SNOWEST FORUMS: Member Comments on "Letter to All Members"
- Thread starter Adrenaline Revolution
- Start date
- Status
Excuse me?
Fully redundant tier-1 bandwidth is NOT cheap, especially if purchased from data-center providers. We don't operate off MAE-West (or anything like that), so we have to pay a little more since we're not sitting in a carrier hotel. You CAN buy gigabit pipes in the $20/meg range -- but we're not quite big enough to buy in that kind of volume -- and at that price, it's not redundant (Goes to about $80 to get 4x redundancy). Maybe next winter? =)
If you can get me a better deal on a quad-redundant 12mb pipe in a tier-1 data-center in Utah or Idaho, please PM me. (Prefer AT&T, XO, and Cogent for at least 3 of the 4 carriers in the mix -- and all 4 must be willing to do BGP peering).
The discount-guys offering this stuff for under $10 require that you buy in MASSIVE bulk (we are not big enough for that yet), and they are generally delivering a pretty crappy product. Further, I don't need a gig. I need 12mb/s.
Last edited:
I would just like to point out here that his username was not changed intentionally. It was a very unfortunate by-product of another alteration that had been made.
Darrin
Then charge the ADVERTISERS more for click throughs, I know I have purchased my sledding gear from the companies that have supported Snowest with purchasing banner ads. I think if you did a little investigating you would see that many others have as well. THAT is how ALL of the free websites make their money. I KNOW from my past experience that I was able to get upwards of $2,000 per year from advertisers (over 20 of them) on a different website, PLUS we were put on a percent of sales (usually 2 - 3%, and that added up fast) which with the price of the gear that's pimped for sledders, that is a LARGE number as well. It seems that the business model has been misrepresented AND misunderstood, the people PAYING should be the ones MAKING the money, NOT the ones that are FREELY providing their experience and expertise. I am not happy and while $10 isn't alot of money, WHY should I pay $10 a year for HP to provide my knowledge to a fellow sledder? You may gain members but you will do it at the expense of the senior guys and I can GUARANTEE that the knowledge of the newbie is dramatically less that that of the old timers that are here and at the end of the day THAT is why most of us come here is for THAT very knowledge.
Please see my previous post. I'd be delighted to speak to your sales person.
D
deepdiver
Well-known member
Wow..I have sat back and read and watched as this grew. Many of us as members have missed the point that Christopher was asking for. He was asking for your input on what you thought about the proposal. Too many times I read editorials from a member that wanted to slam the thoughts of another instead of saying what they personally thought about Christopher's proposal.
Lets try to stay focused. We cant and shouldnt make comments on what someone else should be paying for in their lives etc. I mean the crap about if they cant afford 10.00 they should not have sled. I am not saying I disagree but none of us know the challanges of others and someone elses financial hurdles in life are not your business. In this economy many are jsut barely getting by on tight budgets. NO pay Raises are common along with lay offs..any extra burden is added to all the rest. You cant just take the "ten" dollars and think of it as a single thing..it is compounded with the rest of the increases.
I would say "oh crap another 10.00 that someone has their hand out for.
Now I personally think that if you get one discount deal or one time savings from something posted by Mountainhorse or someone else it would be worth ten dollars.
Now do I think all the buttons and whistles Christopher are worth anything..well many of them he should pay me, for the clutter and such of a social networking site. If someone wants or really needs a dating site go to match .com or some other.
People will pay for a forum if they know they are going to get value out of it and the price is reasonable.
There are a couple of things to remember though:
1. Your forum must provide information they can't easily find on another forum/website for free (not the case here, strike one)
2. The price should be low enough so it doesn't require much thought about whether it will be worth it (I think $5 to $10 per year is reasonable)
3. Potential subscribers need to have a way of seeing what they will be getting before they will be willing to pay for it. I've seen a few forums that allow you to read threads, but charge you to make posts. On others, you must pay to do a search. Perhaps free trial memberships.
