Would you pay for Premium Content?

Post by **TFArchive** » Wed Jun 19, 2002 8:52 pm

Ok everyone, I'm just bouncing ideas around I'm not going to do anything rash yet. But I need to ask.

Bottom line is the servers for this site are expensive and I can't generate enough revenue to maintain them with just banners/videos sales. So I need other ideas.

Would you pay a nominal monthly fee for premium access to this site?

I am thinking about $2.50 - $3.50 per month or $25 - $35 per year. I am not sure yet, I'll have to do some number crunching.

What it would involve is:

All comics being available (including UK comics)
Lots of episodes (Not sure yet if I could do them all at once)
Higher quality video clips (VCD or possibly high res divx)
No banners

What would happen to the current layout:

Only sample assortment of comics available
Only sample clips of episodes
Likely the same batch of video clips that is online now
Banners, including pop ups/unders

I don't currently have a way to set this kind of thing up yet, but if enough people would do it then I would consider investing the money to set it up.

Because only paying members would be downloading from the server, the load would be much less. And if I had enough users I could add additional servers to balance the load so there would always be a server available.

Let me know what you think

Post by **Denyer** » Wed Jun 19, 2002 9:29 pm

To be perfectly honest, I think you would probably become the target of some whingers who would try to shut you down over the copyright aspect...

Personally, I would drop direct episode downloads in favour of co-ordinated peer-to-peer sharing, since that's the vast majority of the server hit.

I would also say it's worth running the comic scans through a compressor such as JPEG Optimizer 3.07 [ http://www.kreideholen.de/f_grafik.htm ], which would preserve readability vastly better than simply increasing the compression by re-saving them. Some of the scans could really stand to be reduced in dimension, too.

I wouldn't have any trouble with a nominal fee for the message-board, although I fear it would probably become somewhat of a ghost-town.

If you want any help crunching video clips down with DivX, let me know, although uploading would take quite a while on a 56.6 modem. I think Sky has cable, so I could always post CDs of finished stuff to him for him to upload...

Anything else useful I can do, just let me know.

Jetfire · Post by **Jetfire** » Wed Jun 19, 2002 9:32 pm

On boardband I might consider it as the speed to download episodes and read the comics is worth it after dial up-" load up as I feel like it attitude" it woud not be much good to me hence why I don't bother to down load. 1 problem with that I think is many people can obtain the content elsewhere. But if the quality is good I would be happy to advertise it on boards accross the net-to bring the customers

Ideas:
Have you considered what effect the DVD series has had on the downloading of eps? Because if season 2 comes out people might have less reason to download episodes but you would already know that from the season 1+TF:Tm ones if it does in fact affect? (but then its free here).

On the other hand if you could get all the Japenese (Headmasters, RiD BW-neo etc) ,only at a high quality+fast down loading time I feel they will come if they know about it.

A number of sites has invested in selling the dreamwave comics prehaps you could add those (with permission) or even the up comming Amarda.
Amarda Toys?

Post by **Denyer** » Wed Jun 19, 2002 9:40 pm

Mmmm...dealing with that many comics/posters/lithos takes a lot of time...ask the people who were/are waiting for their stuff from Seibertron...

Toy sale referrals to Amazon or elsewhere would be worthwhile.

StoneCold Skywarp · Post by **StoneCold Skywarp** » Wed Jun 19, 2002 10:17 pm

Originally posted by Stuart Denyer
If you want any help crunching video clips down with DivX, let me know, although uploading would take quite a while on a 56.6 modem. I think Sky has cable, so I could always post CDs of finished stuff to him for him to upload...

Nope, sadly not.

I should be getting ADSL soon, and if the cable network up here ever does get finished (first City in the UK to get proper cable) then I'll be able to...

Savannahtron · Post by **Savannahtron** » Wed Jun 19, 2002 11:42 pm

I would not have a problem paying for say a membership to the TFARCHIVE PREMIUM club.

I think you have a good idea here. If you could guarantee that I could download higher quality videos at a constant speed, then I would be very happy.

You could sell access to the membership club, and I don't think you will have any more of a problem than you could right now, because you would be selling membership dues, not the episodes themselves, which I think is illegal in any manner to distribute without written permission of copyright holder, so I say do it.

If you could set up using PayPal, you could also take contributions which I would not mind donating money to your site, it is my favorite TF site to visit.

BigMaki · Post by **BigMaki** » Thu Jun 20, 2002 12:14 am

I would pay, as long as the fee stays around $20-$25 yearly. As far as each of the areas that would be changed goes:

Episodes and comics: I think the problem would be that most of us who frequent the board already have most of the episodes and the comics downloaded. Unless you're offering, say, DIVX versions of the HM/MF/V/BW/BM/RiD episodes instead of RM files, I think this wouldn't appeal that much to most of us who are already here.

No banners: All for it. Who wouldn't be? Of course, what happens to your revenue from those?

Message board: I may be the only one who thinks this, but I think paying for the message board area is a good idea. I know that I'd be willing to pay for it, and most of the regulars who post a lot more frequently than I would be willing to pay it, begrudgingly or not. What would be the benefit? Well, it would certainly keep the trolls out. Granted, we've been lucky thus far to have a good mod/admin staff and have been left alone, for the most part. But what if we get inundated with jerks once the G1 reissues hit US stores? A fee would certainly nip that in the bud. Of course, the downside is that it costs money, and would cause some of the less frequent posters to leave. I'm not sure of how you'd handle bannings, either, as far as refunds and that fun stuff goes...

LigerZero · Post by **LigerZero** » Thu Jun 20, 2002 2:11 am

I personally would not pay to get into the site. There are other sites that offer Videos and Comics, so why pay to get it?

Perhaps theres other ways to lower you costs. Ever look into free hosts for things like you pics and comics? There's a good free host called http://www.topcities.com/ . They offer 150MB of space for free, and you only have to have 1 banner on the top of each page. They also have a pay service you could look into that might be cheeper than what your paying now.

You could put your pics, and maybe your comics on there without breaking their TOS. They also block remote loading which would keep people from stealing your bandwidth. The videos I'm not so sure about. The free service has a 900KB file size limit so if you did try to put the videos on there you would have to us WinRAR to compress and split them up.

Blaster_86 · Post by **Blaster_86** » Thu Jun 20, 2002 2:32 am

Originally posted by LigerZero
I personally would not pay to get into the site. There are other sites that offer Videos and Comics, so why pay to get it?

Perhaps theres other ways to lower you costs. Ever look into free hosts for things like you pics and comics? There's a good free host called http://www.topcities.com/ . They offer 150MB of space for free, and you only have to have 1 banner on the top of each page. .

You have no idea how much space this site uses do you?

And yes I'd be willing to pay for this.

The Green Knight · Post by **The Green Knight** » Thu Jun 20, 2002 2:45 am

I doubt people will subscribe. They just want the episodes, and they don't want to go through anything to get them; just provide the link already. They're not even willing to chat on the board for even a thread or two. They just register, immediately beg for the episodes, and then vanish, never to be heard from again. Pretty sad they won't even feign interest in discussion until they're done getting the episodes they want. And if they can't get them for free here, they'll go someplace else where they can. Maybe instead of charging for access, you should just cut the availability way down...

LigerZero · Post by **LigerZero** » Thu Jun 20, 2002 3:04 am

Originally posted by Blaster_86

You have no idea how much space this site uses do you?

And yes I'd be willing to pay for this.

I got some idea of how much space this site takes up. I'd guess with the Episodes, Video clips, Pics and Comics this site takes up about 5GBs of space.

But I was only putting in my 2 cents about ways to cut costs is all. Useing a free service for little things like pics might help.

BigMaki · Post by **BigMaki** » Thu Jun 20, 2002 3:21 am

Originally posted by LigerZero
I got some idea of how much space this site takes up. I'd guess with the Episodes, Video clips, Pics and Comics this site takes up about 5GBs of space.

But I was only putting in my 2 cents about ways to cut costs is all. Useing a free service for little things like pics might help.

Yeah, it probably takes up 5 GB of space on a physical drive, but the problem is how many gigs are transferred through the network connection. Think about it -- on any given hour you've got 20 people (and that is an incredibly conservative estimate) trying to download a 50 megabyte video file. That's a gig right there. Now multiply that times 24 and you get 24 gigs daily. Now multiply that times 30 and you start to get an idea of what the monthly hosting fees are going to shoot up to. Hosting the graphics and html pages elsewhere isn't going to do a bit of good -- they're just a drop in the bucket. I think Snake has the right idea -- keep the episodes available to a minimum. Give 5 for each series every month, maybe?

Unicron · Post by **Unicron** » Thu Jun 20, 2002 3:25 am

Well, I don't download any episodes (doubt my 56k could handle it) so I wouldn't really need to bother with Premium membership thingy (unless the board becomes part of that).

