Jump to content

Covering The Expanding Costs Of TGA


Ben

Recommended Posts

BoardGameGeek have a yearly donation drive. People who donate a certain amount get an advert free experience and a badge under their avatar saying they're a BGG Supporter on something like that. As others have said, I'd be happy to be a monthly/yearly subscriber and a special badge for paid subscribers is a little incentive that really seems to work.

This forum is easily the highest quality one I've used for any hobby or profession and I'd hate to start seeing adverts! More merchandise would be a good thing too- the terrain dice are great but adding more might help. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Congratulations on the success of the site! It's such a great resource for the community.

I like the idea of adds, but also giving the option to buy a membership that makes the site add free for paid members. That way people who don't like the adds have a way to get rid of them, and people who don't want to keep up on a subscription have a way to still use the site without any big restrictions. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 hours ago, Arkiham said:

a subscriber thing might be good, i don't think the likes an stuff are necessary. this isn't facebook, id rather not create an environment similar to that.

i think the subscriber thing might be a good way to try an maybe use your influence? maybe get some subscriber-only content things from games-workshop, this is the most popular aos forum, worldwide im pretty sure

a monthly subscriber raffle for prizes? pay via paypal, £1 a strip winner gets a new model/box set etc etc 

£50 box set, 300 people buy tickets for it, bam £250 profit - postage fees. do a little raffle on youtube or something maybe to show it

This is an excellent idea and I would sign up in a heart beat. 

I would know that my subscription is helping to maintain the clean look of the website and there is a chance of a prize. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

To echo everyone else, thanks for the great work and commitment on the site! I've been a long time Dakka user and the single banner add can be unobtrusive, but they have a much wider scope for advertisers. The subscription option would certainly be my preference a couple of dollars a month, or a yearly 30 dollars?

I like Arkimad's suggestion of a raffle. You could see if companies would sponsor the raffle in return for that month/year's thing, or provide a membership discount code or something?

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I like the Bolter & Chainswords yearly donation drive as previously mentioned by others  the best.

If you want to put ads on the site, it would not bother me as I run with full ad and scriptblockers, so I wouldn't be exposed to them. But I wouldn't mind chipping in through other means, preferbly lump sums rather than monthly subscription, though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

An option may be to just have a special icon to go on user profiles who are contributing members?  If a special "premium" section of the website isn't feasible, then maybe just having something on user profiles would be sufficient?  As you mentioned in the first post, only a fraction of a percentage of the members need to contribute a little bit in order to keep things running.

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 hours ago, Ben said:

1. Advertising.  

This would also be quite labour intensive of chasing advertisers and making sales.  

2. Members section.  
3. Patreon system.  

4. A kickstarter

5. a mixture of all of the above. 

6. any other suggestions?  

1. Ads feedback:

Ads are bad, and have substantial potential to end up as a target for malware attacks, or Cryptocurrency mining. (Edit: And loads of people use ad-blockers)

2. Membership:

Not sure about the “off topic chat”...

I’m for giving paying members more “Likes” or “special forum tags” (Forum Sponsor). The web browser lets me upload crazy image sizes... (image optimization at some level might help from a data transfer perspective)

6. Other Suggestions:

Forum space for vendors that have products they would like to sell to the TGA AoS community. (Like a “verified vendor program” with designated sticky thread space either in the sales/trading or in a custom space.)

Edited by TheOtherJosh
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ask GW to cover the costs tbh. You're already doing the playtesting for them, and this forum generates a lot of hype for them on the rumour thread and just by the amount of community discussion going on on a daily basis.

A few hundred a month to represent literally thousands of their community is a nothing cost for them. A total no brainer.

  • Like 6
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think a yearly funding drive to try and build up enough to cover a year's costs would be a good idea. There's plenty of approaches to handle that, and you can also open up "fund a feature" point when it becomes relevant.