I'd be careful about offering limited options to non-subscribers. Snowest Forum is successful because it has a huge member base, which builds up tons of valuable content. If you stop some members from posting or fully enjoying your site you will be limiting the value of your forum. Just one example is like if Ollie leaves..he has helped me on different things...we lose that knowledge base. How many other Ollies will leave and go to another site. If that continues to domino then we will only be left with the "I want a social networking site" mentality...they can go play on Myspace then and get the free spyware that comes with it.
The free membership level is critical..forcing people to have paid memberships only will certainly drop the membership level. I saw this with one of my own forums that I started on Delphi. After they started charging it was just a mater of time befor the prices got to the point where membership was dropping at a rate that it wasnt worth the trouble.
Christopher: Have you done a cost analisis on owning vs leasing servers or possibly contracting to a web hosting company. Owning your own servers will be interesting in a few years when they become slow by industry standards and you need another shot in the arm...where will it end? Because of this, membership prices will go up and up over time..once this door is opened it will continue. I started buying snowest at the news stand after I had been on the forum. It was the forum that took me to the magazine and not the other way around.
In re to your bling. Here is my personal thoughts..just my opinions and food for thought. I am not here to argue.. no one is going to like the same thing. The world would be boring if they did.
1. Auto Media embedding...on the fence
2.Faster servers...A big Plus...Alexa rates Snowest as slow..self explanatory...you will never be fast enough but have been behind over 65% of the rest of the world!
3. The digital copy of Snowest...thats a plus!
Favorites...thats another plus but I could get by without it. If it is cookie based then it wont help me for more than a day or so and would have to set it all up again.
4.Discounted Paper subs...thats nice but really doesnt matter..like you said they Snowest are seperated..supposedly. If this is truely a seperate intity in the future Harris Publishing should have to pay for advertising.
5.Business Center Links...available for free on the web..big deal. You can find anything with Google or Dogpile..create your own links page..dont need yours.
6. Video Chat...bling that isnt needed..dating website stuff...you can do that for free on the net anyway.
7. Webinars...whats next mandatory conferece calls?
8. IM...Free for years all over the net. Big deal..again, dating web site mentality.
9. Social Groups..thats special. Gave me a warm fuzzy. Ill ask all my Biker buds about this one..I know the answer.
10. New search engine...boring..I may be on the fence..I dont use it that much as I have not had favorable results with it. Gets me to a post that you have to weed thru that may or may not pertain.
11. Treadmill. Not needed IMHO just more clutter and bling. Nice for moderators.
12.Auto answer forum. Bling.
13. Ind. Blogs...dating website stuff.
14. Group rides? not a big selling point.
15. Emerg. alerts. Not a big selling point..instead..better..local Avy report to my text msging would be cool.
16. Club forums. As a former Board Member of a Washington Snowmobile club...I think..I have mixed feelings. I am leaning towards that this as socialized medicine. Creating some tools for certain groups that are paid for by the masses. If I wear the other hat..it would help my club at no cost to the club....
Maybe have a custome memberships for example starting at 2.00 and you can add services by clicking the radio button when you subscribe. you want IM..pay for it. You want Blog access..pay the extra .75cents...you want social groups pay the extra .50 for access. Hard to manage I know.
With that in mind..instead of a post that will have 31,000 different ideas and arguments..create a survey that each member can only do once. Have the radio buttong and let them line item pick what they think are useful and want. The Servers and maintenance and backup systems are the big ticket item, along with the IT employee positions.
The Donation thing... is nice..however it is my opinion and just mine that I donate to those that I choose..not who you choose wether they are a good cause or not is irrelavent. Donating to a mass hand is risky as you really never know where your donation went to or if it even did. BTW..will Snowest take the tax right-off of the charitable contribution? Perhaps you let the member pick who that portion of their member ship shopuld go to...Maybe I just want mine to go to the Groomer in a specific area that is strapped financially..or maybe I want my charity to go to the local womens needs center instead. Please dont pick my charity for me as I wont pick yours.
