I was pondering this last night, and I thought of something that hasn't been mentioned yet, and might work very well:
A Reward Points System.
In this, you would earn reward points for contributing to the site, and could then cash in points toward various levels of membership on a continuing basis.
So, a 6-month silver membership could cost $5.00 or 1000 reward points. After the six months, if the membership was purchased with reward points, it would revert to "free" if the member had not either earned enough reward points to renew, or paid the ongoing membership fee.
This would encourage not just participation in the site, but ongoing participation.
A gold membership would just cost more points, but would also have to be renewed by earning more points.
Or, it could be even more simple:
x number of reward points = coupon for y dollars off your membership.
People could cash in their points for a promo code, which they could enter when paying. That would help, for example, if someone had earned enough points for a silver membership, but wanted a gold. Every 1000 reward points would give them a gift certificate for $5.00. If a 6-month gold membership costed $19.95 or 4000 reward points, and they had 2000, they could use 2 $5.00 gift certificates and pay $9.95.
Suggested ways of earning Reward Points (and this is just off the top of my head; would definitely need some refinement):
- 1 point per post
- 1 point for every 3 gallery comments (?)
- 10 points for every photo posted (with a limit of up to 20 in a gallery per 6 months?)
- 100 points for a "verified sexy" photo as you described earlier
Of course, you would have to monitor people who were just spamming the boards or posting duplicate pics to earn points, suspend those accounts when found, and modify the TOS accordingly...
But it could work, and spare you the possible expense of a lot of "lifetime" members, and encourage continued participation in the site.
And, if you wanted to get
really silly, you could call them
"Penis Points." :tongue: