Have I got the Community Supporter idea wrong?

[Ed]

This Community Supporter thing was supposed to save the site by (hopefully) covering the running costs. It was also another way of encouraging people to keep engaged in the community, even through the all-too-frequent quiet patches.

A few of you have been incredible, have kept up your community supporter status and been really great about the whole thing, but more people have been quite off about it.

I was hoping the information page would cover it, but I keep having to explain it and, in a few cases, defend the idea.

I don’t know where people get the idea that the entirely voluntary non-recurring fee is a rip-off or is (somehow?) making me a fortune! There are currently 7 active supporters and there have not been any transactions since June. This barely covers the bandwidth costs of the community and certainly doesn’t pay for my time (which is often 12+ hours per week). Also, the KoFi amount is much lower than almost any subscription site I’ve ever heard of.

I usually get at least one person per month accusing me of keeping “all the good stuff” for the “community supporter scam” (or words to that effect) and demanding that, if I “wasn’t dodgy”, I would give it away free.

I only added the extras that community supporters get access to (and there isn’t exactly an enormous library with weekly updates!) as a thank you to those supporters and to make it feel more worthwhile to them. I’ve always said, I don’t want to run the site like a charity – I’d rather provide something and get something back for it. If I was in this for the money, I simply would not run this community at all.

This community’s continued existence does, at least partially, rely on it paying its running costs, and I will keep trying to encourage more people to become supporters because we don’t have enough at the trend is currently downwards not up.

Martin likes this

[Gary]

TBH I am stunned that people are so short-sighted.  I (think) paid for a full year ( @Ed – please let me know if it’s lapsed) and not for the additional content (which I do like although for obvious reasons the “who should strip” has not done much).

I agree @Ed, what to people want?  Almost the entire site is free and I love taking part, I think it’s the few who just don’t know when they are on to a good thing – shame on them

Martin and Ed like this

[Ed]

You’ve got a couple of months left yet, @Gary. I try to make supporters feel valued (which you most certainly are) but how can I do that without having a few exclusive benefits for supporters?

I’ve been doing this long enough that I should have toughened up to the occasional (and they are pretty rare) person who has a go at me. There are many ways to make money that would go way higher on the list than running a mostly free site.

Gary and Martin like this

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