hotmilf :
Premium features that people would probably pay for:
-- Being able to see the galleries as LARGE pics
-- Being able to post your own pictures in the galleries

Paying to POST pictures! I don't think so - you should be paying ME for my works of art! :tongue: :smile:
 

B_Think_Kink

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I really disagree with taking away the PM functions from free members or not allowing chat use. I'm a student I don't have money or a credit card to spend online. (I've only ever adopted a guinea pig online using paypal). So I don't care if you limit me to seeing thumbnails but I totally think it's unfair to take away pm and chat usage.. how are members supposed to interact that way?

*edit*
Hotmilf there is no way in hell I'm paying to post my pics.. I couldn't give a crap if people seen what I looked like or not; I can get praise from other sites.
 

IntoxicatingToxin

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I really disagree with taking away the PM functions from free members or not allowing chat use. I'm a student I don't have money or a credit card to spend online. (I've only ever adopted a guinea pig online using paypal). So I don't care if you limit me to seeing thumbnails but I totally think it's unfair to take away pm and chat usage.. how are members supposed to interact that way?

*edit*
Hotmilf there is no way in hell I'm paying to post my pics.. I couldn't give a crap if people seen what I looked like or not; I can get praise from other sites.

Well, if we do Rob_E's idea, you'll be "grandfathered in" and have Gold Member status...