Although I might do it just to help support this great site and it's wonderful message board. [/sucking up]

Menasor · Post by **Menasor** » Thu Jun 20, 2002 3:52 am

Beyond the idea that $$ to use the message board is bad because it could become a ghost town I think that it is an all-around bad idea.

When someone rediscovers their love of Transformers it will be quenched by seeing that everything costs money. My two cents is this: I have just about every single episode many from here many from CuteMX and that other thing that was similar (name escapes me) to be honest, you tell me where to send the cheque and what is required by person and I honestly have no problem paying out. I think that this is a great service to everyone.

The other thing that I would investigate is potentially a buy and sell board with a cost of $2 per transaction. Or selling CD's. Legal????

This is not some stupid place, I think that we can tease non-members with poorer quality or less video availablity and get them to pay the premiums - heck there will be all sorts of us here paying members. This is not some fly by night porn place that simply promises the best with no referals or anything else, the other problem is potentially people who cheat the system.

Lockpick · Post by **Lockpick** » Thu Jun 20, 2002 4:05 am

If we do go to pay-per-view, since I don't download any episodes or clips or pics, I just use the boards, perhaps have different setups so if people want just the bboard, they pay for JUST it, instead of 25 bucks for a bunch of stuff they don't ever use.

Scout · Post by **Scout** » Thu Jun 20, 2002 5:21 am

After seeing some of the posts for the costs of this website, I can sure understand where the concern is.

My other toy hobby website is around 120k and it's nowhere as big as this one- so I can just make a rough guess as to how much space it must take, and everything else from time to effort involved. The people that run the site really deserve gold stars and a lot more for everything they do. And imo, you have a good idea about the premiums, Brend. I'm afraid I dunno anything at all about the download/hub/speed etc. thing- Denyer seems to be the expert there, so I don't know how that would affect regular 56 modem people like me.

You've got my support for some help of a variety, because the group is terrific here and paying out of pocket is no fun-- but charging money overall would scare off many folks I think. Information can come from lots of sources, but what got my attention was the community here.

Scout

neoprimestar · Post by **neoprimestar** » Thu Jun 20, 2002 5:26 am

you know there is a site that costs like 5.00 for a month for the msg board. But I dunno about paying for the site but I got an idea.....

Why not do several free sites and combine them? or something.... like topcities.com or homestead...depends on you hon... but I do love your site

Cliffjumper · Post by **Cliffjumper** » Thu Jun 20, 2002 5:59 am

Originally posted by LigerZero

I got some idea of how much space this site takes up. I'd guess with the Episodes, Video clips, Pics and Comics this site takes up about 5GBs of space.

But I was only putting in my 2 cents about ways to cut costs is all. Useing a free service for little things like pics might help.

Have you actually used a Topcities account? Yeh, you could really bung this site up on one, what with the free accounts having banners, 800kb filesize limits, a very small band of allowed filetypes and a 6MB hourly bandwidth level. Trust me, I use one... Also, as they're giving away 150MB, Topcities are apparently very strict on multiple accounts, as in they actually check and look at sites, and if you get a couple which look similar...

I, right now, wouldn't pay to use the board, and to be honest rarely visit the site - usually only once a week to see if there have been any updates...

Post by **TFArchive** » Thu Jun 20, 2002 11:24 am

yeah, free sites are certainly not an option, I tried them when they used to be 'unlimited' my account would always get deleted within a few hours of me uploading a couple megs of stuff.

The non-episodes portion of the site transfers about 10GB per day. The Episodes do about 90GB per day.

The cost of the non-eps server is quite reasonable, and would be fully paid for if I dumped the eps server. That might be the best option down the road. I will have to decide.

I'm just trying to think of a way to keep the episodes while not losing $200/month anymore.

Savannahtron · Post by **Savannahtron** » Thu Jun 20, 2002 11:29 am

Maybe something like this will work.

If you got ppl to join your membership, you could still offer the eps to ppl for free, but at a lesser qual. just offer the divx to paying members.

I have not really used the D/L area that much, because I can not get a decent transfer rate, and stuff gets broken when I try to d/l things, so I just post here on the board, but I would love to be able to get the episodes easily, without hassle.

Have you ever thought about burning them onto cd, and selling the cds? I would not mind getting a copy of that.

I know that ppl are getting a premium on Ebay still for eps. cds.

TFARCHIVE FORUMS

Would you pay for Premium Content?

Would you pay to get Premium Access?

Would you pay for Premium Content?

The boss has spoken.

Message board $$ is a bad, bad idea.....

hmm