IF YOU WANT TO USE THIS SITE - YOU MUST READ THIS!

[Wireless]

I'm all for a subscription based service and will fill out the questionnaire in a few minutes. In terms of features I'd like to see, a return to HQ images would be nice. Instead of resizing them down to a maximum of 800x600 how about a maximum of 1600x1200...? I love to see the detail on pics and it's all but gone by the time you get to 800x600 from most digicam pics, especially if the resample is anti-aliased.

Roop

[raemin]

quote:Originally posted by netsmithUK

well spotted it should have been paypal.

Taking money from trades is a none starter I am afraid

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What about charging a fee for traderoom access them? I would certainly pay an additional fee to get as many item as I want in my trading room. As said I do not need 15 items * 5 images, and would definitively make it do with 5 * 15 items with only one image per item ... This would cost just the same in terms of space usage, reduce bandwith (less images simultaneously downloaded), and make me really happy (i.e I would happily pay for it).

[Stanley]

Complete

I would be happy to pay an annual subscription to be a member.

I think it makes the club look more professional.

At the moment I would probably not use any video , but wouldn't mind paying an all in fee as long as there were some restictions on alocations per member.

As for the trade room I feel contributions from sales should be voluntary otherwise people will go to Ebay for higher prices and smaller items might become unsaleable.

Stuart[]

[skinner]

hi chris

i think it is a realy good ider ,but i have not got paypal and do not want it ever so will that be a prob ?i do hope not .

[AZAZAL]

Hey chris, form is done, lets hope this idea takes off and site updates as you are thinking of doing can begin. i also think that there is no need for the enhanced pic facility, in trade room anyway and only 1 or 2 pics per trade item i would say is sufficient, other thing,a tamiyaclub.com email addy, is that also needed..? i addmit having an email addy with the tc name sounds great but would it not be better to leave that side of things as is..? because surely you would need space to store emails...?

cheers

AZ

[grusomkis]

In my opinion there must be only one payment once a year, and you get a new password every year you pay for a membership. Then you will get free access to everything ie. traderoom,forums, showroom,downloads and so on. If you should be paying "a small fee" for nearly everything you do in here, there will be too much hassle using TC.

Cheers

Stian[8D]

[urban warrior]

Hi,

AZAZAL: Sorry but I may have written mistakable, with the enhancement in the traderoom I meant number of items not picture quality, I would vote for enhanced images in in the showroom only!

Regards, Martin

[netsmithUK]

One of the other features that would be possible with the new server is a 'guest/comment book' for each one of your showroom items, which you have admin rights to, so you can decide which comments get shown and which don't.

[DJTheo]

I would also like to pay a obligatory fee, but then only members can have show- and traderooms, wouldnt be fair to pay for others showrooms/trades, but non-payers could still visit them. How about a webspace related pricing, i.e. for anually 5EUR you get 5MB of webspace, if you want more, you pay more, how you use it, high resolution pics, many trades or videos is up to you.

quote:Showroom Pictures

as for high res pictures how about the member host the high res pic's and a link be put in for it in there showroom?

as there are a lot of free hosts out there if you can be botherd to look

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Sorry but if we will pay I would like to have high res pics, most free hosts dont allow them and have a halflife of week[], it is so frustrating needing to find a new one every now and then [!].

Cheers

[netsmithUK]

Yes, we are talking about paying for services here. You subscribe you get showrooms, traderooms etc. Browsing will be free to all visitors of the site.

The idea of paying for different parts of the site that you specifically use is a good one, but from an administration point of view its a bit of a nightmare i'm afraid and unfortunately I have no way of programatically checking disk space use against membership fee paid. These systems can be developed but you are getting into the realms of full time development there - Unless we get 5000 members paying in advance, I won't be giving up my day job to do this site just yet []

Cheers

Chris

[malcolm(2)]

Questionaire filled in and preferences clearly stated. I'm not a big user of Tamiya Club but already find it invaluable and would be more than willing to subscribe.

quote:Originally posted by ShenUK

I have answered the questions too.

Showroom Pictures

as for high res pictures how about the member host the high res pic's and a link be put in for it in there showroom?

as there are a lot of free hosts out there if you can be botherd to look[]

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I believe this helps with the hosting costs, but doubles the bandwidth required, since the remote images have to be uploaded and downloaded to be included on a Tamiya Club page, so no real help there I'm afraid. The best answer in my opinion is for the users to pay for the site and then we can have the high res. graphics we all seem to want.

[trabbi daz]

I'm in the same boat as Skinner i also don't have a 'paypal'account and i'm sure there are other ppl who use this site and not have paypal.I would like to ask the question 'is there going to be an alternative way of paying to use this site??' i do not mind paying a fee as long as it isnt going to take the 'preverbial'

'Do we know how much this is going to cost us??'...ppl say 'they wont mind paying a subscription' but there has been no mention of how much this sub is going to be or a 'guesstimate'..

