Would You Pay to Subscribe to this Forum?

[punkncat]

Just out of curiousity you are talking only about the forums and not the store, correct?

[rkjunior303]

Not to be a sourpuss, but AGD can't afford $5-600/month to something that I would say at least indirectly generates that in sales for the company? That doesn't make me feel to 'secure' about things - and don't get me wrong, I love you guys.

[phizz]

I think a low annual fee would be a good idea, and if its not too high I can't see you loosing many of the active members, but new members looking to buy items may reconsider and buy from elsewhere like the nation etc. As for use of bandwidth might it not be possible to delete posts that are more then say 3-6 months old... I don't know much about computers but wouldn't that help?

[shartley]

No. All the reasons have been posted by others.

[wimag]

nope, not a chance

[mobsterboy]

Tom,
When Zupe became AGD president, it just didnt feel right. AO wasn't the same, and it just seemed like AO was just going downhill. Now that has been proven correct. I dont mean to be blunt about this, but after hearing this(this being AO no longer being owned by TK), Im done with mags. I didnt care about mags half as much as I did the AO community. I know its not personal for you, its just business. Well its personal for me. Guess I'll keep moving on. It was a good run, AO, I guess we all knew it would never last

[SlartyBartFast]

It costs about 5-600 a month for the whole package and we get about 150 from Google. That means we would need about 450x12 months=5400.00 to cover everything.

Okay, I'm going to be undiplomatic.

AGD sucks! They're really cheap, stingy, idiots. Or, the company is so tiny and profits so low, they're going to hell in a handbasket pretty soon anyway.

5-600 a month? I know TK has been covering the costs of AO and not AGD. But if the current administration can't see AO for the promotions possibility it is, then they're incredibly short-sighted IMO.

But, if they have decided that the AGD forum on PBN is sufficient as a web presence for them, who are we to argue?

Then again, how often does the current president (what's his name again?) of AGD appear on AO? I think that speaks volumes...

[warpfeedmod]

Well the problem is we own our own server at Delaware.net and it hosts all our sites. Its not so easy to just dump AO off to another provider becasue I still have the expense of the server etc. As you all point out, and I certainly understand, paying money and forums don't mix.

It costs about 5-600 a month for the whole package and we get about 150 from Google. That means we would need about 450x12 months=5400.00 to cover everything. Roughly thats 540 subscribers for 10 bucks a year. If you watch the "who's online" numbers you will see that a huge majority of people are not members but "guests" and in effect lurkers.

So I am wrestling with this and might just sell the forum off to someone who can fund it and keep it free.

Thanks,

AGD

Tom, shoot me a PM, I'm pretty sure my guy could offer you something cheaper, usually a discount for a full year up front, it would just be a matter of taking the stuff off the server it's on now, move it to his servers (he's got some co-locations in Illinois here as well as across the country) and transfer the DNS so the name points to the new server. Would be down for a day if that while the DNS populates and changes across the 'net but that wouldn't be a big deal. Like I said bandwidth and space aren't an issue usually, I really doubt this forum is as high traffic as some of the sites he hosts.

[Chaos_Theory!]

Do it like PBN and make a supporting memeber tag. If you make it mandatory to pay to use the site, especially the BST youll lose a lot of users imo. I for one come here a lot to check out the BST and wouldnt bother if i had to pay.

[Rudz]

uh oh

ummm, agd cant get numbers for shatnerball, agd cant pay for ao...i love agd, but this doesnt look good at all...

[Pneumagger]

Nobody can resist sad puppy face

Tom,

Please don't send us to the PBNz.
Everytime a small PB company goes under, Smart Parts kills a puppy.

[Chaos_Theory!]

Why does everyoen resort to bashing SP? lol

Even if its a joke they arent bad company.

[Rudz]

bahhhhh

Why does everyoen resort to bashing SP? lol

Even if its a joke they arent bad company.

Thay are evil nazis..now go back to pbn...ion lover.....

[Arstron]

I have never paid to use somones forum, it is somthing I simply would not do. I would support AO though. Isnt the agd website on the same server as this forum as well if this forum went down would that mean an end to the agd site as well? On average, how many post or bandwith is used?

[luke]

To be honest, because I run an AGD based business I would have to.

Just to hang out and shoot the breeze, no.

5 years ago, maybe.