Ron Earp
Admin
Dear Member,
As you're most likely aware via the recent private message, GT40s.com is going through a reboot of sorts and becoming an advertising free site that will be supported by membership. Our needs to keep the forum in operation are currently relatively modest, around $3.5k to $4k year, and that should be entirely feasible with small donations by our membership. Details about what becoming a supporter offers you can be found on the support page.
Naturally with change comes questions and I've collected several of those here so that everyone can benefit from the responses.
I hope this is helpful. If you have any questions please ask them here so that we can all learn from the query.
As you're most likely aware via the recent private message, GT40s.com is going through a reboot of sorts and becoming an advertising free site that will be supported by membership. Our needs to keep the forum in operation are currently relatively modest, around $3.5k to $4k year, and that should be entirely feasible with small donations by our membership. Details about what becoming a supporter offers you can be found on the support page.
Naturally with change comes questions and I've collected several of those here so that everyone can benefit from the responses.
- Are you saying that, as a registered user, I have continued use of the site, or that I no longer can use this forum?
- Let’s be clear here – as a registered user at GT40s.com you can use the site. Nothing has changed there. As a Supporter you can use the site, again, nothing has changed. What has changed is that the forum will be entirely supported by users.
- Will the SLC forum and clubhouse remain?
- Yes but it’ll probably end up moving to our Wings, Wheels, and Keels area.
- The $5 a month adds to $60 a year. The annual is $50. You get the additional benefit of selling a car with the annual but pay more with the monthly. Unless you're factoring in the larger buy in is worth the privilege, I'd say why discriminate?
- It is pretty common for pricing structures for a service to be a bit more at the monthly level compared to a yearly level, nothing different here. The reason the monthly supporters don’t have access to selling a car is that advertising a car on the internet is worth much more than $5. To avoid folks taking advantage of our forum the selling of a car isn’t available on the monthly plan.
- What am I missing out on if I'm not a Supporter?
- A few perks - having an avatar, editing posts, a signature, larger picture uploads / more space for picture uploads, but that's it. Everything else works exactly the same. The differences are there to entice users to at least become a supporter at some point during their stay here. Your avatar and signature will remain after the Supporter status expires.
- Is the Paddock closed to non-Supporters?
- That and the Pub concept hasn't been completely worked out quite yet. The forum needs to be open while we work through the reboot so there are some minor details that have not been sorted.
- Hi Ron, I'll rather see a bit of advertising as I do not want to pay for all the forums I visit.
- I understand, but GT40s.com isn't in a position to get meaningful revenue from advertisers. We're an extremely small community in comparison to other auto or hobby communities and we don't have enough traffic to get revenue from normal ad sources. On the flip side, GT40s.com will be very different from most hobby forums in that you won't be inundated with advertisements.
- Ron, what about the commercial membership? Will that change?
- Yes, it will change but we'll still have a commercial level. We no longer accept banner adverts. We will have a Vendor Supporter level or similar so that vendors can post in the Vendor Subforum and have a signature linking to their websites.
- I don't want to use PayPal. Is there any other way to send money?
- No. I know some of you are down on PayPal, but think about it from an administrator's perspective. PayPal gives and admin to the ability to accept money from all over the world, credit cards too, for a very modest fee. This frees the administrator from worrying about a credit card plug in for the forum, and, it saves a lot of time over people sending me checks which would have to be cashed and mated up with user names. And lastly, you do not need a PayPal account to use PayPal. PayPal will accept a credit card via a guest account.
I hope this is helpful. If you have any questions please ask them here so that we can all learn from the query.
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