Perhaps a reduced membership for existing members that gradually goes up to the new member price over a few years...make it less painful in principle. In reality it is about one less Cup of Starbucks +tip and Howard Schultz has enough cash anyway. Now I'm sad I never got to see the Bikini Bare-ristas before they got shut down.
Lets try to stay focused. We cant and shouldnt make comments on what someone else should be paying for in their lives etc. I mean the crap about if they cant afford 10.00 they should not have sled. I am not saying I disagree but none of us know the challanges of others and someone elses financial hurdles in life are not your business. In this economy many are jsut barely getting by on tight budgets. NO pay Raises are common along with lay offs..any extra burden is added to all the rest. You cant just take the "ten" dollars and think of it as a single thing..it is compounded with the rest of the increases.
I would say "oh crap another 10.00 that someone has their hand out for.
Now I personally think that if you get one discount deal or one time savings from something posted by Mountainhorse or someone else it would be worth ten dollars.
Now do I think all the buttons and whistles Christopher are worth anything..well many of them he should pay me, for the clutter and such of a social networking site. If someone wants or really needs a dating site go to match .com or some other.
People will pay for a forum if they know they are going to get value out of it and the price is reasonable.
There are a couple of things to remember though:
1. Your forum must provide information they can't easily find on another forum/website for free (not the case here, strike one)
2. The price should be low enough so it doesn't require much thought about whether it will be worth it (I think $5 to $10 per year is reasonable)
3. Potential subscribers need to have a way of seeing what they will be getting before they will be willing to pay for it. I've seen a few forums that allow you to read threads, but charge you to make posts. On others, you must pay to do a search. Perhaps free trial memberships.
I'd be careful about offering limited options to non-subscribers. Snowest Forum is successful because it has a huge member base, which builds up tons of valuable content. If you stop some members from posting or fully enjoying your site you will be limiting the value of your forum. Just one example is like if Ollie leaves..he has helped me on different things...we lose that knowledge base. How many other Ollies will leave and go to another site. If that continues to domino then we will only be left with the "I want a social networking site" mentality...they can go play on Myspace then and get the free spyware that comes with it.
The free membership level is critical..forcing people to have paid memberships only will certainly drop the membership level. I saw this with one of my own forums that I started on Delphi. After they started charging it was just a mater of time befor the prices got to the point where membership was dropping at a rate that it wasnt worth the trouble.
Christopher: Have you done a cost analisis on owning vs leasing servers or possibly contracting to a web hosting company. Owning your own servers will be interesting in a few years when they become slow by industry standards and you need another shot in the arm...where will it end? Because of this, membership prices will go up and up over time..once this door is opened it will continue. I started buying snowest at the news stand after I had been on the forum. It was the forum that took me to the magazine and not the other way around.
In re to your bling. Here is my personal thoughts..just my opinions and food for thought. I am not here to argue.. no one is going to like the same thing. The world would be boring if they did.
1. Auto Media embedding...on the fence
2.Faster servers...A big Plus...Alexa rates Snowest as slow..self explanatory...you will never be fast enough but have been behind over 65% of the rest of the world!
3. The digital copy of Snowest...thats a plus!
Favorites...thats another plus but I could get by without it. If it is cookie based then it wont help me for more than a day or so and would have to set it all up again.
4.Discounted Paper subs...thats nice but really doesnt matter..like you said they Snowest are seperated..supposedly. If this is truely a seperate intity in the future Harris Publishing should have to pay for advertising.
5.Business Center Links...available for free on the web..big deal. You can find anything with Google or Dogpile..create your own links page..dont need yours.
6. Video Chat...bling that isnt needed..dating website stuff...you can do that for free on the net anyway.
7. Webinars...whats next mandatory conferece calls?
8. IM...Free for years all over the net. Big deal..again, dating web site mentality.
9. Social Groups..thats special. Gave me a warm fuzzy. Ill ask all my Biker buds about this one..I know the answer.
10. New search engine...boring..I may be on the fence..I dont use it that much as I have not had favorable results with it. Gets me to a post that you have to weed thru that may or may not pertain.
