Micro Payments?

sarahk

have a look at universalthread.com. I've been a member since 96 I think and have never paid and have, on occassion been sooo close to paying. However I'm not as active on the forum as I am here and my involvement in the vfp world is not as intense. Lots pay to be there and they get additional features.

I don't know if Michael Fournier pays his moderators but there are key personalities there and they are given a heap of kudos which no doubt helps their profile in the contract world.

3 problems I see:
alot of people post a few times, move onto other things (or give up) and wouldn't want to spend money on something they don't believe they will use for the stated period
there are so many wannabe sites trying to get the postings that phpbuilder has that, if they stay free, people will move to them. Bit like nightclubs being flavour of the month. People might move around.
* $12 a year isn't much but that's actually about $30 of my local dollars and that's a night out for me. Others may find the $12 onerous depending on their local economy. I like that we are united by our "programming language" rather than geography, politics etc. I'd hate to see the site become USA only.

mystrymaster

I began as purely a consumer of this sites goods - now however I feel that I am more 50 50 as a consumer and a producer. I think that a subscription service of 5.00 a year or something cheap like that would also stunt the growth of the community as I would not have paid to ask my questions here because I had no idea what kind of service I would have been able to get.

I would say that there are times that it takes some time for questions to get answered however if I was paying I would expect answers almost immediately and that just isn't possible.

stolzyboy

that may not be a problem with current members that like the community, but someone new to the system thinks, crap i have to pay for advice on something, yeah that is real world, but there is enough free advice out there, they may say, so you may not get new members to come and help the community grow, i am kinda particular for the donations idea, i think many of us would willingly donate cuz we can to help, but being forced is another thing, i myself would pay "something" to be a member of "this" forum anyway

jkohns

Sure that'd work- except: where would i insert the penny? i don't have a coin acceptor on my computer, do you???

stolzyboy

well ya see there could be a paypal sort of donation thing, then you simply use your CC, voila

ScubaKing22

Well what if you're like me and you're not old enough for a CC or just don't have one? Then you'd be left out...

stolzyboy

ask mom, dad, friend, or don't donate, thats why it is called donating, you don't have to pay

or if nothing else i could give you my address and you could mail me cash, check, or money order, LOL

FrozNic

well, i read through a portion of the posts and here's my thoughts for the peeps. first off, do we even know if the site admins are having a hard time financially with hosting the site? i mean sure, it's not free for them. but nothings free for any of us, and they decided that they wanted to host this site free in the first place. i feel that i probably would donate a small amount to the people that host this site, but not to the people answering questions simply because i would never ask people for money about me helping them with something. when i enjoy doing it, and don't mind doing it for free. imho, yeah the money would be nice, but, php is open source, this is all an open source project per say, help should be free as well.

i'm sure many of us who have been here for a little while, see the benifits that come from the people that are here, and if the site is struggling to make ends meet, we would help out in any way that we could. whether it's different hosting or just 5 extra bucks to cover hosting for this month. whatever! but like i said, i don't know if they are struggling finacially or not, but if they are, i'd 'donate' long before this thing went under.

khaine

we would help out in any way that we could. whether it's different hosting or just 5 extra bucks to cover hosting for this month

I agree, one off 'donations' would be an acceptable method of doing payments to cover hosting and such. I think the idea of micro payments per click could very rapidly hit problems, where say a 5 or 10 dollar payment is small change if it was a yearly fee. It wouldn't take many people making donations to soon add up.

i'd 'donate' long before this thing went under

As would I. It would be a shame for a good, helpful site to go under while there is so many out there producing arkward help sites and charging an arm and a leg for the software in the first place. ( Microsoft I'm looking at you ).

The donations idea is definately better than a forced payment at attracting new people to the site. If they ask a question and get a good answer they may go 'great site I'll tell my mate about that' but If they have to pay and then don't get a good answer, (From what I've seen very few and far between) they may tell all there friends how terrible the site is and they had to part with money to find this out.

O.k. thats my two penneth worth thrown in the pot for now.

Mark.

baronmask

I definitely agree that forcing someone paying on clicking the content of this site will make a giant step back on PHP development.
As long as I go surfing the web, this site this the best site offering many solutions to all problems facing by PHP users, slowly but sure PHP builder become the most greatest PHP development site, and maybe the second site (after PHP.net) that people will turn their face to find out their solutions.
Since PHP is free -- why should PHP builder have to pay? -- why don't just use the strategy using by PHP.net regarding with how to finance their site?

drag0n

Per Click? Damn...
PHP is still OpenSource right?

james2010

On the bright side if they were to charge users on this site I'd be guaranteed to see more traffic on some of the php support forums I've attempted. 😃