DVD Talk Premium Membership - Part II
 

The <a href="http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=304429&perpage=25&pagenumber=1">First Thread</a> was getting pretty long, so I thought I'd start Part II off with a recap of what we're looking at for Premium Membership on DVD Talk:


First off, to respond to people who have voiced some concerns about premium services 'creeping' their way into other areas of the site:

We have ABSOLUTELY NO intent to covert things which are currently ad supported to a membership service. This especially includes the DVD Talk Reviews as well as the key areas of the forum.

There have been a number of really fantastic ideas in this thread, but to be clear the #1 benefit of forum membership (aside from supporting the site) will be the ability to access the forum without ads.

Before I get down to what I'm thinking will be included in the premium service, let me list what won't be included:

1) @DVDTalk email address. There are too many issues with Spam and spammers for us to offer email addresses to people. Also services like Yahoo Mail do such a fantastic job of offering Free Email with Spam Filters we don't think it makes and sense to offer this kind of service.

2) Image hosting. After a lot of research, there are a ton of issues around Image Hosting which make it very problematic to offer right out of the gate. So don't expect this as part of the membership

3) Tiered levels. We looked at what it would take to track a number of different membership levels (ie letting people buy a custom title, etc) and to manage it would take more resources than we have. So expect to see 2 options. An annual membership and a lifetime membership.

4) Avatars. Again a ton of issues to deal with in moderating avatars, so they'll not be there at launch.

What we are planning on offering is this:
1) An ad free version of the forum, which loads much faster and has no banners, pop-unders, or other advertising.

2) An indication under your name when you post that you are a paid supporting member. This probably won't replace our standard member titles. But would most likely be an additional field or graphic that would appear under the names of paid members.

3) A Set of NEW forum areas which are only postable by paid members. These will include a General For Sale/Trade Area, which you must be a member to post in (but will be readable by all). As well as a Members Only forum area which is ONLY readable and Postable by members.

4) Member's Only giveaways/promotions. We're planning on posting special and limited offers early in the Member's Only forum as well as host special giveaways and promotions which reward the paid members. This could also be an area for people to share things that they find on the net (ie paid surveys, freebies) which are limited opportunity that they wouldn't necessarily post on the open forum.

5) Priority Member Service. Paid members will be able to fill out a customer support forum for things like Member Name Changes, email address changes, forgotten passwords. or general issues they may be having with their account. These support issues will get priority response.

6)Private Messaging* This is still up in the air. But we'd LIKE to offer this to paid members.

At this point Annual Membership is probably going to be $30 but in true DVD Talk fashion expect there to be some great deals on membership (especially during the first week/month). We haven't set the Lifetime Membership price, but we hope to soon.

We're still looking to September to launch this :)

- G

Re: DVD Talk Premium Membership - Part II
 

Probably a silly question but does this include the "DVDTalk review" ad's for the site?

I'm just going to reiterate how wonderful thread tracking would be.

Is that where a little dot shows up on the folder icon of each thread that you've posted in?

Re: Re: DVD Talk Premium Membership - Part II
 

Hmmm. I'd hope not. I personally wouldn't even characterize them as ads.

Re: Re: Re: DVD Talk Premium Membership - Part II
 

Only reason I ask is because they are in the Mature forum and it would be nice to be able to browse those threads at work and not have to worry about some dvd coverart of a 10 inch penis in some chicks mouth -wink-

That's the most basic form. Something Awful has it set up where in your control panel there is a list of your subscribed threads, in order of their last post, and you can set it up to automatically subscribe to a thread when you post to it. It seems to me that this wouldn't take up much disk space to implement, and the bandwidth hit would be negligible.

Would there be ice cream?

show post count for premium members and everyone will rush to sign up ;)

Im willing to bet alot of people would sign up just for that!

Thanks for the detailed description of the plan! It sounds perfectly reasonable to me, and I'm very glad to hear the commitment to keeping the "core features" open to all members. I hope it will be profitable for DVDTalk!

If I pay for membership can I please have my username changed to PixyJunket to match my email, AIM, website, etc? I know it's a huge, radical change from my exsisting name..

I'm happy to do that for you now.

:banana:

Thanks!! Looking forward to the premium services!!

along the lines of thread tracking, I have a problem with the current system. I come on here and read for a while. then i exit IE, if I come back within a few minutes, the system forgets what I looked at the last time and a lot are marked unread, even the ones I'm the last poster in. If I don't come back for a long time, it seems okay. any idea why?

If we get enough DTSL (DVDtalk SmallBall League) managers to pay for the extra service, can we make DTSL the "Official" dvdtalk.com SmallBall League? ;)

will premium users be able to spy on the other users?