11. Treadmill. Not needed IMHO just more clutter and bling. Nice for moderators.
12.Auto answer forum. Bling.
13. Ind. Blogs...dating website stuff.
14. Group rides? not a big selling point.
15. Emerg. alerts. Not a big selling point..instead..better..local Avy report to my text msging would be cool.
16. Club forums. As a former Board Member of a Washington Snowmobile club...I think..I have mixed feelings. I am leaning towards that this as socialized medicine. Creating some tools for certain groups that are paid for by the masses. If I wear the other hat..it would help my club at no cost to the club....
Maybe have a custome memberships for example starting at 2.00 and you can add services by clicking the radio button when you subscribe. you want IM..pay for it. You want Blog access..pay the extra .75cents...you want social groups pay the extra .50 for access. Hard to manage I know.
With that in mind..instead of a post that will have 31,000 different ideas and arguments..create a survey that each member can only do once. Have the radio buttong and let them line item pick what they think are useful and want. The Servers and maintenance and backup systems are the big ticket item, along with the IT employee positions.
The Donation thing... is nice..however it is my opinion and just mine that I donate to those that I choose..not who you choose wether they are a good cause or not is irrelavent. Donating to a mass hand is risky as you really never know where your donation went to or if it even did. BTW..will Snowest take the tax right-off of the charitable contribution? Perhaps you let the member pick who that portion of their member ship shopuld go to...Maybe I just want mine to go to the Groomer in a specific area that is strapped financially..or maybe I want my charity to go to the local womens needs center instead. Please dont pick my charity for me as I wont pick yours.
Perhaps a reduced membership for existing members that gradually goes up to the new member price over a few years...make it less painful in principle. In reality it is about one less Cup of Starbucks +tip and Howard Schultz has enough cash anyway. Now I'm sad I never got to see the Bikini Bare-ristas before they got shut down.
Last edited:
BEELS when he joined Snowest and now:
That guy on the right looks like I feel after all of this.
I am pretty sure the offer was for HALF that amount or even ONE THIRD of that.
No One has been asked to pay $30 ???
Good bye snowest and your job chris!!!
I will not be paying for some forum!!! With that being said I actually am a senior member but with the new site crap didn't role over and quite honestly I don't care for it all will be gone soon. Yes I loved the old forum and would have paid possibly paid for that one, but the reality is that i post my knowlege and school of hard knocks to help others and I will not pay, so that you can make a profit on me on my dime, when I start to get paid for posts I will pay snowest. I am also on other sites with the same username so for me no big deal I'll just delete this out of my favorites. I do not post as often as I use to for the new site is a pain in my a$$, wtf were you thinking chris I want some of the stuff you've been smoking!!! Hey here's an Idea why don't you tell all of harris advertising people that were going to print the mag in black and white and see what they have to say!!! Basically its the same thing you will kill your advertising and your sponsorship the death of the mag. I am happy to say that I get to go to bed at night and Know I have a job tommarow can you say that Mr. Change
I will not be paying for some forum!!! With that being said I actually am a senior member but with the new site crap didn't role over and quite honestly I don't care for it all will be gone soon. Yes I loved the old forum and would have paid possibly paid for that one, but the reality is that i post my knowlege and school of hard knocks to help others and I will not pay, so that you can make a profit on me on my dime, when I start to get paid for posts I will pay snowest. I am also on other sites with the same username so for me no big deal I'll just delete this out of my favorites. I do not post as often as I use to for the new site is a pain in my a$$, wtf were you thinking chris I want some of the stuff you've been smoking!!! Hey here's an Idea why don't you tell all of harris advertising people that were going to print the mag in black and white and see what they have to say!!! Basically its the same thing you will kill your advertising and your sponsorship the death of the mag. I am happy to say that I get to go to bed at night and Know I have a job tommarow can you say that Mr. Change
So you under rated the server capacity???? Well you can make it up to your bosses by over rating the subscription base. That will put you back in the good books!
