Thread: ROLCLUB has to charge 25Usd/year to cover its expenses!read!

25x10000 members in a few months...

Yeah, $250,000 a year sounds about right to run a forum :roll:

Not that people would be tricked so easily as to pay this outrageous fee...

Not trying to be rude here admin but I think you are insulting the intelligence of your membership by asking this, and there is no way you wouldn't be trying to profit by asking this amount. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy this forum, but their are other ways of balancing your expenses than charging us a yearly fee.

If it is necessary, start advertising. This is a simple and fair way of solving this problem. BTW there is nothing wrong with making a profit, just do it in a fair way that takes into account your own best interest as well as those of the membership as a whole.

Also, in order to alleviate the problem for the time being you can disable avatars, signatures, and if possible the posting of pictures and then stop accepting new members until everything is sorted out. Doesn't seem to complicated but correct me if i'm wrong.

Trade

Tradewinds I think you are unfair.... :(

We are lucky to get 300-400 paying members. Those 300-400 will be the 300-400 people who use the forum at all times. The other 6700 are just people who have logged om once or twice and never written anything.
As things are Rolclub is lucky to get the cost of the server covered, but then the 300-400 members have a place to go when they need to talk.........................


I think admin does the right thing here....

I can pay with PayPal or Stormpay. :D

Just wondering..

what are the actual costs to host the forum as it is actually and as it would be with a dedicated server?

Originally Posted by Tradewinds

25x10000 members in a few months...

Yeah, $250,000 a year sounds about right to run a forum :roll:

Not that people would be tricked so easily as to pay this outrageous fee...

Not trying to be rude here admin but I think you are insulting the intelligence of your membership by asking this, and there is no way you wouldn't be trying to profit by asking this amount. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy this forum, but their are other ways of balancing your expenses than charging us a yearly fee.

If it is necessary, start advertising. This is a simple and fair way of solving this problem. BTW there is nothing wrong with making a profit, just do it in a fair way that takes into account your own best interest as well as those of the membership as a whole.

Also, in order to alleviate the problem for the time being you can disable avatars, signatures, and if possible the posting of pictures and then stop accepting new members until everything is sorted out. Doesn't seem to complicated but correct me if i'm wrong.

Trade

Hello Trade. I welcome your thoughts! It never happen in any forum that all members ever paid. Never !unless they were a paid to join from the start which we weren’t. And as shell also said, only a certain amount of people pay.

Those that look at a forum as a news paper, and need a subscription, are the once that pay.

regarding insulting anyone? No i believe i am not doing that! I am just being honest! And i did not ask anyone to pay extreem fees like 100 Usd. That’s not what i think we need to solve this problem? I Believe you haven’t seen the error we keep receiving, or maybe you like to ignore it, which is it?
DON’T YOU SEE THE PROBLEM ON OUR SITE, each click shows a
---------------- ------------------- ---------------- ---------------- ----------
Warning: mysql_connect(): User 'rolclub' has exceeded the 'max_connections' resource (current value: 7200) in /www/r/rolclubcom/htdocs/db/mysql4.php on line 48

Warning: mysql_error(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL-Link resource in /www/r/rolclubcom/htdocs/db/mysql4.php on line 330

Warning: mysql_errno(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL-Link resource in /www/r/rolclubcom/htdocs/db/mysql4.php on line 331
phpBB : Critical Error
Could not connect to the database
---------------- -------------------- ---------------- --------------- -----------

I believe i will open a thread for people that have paid. Just so you can keep a track of the money we will receive, we will tell you our expenses , all can do a democratic thing and make a vote before rol spends members money, But i also believe i am being very honest and open when i come with such a NEWS to you before handed ,and willing to take the yes and no's instead of imposing a paied service on you when you login to rolclub someday!!!!!!!!

I believe i ask Rolclub members very often i pools what they think to make my final decition on matters, just like i am doing NOW! this is still a open discussion, i haven’t imposed any fee on anyone yeat.

Your approach still does not solve our problem, and your advice of running ad space is under consideration, but does not get us what we need to get done in 1 weeks times? Does it?