Wow, didn't even know this premium service idea was being thrown around! Well, I'd definitely contribute. I would've liked avatars implemented (small and non-animated) for quick poster identification, but overall it sounds like a good idea!

The forum has 15 minute lag on it, so that if you don't do anything in the forums for about 15 minutes, it considers you "logged off" and any posts made after that will be "unread" when you come back.

However, if you exit and then come back in less than the 15 minutes, then, to the forum, it looks like you never left, so the previous unread tags are still there. Although, that doesn't really explain why threads you made the last post in are marked unread.

In any case, at the bottom of each forum, and at the bottom of the forum list page, there are tiny lines of text that read "Mark this forum/all forums read." If you click on the appropriate link before you exit the browser, then, even if you come back right away, the read/unread tags should be right.

Hope that helps.

actually i tried that too and marked the forum read and it did the same thing. everything previously unread was unread this time too

No

Sounds like your cookies for DVDTalk might be messed up.

The only thing I can suggest is to check out the Cookie section of the FAQ in this forum and reset your cookies for DVDTalk. That might help. It might not too. :( Sorry I couldn't help you out more.

To be perfectly honest, I'm disappointed about the avatar thing. I would have really liked to have that feature added. Especially for $30. Ouch.

I agree with caiman. I'm all for supporting the board this way and it's not a deal breaker, but it would kinda be cool to have avatars.

One idea could be to have a basic Premium Membership and have Options that could be added for a few $. Maybe avatars could be a extra $5 or $10/year. I'd be willing to go this route.

However it turns out, this is a really cool idea and I hope it's very successful.:up:

He's already said there won't be 'add-on' plans. For $30 I think people should be entitled to avatars.

I use high speed connections wherever i browse from.. and I still dont want avatars to be allowed
:down:

just a pointless waste of bandwidth

I use dialup and I hate avatars. I can read an entire page before the darn things load.

<BLOCKQUOTE> • Quoth twikoff •<HR SIZE=1>I use high speed connections wherever i browse from.. and I still dont want avatars to be allowed
:down:

just a pointless waste of bandwidth <HR SIZE=1></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yeah, I don't see what the appeal is. At best, they just take up space, and at worst, they're incredibly annoying and a stress to the moderators. So a few people will have funny avatars. Most everyone else will have boring and uncreative ones that appear all over the place and waste bandwidth.

<b>Geoff</b>, perhaps there's a way to be more creative with the user Profile page in a way that allows paying users to have a small avatar of sorts there but doesn't clog the forum. It would allow paying users to have a bit of self expression without sticking it in the faces of those who aren't interested.

das

Not that I care one way or another (and I feel like the word has been that avatars are out) but if they ever enter the equation maybe users can have the ability to turn them off. I believe the rotten tomatoes forum gives you the ability to turn them off.

Actually, if you go to your User CP and click on options, you'll see there is already an option to select whether or not you want to see user's avatars.

It's right below the view signatures option.

I've always hated them as well, but with this option it's not big deal. Unless having them slows down the site overall.

slows down the site overall.. especially when you let people remote link.. because they might remote link to really slow sites
if you host them internally, then it means more bandwidth wasted

sure.. there is always the option to turn them off.. but Im not sure what the arguement would be, to enable them

Still sounds high at $30 for what you get.

I think part of what you get is the continuing existence of this site. If you like the time you spend on here and feel that the content that is being created here is worth something then you might feel like chipping in.

I would chip in at a lower rate, even if it meant the viewing of ads. I feel most of us, don't mind the banner ads and links. (I even purchase off of them), but the popup/unders, and Final Des2 type ads drive everyone crazy. That said, I would still accept those AND donate, if they had a lower (>$15.00 a year) type membership.

In that case :thmbsdwn: :thmbsdwn:

Like I said, I hate the damn things. I wouldn't mind enabling them if there were no downside to the performance of the site since you can turn them off, but if it slows things down and/or wastes bandwith then forget about them.

Just as I supported Voyager and Enterprise because I am a loyal dude, I will support DVDTalk at as high a level as I can. But I still want avatars.

But either way, I will pony up the dough.

Even though Geoff still owes me a DVD from the 2000 Fantasy Football league.

Avatars = :down: :down:

Completely pointless and annoying to everyone else. Why do you need a picture by your name?

I would do at least one year of the annual membership if for nothing else than I have been enjoying this site for years now and I would like to help out. That being said, $30 a year is too much IMO. I think if you go lower, say $15-$20, you will end up making more because more people would do it.

Avatars will probably be out. But pictures in your profile probably will be in.

For what it's worth, I agree. I wouldn't do it for $30 but I probably would for $15.

I'll be doing this on my board as well and while I'm sure my costs aren't near what yours are I'll be charging $16 per year.