Having been a regional Manager for a very large firm for a number of years before going into business for myself (the last 9 years) I find it odd you cannot properly estimate anything.... someone asked what your projection is for the membership..........um....I don't know, we will find out. Great answer, maybe we should give you "call a friend???"
Contact the publishing staff and speak with them.
But they are convinced I am lying to them, and nothing is going to convince them otherwise.
I can think of very few applications that use only 12Mbps and require four Tier1 peers. LOL
I'll sell ya 100Mbps for $6500/mo + colocation fee w/ two egress peers.
Dedicated FE, or rate-shaped burstable GE - your choice.
There's a reference point for you.
ONE CORRECTION: Tier 1 ISP Bandwidth is the CHEAPEST resource you can buy!!!
The only catch is that you need to buy it in volume, and at their POPs.
Single GE ports are being sold regularly for under $10/mbps form well known players.
Tertiary players in NFL cities are closer to $4/mbps.
Paying TierII, TierIII providers to transport those packets to remote (snowy) destinations is what is costly.
If you connect to an ISP and use their address space(simple route), you will be subject to whatever their BGP peering(transit) arrangements are - and they will have a minimum of two. Tier1's have hundreds of peering points (just go to the NANOG Peering BoFs and pick up the list)
If you a want to build this "quad-peered" connection yourself, first you need to talk to ARIN and get your ASN assigned and a /19 - good luck. Its getting tougher, and probably wont happen for a single small enterprise. They require justification of a larger address space than you can use. Further more, then YOU would need to be dual-homed at a minimum to get the ISPs to run BGP with you properly. Single-homed BGP does nothing for you. (ARIN requires this)
So, your best bet? Get an ISP to SWIP you a small subnet of their address space, and run BGP with you (have them aggregate your routes), then get a second connection from and ISP that is willing to advertise your routes in their BGP table. (you'll still need the ASN, but not the addr assignment)
I serve 400 customers from DS1 to GigE, OC3, OC12, OC48, DWDM the whole schebang and we do this using two BGP transit points (peers), and ringed, fully meshed MPLS 10GE core.
Distance from the providers will make the costs go up, as someone has to pay to put in place and maintain the infrastructure. (read: customer)
Lots of cheeeeep colocation space can be had at Level(3) Gateway facilities, Qwest CyberCenters, and other colos - they're hurting for new business to fill the empty racks! I'll bet ya $10 bones we're still in a recession.
That said, the changes proposed for this forum still suck.
Time to listen to your users.
MtnDoo
I'll sell ya 100Mbps for $6500/mo + colocation fee w/ two egress peers.
Dedicated FE, or rate-shaped burstable GE - your choice.
There's a reference point for you.
ONE CORRECTION: Tier 1 ISP Bandwidth is the CHEAPEST resource you can buy!!!
The only catch is that you need to buy it in volume, and at their POPs.
Single GE ports are being sold regularly for under $10/mbps form well known players.
Tertiary players in NFL cities are closer to $4/mbps.
Paying TierII, TierIII providers to transport those packets to remote (snowy) destinations is what is costly.
If you connect to an ISP and use their address space(simple route), you will be subject to whatever their BGP peering(transit) arrangements are - and they will have a minimum of two. Tier1's have hundreds of peering points (just go to the NANOG Peering BoFs and pick up the list)
If you a want to build this "quad-peered" connection yourself, first you need to talk to ARIN and get your ASN assigned and a /19 - good luck. Its getting tougher, and probably wont happen for a single small enterprise. They require justification of a larger address space than you can use. Further more, then YOU would need to be dual-homed at a minimum to get the ISPs to run BGP with you properly. Single-homed BGP does nothing for you. (ARIN requires this)
So, your best bet? Get an ISP to SWIP you a small subnet of their address space, and run BGP with you (have them aggregate your routes), then get a second connection from and ISP that is willing to advertise your routes in their BGP table. (you'll still need the ASN, but not the addr assignment)
I serve 400 customers from DS1 to GigE, OC3, OC12, OC48, DWDM the whole schebang and we do this using two BGP transit points (peers), and ringed, fully meshed MPLS 10GE core.