We have more then + - 100 signups a day now. The problem is just increasing with site down. How can you then say i am insulting the intelligence of your members by asking for 25 Usd. I have as many other moderators spent 100s of hours on this site. And until now i haven’t wanted to take any money. But as soon as i do need to, you think i am a liar of some kind?

Well yes! I will make a profit! And that is only if all members pay! If not, what do you say then?
I said I have tried to keep Rolclub a non paid forum. I did not say I wont like a profit. But what makes me angry is, we need to solve a problem here, and all you could solve here my friend is the “ OH HOW MUCH MONEY WILL YOU MAKE?” Did you in anyhow come with a better plan of how to get this site fixed?

Sorry , don’t want to be hammering down on you. But if you think you can, and are able to solve our problem any way better then i can, then I welcome you to join our forum as a moderator and work for free like any other moderator including me has done so far and fix the problem in 1 week without any funds from members.

You are welcome!

fhhhh, :( disappointed !

admin

Originally Posted by zik

Just wondering..

what are the actual costs to host the forum as it is actually and as it would be with a dedicated server?

That depends on our needs, we need a server, its software, someone to do the jobe, transfer all this sites database, (all username, passwords, posts, all) to the new server. Maintain our new server with any problems that might happen. I belive i have answered this in my first post.

So far i have paid a few thousand Usd's out of my pocket.

regadrs

admin

:?

$25/year sounds very reasonable to me.

I do not come to promote nor post much
but to read and try to keep up to date.

e-gold is fine for me.
have no funds in any other e currency right now.
:P

i had to remove Bladmin.

If you cant be Civilized, i will remove you without a second thought.
Please keep it clean.

if i have decided to be open about this, try to keep a normal discussion!
if you cant, then please take your Bs somewhere else!

admin

Perhaps it wouldn't be insulting anyones intellience, as I know alot of us have come to love this forum.

Would this plan solve the issues in your opinion?

1) Open up for donations (as opposed to sticking a fee onto all members, which would seperate those members who were not willing to pay, and later taking away from advertising revenue because of loss of numbers of registered users.)

2) CLOSE MEMBERSHIP TEMPORARILY, i'm not sure if you caught this idea in my last post. By doing this you could sort of freeze things where they are, and then use other things like eliminating avatars etc like I suggested in my last post to save bandwidth.

3) Start advertising. I'm really not sure how much a dedicated server would cost you, because I have no experience there, but perhaps between donations and advertising you will be able afford it in the near future, at which point you can open the site back up for new members and continue to increase your advertising revenue.

I'm only suggesting here, I really don't know any more than anyone else. This or something similar just seems like the way to go if you could manage it. Do you see what I mean when I say both sides would benefit the most from this arrangement? You would be taking in the maximum possible advertising revenue and we would never have had to pay a fee, not to mention everyone would be able to continue to use the forum regardless of whether they could pay a fee or not.

Maybe i'm wrong? And sorry I sort of attacked you in that first post. I was going on my feeling that this would be a great deal more money than necessary and would also cause half of the community to be exiled. Anyway, please do let me know what the flaw is in my plan. That's what i'm looking for.

Trade

I'm not sure what the daily hits are to the site, but you might want to consider putting a banner ad or two on the forum that pay CPM. CPM ads or Google Adsense could be an alternate solution. Both methods can sometimes provide a nice income for a site to help cover or cover completely costs of running the site etc. Just wanted to make this option known if you have not already considered it. Good luck! [ Thanks for the tip, as i said before this strategy will be used, while we work on this site", and when these revenues cover rol cost, i will make rolclub.com free for any fee again. Admin .]

Hi admin,

Well I just had to jump in on this one, and make a suggestion.

I will first say that this is a good forum for discussion and information. I was wondering why you need to sign up for this forum just to view most all of the posts? What is the point of this? Anyone can just get an email address, and create a username. Considering that maybe half? of the users of this forum don't post, myself included, they wouldn't need to create a username.

Is there any reason for this, and wouldn't opening the forum to "Guests" help to relieve some of the sign up overload? Thanks