Can i offer a suggestion. can we have different grades of subs (eg bronze for limited use then silver for a bit more access and then gold for use of downloading video mpegs and other similar stuff.

i would appreciate your comments chris 'cos as ive said about ppl who dont have paypal would like this question answered.. Me in particular

Cheers

Daz

[netsmithUK]

The whole point of the questionnaire is to try and guage how many people would pay and roughly what they would pay for the club services

Its then just a case of maths - which subscription rate will give us the finds to cover the services. eg if we only got 50 people saying they would subscribe but only at £5 a head - its obvious that the subscription rate is a none started. On the otherhand if we get 300 people that have indicated they would pay £10 or above, we'd set the fee at £10 a head (regardless of if they said they would pay more)which would cover our costs.

Paypal issue is a tricky one I am afraid. As for the club it has a lot of advantages. They handle the money collection, I can automatically link it so when you've paid you get your login details and when your year is up they send reminders and so on. It also means all the funds are in one place.

With other forms of payment it becomes a lot more manual a process, collecting money, paying it into bank, waiting for clearance, mailing details, mailing reminders etc etc etc (and hence a lot more time consuming) If there is enough call for it I will look into it, but at the moment its not something I would really like to do because of the administration invloved. Its unfortunate but it how nearly all online services work, probably for the same reasons.

Maybe another member with an ebay account would want to set themselves up as a payment service - you pay them, they paypal the club?

Can people not pay via paypal as a one off payment now with thier credit card, rather than signing up for an account?

Chris

[trabbi daz]

Fair point chris but i'm still not convinced on the paypal,i dont use paypal and i do not have a credit card..I'm sorry but i'm one of these ppl who just believes in hard earned cash (or Cheque if i have to) I hear too many stories about credit card 'skimming' also i'm very reluctant about giving my personal details on line to set up a paypal a/c

I go by the philosiphy:'if i havent got it.....i can't spend it'

Daz

[Tamstar]

Well, I think TC is a really great thing and one of the biggest pros of this club is that there are so many members. A sub fees is ok if it is used to cover the running costs but I won't trade additional services for the large number of members. I don't want to pay a fee that is used for financing merchandising goods. And online videos are nice but not essential! I think the great thing on TC is that everyone can become a member without having to think about the costs.

Size does matter! And in this case I would try to keep the current services open for everybody! Try to finance the running costs by sponsors. If we need GBP 200 a month it can't be such a big problem!

Try to get funds through selling of reproduced stickers! Offer them on the main page! I think you will make enough to cover the running costs.

[netsmithUK]

Like I said before - trying to finance the site through selling things like stickers is just not viable - it sounds like a good idea but

- At the moment I sell a handful a month with next to no profit. There is no way we would ever sell enough to finance the club

- in order to get the price I do I have to pay for them to be produced which runs into £100's just for the small amount I have done now. This one is the bigger we just cannot afford to do anything which involve spending lots of money having things produced to sell.

- At any point Tamiya could tell me to stop doing it. (I know they might not, but this is just the sort of 'if/maybe' we can't really build a stable club on.

I am still chasing companies about possibly advertising but its very slow going.

- most of them already have yearly investments in magazines

- a lot don't see the worth of advertising online

- some companies are a bit wary of us

a)because we talk of vintage stuff alot, which they don't sell

b)we are specifically about tamiya and they are just a small percentage of the kits they sell.

- a lot of them want to do it a month at a time, were as the club needs funds upfront for the year a head. If they pay month they can pull out at anytime leaving us in a mess again.

All that said - I am still actively pursuing it and anything I can get from advertisers will go towards subsidising the subscription fees, if it comes through in time.

[Wireless]

Chris,

What sort of spec do you need regarding servers and bandwidth. I work for a Specialist Internet Services provider and being the Support Manager that looks after the networking side of things I have lots of fingers in lots of pies when it comes to fast cheap hosting.

Lemme know if I can be of assistance.

Roop

[richtea78]

Filled in []

One thing I would like to see is the possibility of email notifications to topics (or am I being thick) and also allowing html in posts and for sigs in the forums and possibly the personal showrooms of subscribers

[GroupCFan]

Hello,

I felt compelled to add my thoughts, suggestions & potential issues on this topic. While I have only been a member for a short time, I have come to rely on this site and would be more than happy to subscribe annually. Most of all I would hate to see this site go away. My thoughts are:

· Get back to basics. As most have suggested, limit the number of pictures per item or the amount of space allocated per showroom (user decides how they use their allocation of space). I’ll be the first to admit that I am guilty of over indulging with more photos than are needed. However, would be more than happy to limit my space usage. Perhaps it will encourage us to only post the best of our collections

· Tiered subscription. For example free, basic, expanded basic premium (sound like Cable TV???). Free service would have space restrictions along with access restrictions. The basic service would offer more storage and access to more information. Premium would offer full service with extra storage, ability to store video etc. Offer incentives for users of the free and basic service to upgrade

· Once this becomes a user subscription membership service there then becomes the issue of accountability. I am guessing that some members would like to see an account of how member funds are used. Issues like if there is a surplus of funds how will they be used? Will the club become bogged down in red tape and bureaucracy?