Distance from the providers will make the costs go up, as someone has to pay to put in place and maintain the infrastructure. (read: customer)
Lots of cheeeeep colocation space can be had at Level(3) Gateway facilities, Qwest CyberCenters, and other colos - they're hurting for new business to fill the empty racks! I'll bet ya $10 bones we're still in a recession.
That said, the changes proposed for this forum still suck.
Time to listen to your users.
MtnDoo
Last edited:
Well. I don't think I will be around if the charges start coming...I have been around for more years than my sig suggests. I post builds, buy and sell stuff, help with tech.
There are plenty of other sites with quality supporters, and people with knowledge willing to help....for free. I suspect that many of the people willing to help here will migrate to those sites.
This whole thing smells of upper management "speak". I hear a lot of support from the Moderators, but I suspect they will not be affected by the pricing, as they will be getting it for free.
This is a slippery slope. Start charging for it, and I realistically see the enrollment drop from 32,000 to 16,000 conservatively, if not even further. When enrollment starts to drop, sponsors will start dropping too.
SW advertising is a premium, people spending that kind of money expect exposure. When the exposure drops, sponsors will start to drop, also.
Then what is left, who is going to pick up the slack for lost sponsors? That will then result in higher expenses expected to be paid by us....again?
This whole thing smacks of someone seeing dollar signs, and not using common sense on what will happen.
When the content continues to drop, so will the die-hard enrollment. There will be no reason to continue to pay. The landscape of SW will change dramatically.
How do you propose to attract new members, what is the "selling point" when there are dozens of snowmobile sites for free? Why would new people WANT to pay for this site? Do you actually think your site has THAT much clout. That is arrogant.
If it actually worked, don't you think someone would be doing it - successfully - already? This isnt a revolutionary idea..
Just my $.02.....you asked.....
There are plenty of other sites with quality supporters, and people with knowledge willing to help....for free. I suspect that many of the people willing to help here will migrate to those sites.
This whole thing smells of upper management "speak". I hear a lot of support from the Moderators, but I suspect they will not be affected by the pricing, as they will be getting it for free.
This is a slippery slope. Start charging for it, and I realistically see the enrollment drop from 32,000 to 16,000 conservatively, if not even further. When enrollment starts to drop, sponsors will start dropping too.
SW advertising is a premium, people spending that kind of money expect exposure. When the exposure drops, sponsors will start to drop, also.
Then what is left, who is going to pick up the slack for lost sponsors? That will then result in higher expenses expected to be paid by us....again?
This whole thing smacks of someone seeing dollar signs, and not using common sense on what will happen.
When the content continues to drop, so will the die-hard enrollment. There will be no reason to continue to pay. The landscape of SW will change dramatically.
How do you propose to attract new members, what is the "selling point" when there are dozens of snowmobile sites for free? Why would new people WANT to pay for this site? Do you actually think your site has THAT much clout. That is arrogant.
If it actually worked, don't you think someone would be doing it - successfully - already? This isnt a revolutionary idea..
Just my $.02.....you asked.....
Thank You.
I can honestly say that if we knew then what we know now, we would have done things differently.
Its a learning process and while painful at times, we WILL get to the final destination.
I thought we mentioned that in the letter?
The plan is to only have ONE PERSON per household pay for a membership. Everyone else would be FREE.
That will be something we spend some real time working in the very near future.
It's funny, MOST of the people that say " $10 is cheap and I'm in" are newbies, and the ones saying that paying anything is crap and we don't want mysledspace are the guys that have been here year after year, after year.
YOU NAILED IT.
If the members of SnoWest don't see value in being a member, then I am sure they will leave.
Those that see real value for their dollars and time, will stick around.
- Status
