Question about the forthcoming premium services
 

When the paid services go into effect, getting rid of the ads (which don't really annoy me... well, the 'FearDotCom' one did), will there be any new features that only paying subscribers can access? Or worse, will a number of features that we get for free now become subscriber-only?

Or am I thinking too far in advance?

These are all good questions, and one of the reasons we haven't launched paid member option is that were still working it out.

At this point, here's the rough draft for our paid membership plan.

Cost of Annual Membership $30

Paid Member Benefits:

- A Paid Member Title that replaces DVD Special Edition, Senior Member, ETC
- Access the forum without ads. The main DVD Talk site will still have ads for everyone but the forum will be ad free for paid members
- At this point none of the current forums are earmarked to be paid member only but we're considering adding a paid member forum area
- Ability to Close & Delete Threads you Start on Forum
- Paid Member Only promotions, Offers, giveaways etc
- Priority Member Support

Other things we're looking at:
- Paid Member Avatars
- Paid Member Private Messaging

The intent of the paid membership is to enable people to support the site and get a little benefit for it, not to punish people who don't want to pay for the site.

As always, your thoughts, ideas, feedback and otherwise is very much appreciated.

-Priority Member Support

Does that mean we could get phone calls at 3:30 in the morning about a problem with a thread title? If so, I hope this new responsibilty comes with a pay increase.

;)

[Shameless second request for image hosting]

Whoa! I must have missed an announcement because I had no idea this was coming. Well, a big :thumbsup: to the whole idea.

One feature I would like is that Premium Members can post personal attacks against Freeloader Members. That would be a nice "perk" that wouldn't cost you anything.

Ah no.

Priority Member Support most likely would mean a support forum someone who is a paid member can fill out with their need (ie name change, help with a bad address, etc). They'd be submitted to the mods/admins as a high priority and would get addressed first :)

w3rd

Are there any examples you can show me of forums that do offer image hosting? Want to see how it's handled

Unlimited image hosting could easily eat up the $30 fee in bandwidth charges.

It doesn't have to be unlimited. Give everybody a meg or so, with a cap on the size of the uploaded images.

Something Awful does it. There's a 40k upload limit, but no quota. But then, they get a lot of money from people rejoining after banning and changing each other's custom titles.

Like Aghama said, Something Awful does it. They also allow people to pay to change other member's titles, buy banners, etc..

Unlimited image hosting would consume your bandwidth, but limiting the number of images to 5 and image sizes to about 40 - 50k would probably be OK.

Man, sign me up. My member could use some support!!! For $30 that's a steal!

Actually, a hugely great thing would be thread tracking. And by "hugely" I mean really really good.

I too had no idea that this was coming. Sounds like a great idea Geoff!

Now to hunt down some avatars! ;)

... can paid members get the dancing banana?!!?!?

GenMay offers Member uploads in your response.

Here is an idea that will bring about people.. Make the adult section part of it. this will help weed out the stupid childern under 18 from posting in it.. Genmay offers something like this in it's Adult Eye Candy. they can not post nudity in the regular Babe forum, but they can aswell as offer downloads through the secured section of the adult eye candy area.

Such as? Do we have a choice in which title we want or is it one standard title for all premium members? Here are some ideas if you go the choose your own & be able to change at any time:

DVDTalk OOP Premium Member
DVDTalk B-Film Premium Member
DVDTalk XXX Premium Member
DVDTalk Unrated Premium Member
DVDTalk R-Rated Premium Member
DVDTalk PG-13 Premium Member
DVDTalk PG Premium Member
DVDTalk 5-Star Premium Member
DVDTalk Edited For TV Premium Member
DVDTalk High Definition Premium Member
DVDTalk Criterion Premium Member

Might seem corny... but at least it keeps the DVD theme.

How about titles based on reputation?

DVDTalk Slut
DVDTalk Instigator
DVDTalk Provocateur
DVDTalk Hypocrite
DVDTalk Pr0n Lover
DVDTalk Lakerfan (I, II, IV...)
DVDTalk Laker-hater (El Scrocho)

I know I am now the King of Irony, since I posted a very whiny post early on about what a drag it was to have the title of Member, but... to be honest, it was something of a motivating factor for me to post. Going from New Member (ah) to Cool New Member (cool!) to just Member (sucks) and then Senior Member and then higher kind of drove me to post more, which made me appreciate the site and the people that make the site what it is. If any schmo with $30 can step in and get a custom title... well, that takes some of the fun out of it.

The avatar and private messaging thing is cool, as is the Subscribers Forum. (Great idea!) But I'll be honest -- I'd be willing to pay $30 just to make sure that this site keeps running. :D

just out of curiosity, there are other forums that have tried this subscription model and have been successful?

