Apolyton Revenue

[MarkG]

it's two weeks before the elections here in greece, i cant be less vague

[Nubclear]

Hmm....What do you mean by "Pay for service"?

[MarkG]

i knew someone would ask

examples

pay for access = people paying in order to post

pay for service = people paying for extra stuff (ad-free browsing, bigger avatars, etc)

[PLATO]

Originally posted by MarkG
it's two weeks before the elections here in greece, i cant be less vague

Did some quick searching. Looks to be an interesting contest. What is PASOK?

[MarkG]

PAnhellenic (like Panamerican ) SOcialist Movement (Kinima)

they recently invented the single-candidate presidential race. people now dont need to be afraid what will happen if one or the other candidate does if elected but they still have something to vote for and feel like they are doing something important

[PLATO]

Single candidate presidential race? Hmm. Perhaps a thread on Greek elections in the OT? Sure is enough of them on the US carnival.

[Arnelos]

Well, I'd be willing to donate some money to keep this site up, running, and (if it could be managed) ad free.

My understanding is that you have enough of a solid community membership here that many of us would even be willing (when combined) to pay enough that it even improves conditions for those not paying.

The obvious problem, as I see it, would be country of residence and any tax/registration legal issues.

If you guys can work that out, however, I'd think a number of us would be willing to pay a little for the benefit of everyone. Sure, you'll have some issues with the free rider problem, perhaps you'd have to provide SOME incentive, but everyone is going to benefit if the number of pop up ads is reduced or ESPECIALLY if we could eliminate them while keeping the site free for most users.

[MarkG]

the most possible way to do it would be via Paypal

[PLATO]

Paypal would certainly be the easiest.

How hard would the programming be?

[MarkG]

it depends on what benefits subscribers will get and whether we want to have a single choice or more(e.g. being able to pay more to get more stuff)

paypal has some tools to make the process automated so after seting up the system it's administration would not take up much of our time. so we need a system to interact with the paypal server, track payments, make changes to user accounts to give them their benefits and remembers to make the changes back in cases of cancellations or when the subscription ends. and we need a way to subscribe people without paypal for stuff like giveaways or other forms of payment....

[Bloody Monk]

I have been frequenting one or another of these sites since 1999. I would be very happy to subscribe to an ad-free option. I spend so much time here, it is akin to the TV "Cheers" bar. Having a subscription would be like having my own barstool, a very nice illusion of clubbishness.

The whole point of this discussion reduces to two main points. You, the Owners, need to make some money in order to justify your time, energy, and attention; and, we, the site users, would like a more pleasant experience. And I think, at least at first, it should be a very simple deal; for a reasonable price, no adverts...all other conditions remain the same.

Just say when and I'm there.

Monk

[alva]

Nooormm!!!!

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I pressume that in order to use paypal, one would need a credit-card?
( I can do home-banking, but don't have a (international) creditcard )

[Ben Kenobi]

I second BM:

We really do have a community here on Apolyton.

Though, I would not be able to pay through paypal, as I lack a credit card.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by MarkG
people saying that they would like to see some form of subscriprions (always based on the pay-for-service rather than the pay-for-access model) certainly increases the possibility

Nice.

[Alex]

I also don't have an international credit card, but I'd be willing to pay for a subscription if this helps Poly in some way.