As for adverts, personally I'd include them, and offer a £1 to 2 a month subscription to remove them. Particularly if they sit as a row in the middle of forum posts for non subscribers

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Firstly, I'd like to echo the sentiments of everyone here thanking @Ben for all of his hard work and personal sacrifice. The fact that TGA is not only such a great community and resource for thousands of AoS players worldwide, but also a largely positive one, is a minor miracle that he should be very proud of.

My take on this may not be a popular or widely held one, but I can only speak for myself.

For me, a small subscription is an option that I would consider. But unlike many others who have commented that they would be happy to pay a subscription purely to support the site without necessarily even getting access to bonus features, I would need to feel like I'm getting some extra value for my money. I have various subscriptions here and there for a range of different things, and there's always another worthy cause that I feel I want to support financially, be it a podcast, a specialist YouTube channel, or some other passionate content creator. There are also less worthy things that are nonetheless important to me, like my subscriptions to White Dwarf and Netflix. And of course there are the other boring expenses like electricity bills, mortgage, baby stuff, etc. 

$2 a month isn't much in isolation, but all of these things add up. I'm self-employed on a small, variable income, so I have to be very careful not to overextend my disposable income. The cold, hard reality is that every expense, no matter how small, needs to be weighed in terms of the 'value' it generates for me and the opportunity-cost of not spending that $2 on supporting some other passionate content creator or platform provider. In the past I have made donations to forums expecting nothing in return, but that was many years ago before these 'micro-subscriptions' became such a massive part of everyday life.

So while I'm totally open to paying a small subscription for TGA, I can't just do it out of the goodness of my heart - as cynical and mercenary as that may sound. In my financial position, it's hard to justify paying $2 for something I can get for free, or for extra features I will never use, when there are other content creators I care about charging similar fees for access to some really valuable and well-crafted premium content. This brings me to my second point, which is that the majority of the extra features mentioned in Ben's opening post don't appeal to me - I just can't see myself using them or benefiting from them. I come to TGA to discuss, share and debate, so what I'd really be looking for in a premium membership is something that gives me more opportunity to do those things, and/or something that allows me to respond to and interact with my fellow users in more interesting ways.

For me, that probably means access to premium sub-forums. This is a tricky one, because I can't think of many sub-forums I'd want that aren't already present and accessible for free. If TGA was being developed from scratch, I'd suggest making the general Age of Sigmar Discussions and Rules Questions open to everyone, and make just about everything else members-only (non-members could still view but not post or reply). But it's almost impossible to take things away from people at this stage without causing a lot of trouble.

So this is my dilemma. I want to support Ben and TGA financially, but the site already provides everything I could possibly want for free, so in my financial situation it's near impossible to justify even this small extra expense. The free content and resources are just way too expansive and appealing as they stand. I'm struggling to find a way to reconcile that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Having been on the breadline myself not so long ago I certainly wouldn't expect every member to chip in, even £2. For those of us who are fortunate enough that this kind of subscription is not noticeable, or just buying one less cup of coffee from a stand, it does feel like more of a responsibility. 

TGA is not the product of a business, it is a community. Communities don't let one member shoulder all the burden. At the moment @Ben is not only paying for the whole site, but also doing a lot of the work on its upkeep. It's only fair for those of us who can (and if we're honest, it's the majority of us) to take a bit of that off his back.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Echoing a number of people, thanks for all the work, the site is amazing!

In terms of feedback, I think a donation drive that let users customize their profiles on the left of their posts would be a nice reward without taking anything away from other people. Could have different levels that would let you do different things, like choose a rank from a different faction or allegiance, change the background color, add a signature, etc.

What about a community shop that lets people sell things where either a portion of the sale goes to TGA (listing fee) or people in the community can use their talent to design scenario packs, tokens, 3d printer terrain files, etc. that are donated to the community store with profits going to TGA.

Lastly, I've got the guy below. Anyone that pays 20 bucks towards the running of the site, I'll ship him to you (In the USA). If abroad we can figure out something for shipping.

 

image.png.9a83f0f72499e8669805e1e53be5af0e.png

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...