· Along the lines of bureaucracy. Given that the administration of the club is performed free of charge and I assume takes a lot of time, it has to be as low maintenance as possible. I support the idea of PayPal because if it is easier to administer, that means more time spent maintaining the site and less time depositing money orders and playing debt collector. By the way, I mean no offence to anyone without a PayPal account.

· Perhaps we need to include in the survey what members want to see on the site. As some have pointed out, they are happy to pay subscription but don’t necessarily want all of the bells and whistles. A list of the most popular choices could be provided and members surveyed to determine how much they would pay for the services they selected as valuable. Based on the average amount of what subscribers are willing to pay, it could be determined what services can be provided for projected income (Provide the most selected services first)

Thank you Chris for all of the work you have done and for giving us the forum to provide our input. I intend on going back to my showroom and deleted my kits and re adding with fewer pictures.

[netsmithUK]

Wireless - YGM []

On some other points...

- I am against doing anything which degrades the quality of the showrooms. For me they are the 'basics' of the site. That was what the site was initially set up to do, to give people with great collections a place to show them off in all thier glory. One of the reasons the site is so popular in the quality and the diversity of our members showrooms. The pictures in there are not just to prove you have a model, they are there to show it in all its detail.

- tiered subscriptions, are just too much of a headache to manage (ie code the system) and predict the amount of income they might generate. It might be there are one or two optional extras but these will be limited.

- charge per resource used. This is an even bigger job than the tiered subscriptions. Interfacing with the filesystem to work out how much people are using and then chasing people when quotas are exceeded requires extra software, which costs$ and is an lot of development.

- Auditability. Good point, I am happy to post all facts and figures up online for all to see. What we would do with 'surplus' funds is not a problem I think we will have [] but if we do find ourselves in this situation, we'll put it up for the vote.

- new features are largely driven by what I have time to do. I'm happy to have suggestions and, as I've done in the past, if I can fit them in I will do. Unfortunately this doesn't map onto the features members most want will get done. It all depends on development time and practicability - rather than how many people say they want it. Sorry but this is just the way it has to be. Unless someone want to pay me to do this full time.

There really is no need fo people to go tidying up thier showrooms now, it will have no effect on the site at all - we are exceeding our current quota by at least 3 times - so unless 75% of you went and deleted your showrooms completely it would alter the fact we need to sort out funding of the site once and for all.

This is what we need to simply sort out in the next couple of month - how many people will pay how much for the service. This will allow us to select a simple once yearly membership fee to cover the running cost. New features cannot really be discussed much before this as they will be dependant on it. I know its a bit chicken and egg - "how do we know how much we would pay before we know what the features will be" and "I can't tell you what the features will be until I have an idea of how much you will pay" The 'improvements' I have mentioned so far are ones I know I can easily implement which is why they are there and for the sake of this survey they are what you should be judging you answers on. In order to get anything decided you have to draw a line on things at some point.

Cheers

Chris

[Bibbo]

I have'nt actuallt read through all the replies in this thread but Chris's last comment about the "content versus price issue" seems to be the main point it all boils down to.

Basically the way I see it is you should say what you would pay to see what is available now and then any extra features that come along are a bonus.

As for what is free to visitors: I would assume something along the lines of just being able to view showrooms and forums would be enough to encourage them to join. That means you would get a fair amount extra once you have joined.

I think if manuals and other "resources" are given over free to visitors then many would'nt see thepoint in paying extra for full access.

[netsmithUK]

Bibbos right, the new stuff i've mentioned is really going the icing on the cake. All the new stuff I've mentioned will all be there in the first 12mths of membership. We don't really have time to get into 'if you did this other new feature I would pay x amount'

On the manual front - they are one of the most popular areas of the site and will remain free to all visitors I think. The difference might be non members can download a certain number of pages per day, but paid up members will have a much much higher limit and maybe the option of downloading all the pages as one zip file.

Cheers

Chris

[snollan]

Chris with regards to the manuals. Why would non-members be allowed to download period? IMO if they need to reference a manual they can do it on their computer. It's not like downloading a manual will sway people toward membership.

[netsmithUK]

quote:

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IMO if they need to reference a manual they can do it on their computer. It's not like downloading a manual will sway people toward membership.

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Don't quite understand this bit?

As for why non members should be able to download... two reasons spring to mind.

1. It is a very big draw to the website, members and non members alike. In order to attract advertisers I need to be able to demonstrate that the site has large viewing figures. The manuals section is a now a world renowned resource and big attraction. Advertiser will be more interested in 5000 different visitors a day rather than 200 members regularly visiting. Take away the manuals and that number will drop. [They can still access them on Robys site anyway]

2. By allowing non members to download a couple of manuals it gives them a taste of the resources available for them. If they are really keen and need 5 the same day then they might pay the fee and join up.

For unlimted downloads - another option might be giving low res ones away free and if you want high res ones then you have to be a member.

Chris

[snollan]

They would still get access to the manual on their computer screen. However if they right-clic it wont let them save as. So non-members could see the manual but members could download them.