Yes.

So far what I've seen out there is that forums who offer a premium membership do have enough people take advantage of it to make it worthwhile, however forums who have gone exclusively paid membership tend not to do so well.

As I've mentioned above, our plans aren't to squeeze out non-paying members, it's to add a small benefit for people who wish to support the site. In my mind it's a lot better than begging for donations all the time, which just doesn't seem to work for anyone.

[cartman voice]That would be sweeeet![/cartman voice]

what would the special member forum be? if its just another "other" i think its a bad idea. Alot of the threads would overlap and stuff. If its something like Mature, then i think it'd be fine, although some might not be willing to pay for that

:up:

I was just wondering. This is the only forum I frequent, so I didn't know. What ever keeps the revenue coming and allows the site to stay open, I'm all for.

count me in :up:
will i have to pay for corrie seperately? ;)

looking forward to this. I hope we get our own titles plus avatars :)

PM between members of the premium service would be nice also.

I personally do not care about having image hosting unless it is for a few small images so that someone could upload a desktop pic or a home theater pic :)

yea.. i think image hosting is probably a bit excessive
a large chunk of the regulars already have their own webnames and hosting services.. and the rest will eventually follow suit
i think this would possibly quickly defeat any gains that a premium service might have brought

I think we all agree that it would be a "Lakers" forum.

Just think -- if she doesn't get premium you'll be able to talk about her in a special forum instead of having to do it through e-mail like you do now. ;)

I'm honestly quite confused about this situation.

You are having an annual fee of $30, so we can have access to "exclusive" content. That's all well and good, but what will you guarantee? Maybe a great link to a sale? How can you guarantee it makes it "Only paid members"?

Antoehr thing. An ANNUAL fee? That's insane. At least at $30. I paid $9.95 to join Something Awful for a lifetime, or until I get banned. I paid another $9.95 for a platinum membership and another $5 to buy myself an avatar. That's $25 I feel is well deserved. I have no qualms as they were pretty much all "once and done" things unless someone , or myself decides to pay and change them. For the benefits of THAT forum, I feel my money is well spent.

You already provide a good forum for DVD Bargains and all that fun stuff. Unless you plan on moving all that stuff over to the "pay site".... in which case, I htink you're going to lose a lot of your loyal userbase.

You could disable the search feature for non paid members.

You could disable emailing a member features.

Have little prices to unlock them. That sort of stuff. That way we get what we want and you get the $$ you need.

an annual fee keeps the site going for a long time. a one time fee does not unless you constantly add new members who agree to pay.

I saved enough in one deal to pay my annual fee for awhile so i am ok with this :)

If we get an exclusive deal every now and then I bet it might not get leaked since you paid to get it and giving it away might cause you to lose it.

Like I said, it's a rough draft and $30 per year is not fixed, just proposed. I do think it will be some sort of flat annual fee, it'll be too complex to have one fee for membership, one for an additional benefit, etc.

I don't see the Premium member area being an adult one, the mature forum is fine the way it is and so I have no desire to mess with it.

If I was to move 1 thing from free to premium it would be the Exchange forum. But again it's not my first choice to move something from free to not free.

Other ideas I've had is under the Premium area have a general For Sale or Trade, which wouldallow people to post their ebay auctions and/or their non DVD items for sale.

But PLEASE KEEP those comments and suggestions coming. This is only something we're going to implement after careful consideration and thought.

You should really keep the idea of donations for stuff in mind

$5 for member title change small avatar or other things of the nature.

For the image hosting, you could make it so that it only works for the forum and that will kill off issues with bandwidth being used elsewere and limit it down to a certain size.

On the avatars...please, please limit them to a small size (say 10-20k) and definitely NON-ANIMATED! Browsing through forums with huge, animated avatars is totally annoying and the content of the posts is completely ovreshadowed by the cartoons playing along the left edge of the screen. Just my two cents.

so what are you imagining any "member's only" forum to be like?

I like this idea

Just to add another yes. My forum isn't all that big, but I offered a subscription to the members and have over 160 people sign up thus far. $10/year gets you no ads, custom titles, and more forum features along with a POP e-mail (or forwarding) address. Of course, that doesn't pay for hosting completely, so the ads make up for the rest of it (almost)...

Glad the premium subscription idea is almost here :) About damn_time...

Oh cool. So, I can finally get a name without DVD in the title? That would be worth the $30 all by itself. Also, would there be a limit on how many times you can change it or if you reach a certain number of posts. I always pick crappy names so you might want to make some rules for this. :D

Oh yeah, I also like the idea of being able to use an avatar if you are a paying member. Non-animated and one size.