PDAPhoneHome.com - View Single Post - Put an i760 in the hands of MR & SD

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrailing

I am intentionally trying to stay out of the discussion of this topic, for obvious reasons, but felt I should chime in.

I think the course of charging fees on a site like this would be voluntary, so that if you did pay, you would have a low ad version of the site, maybe just Google Ads and that's it, or Ad free. The information here on the forums, can be discussed anywhere and going to a pay only version wouldn't be that great for traffic, but offering an ad free version, and possibly increasing the adds a bit for the "free/ad" version, which still keeping it clean would work, if people don't want to pay, they don't have to, and everything is still "free", you just get more benefits if you pay.

As far as contributions/donations go for software created or stuff like the guides. It's slim to none. SD can probably vouch for this, as well as Sarcasmra and probably Dimension too. Out of the 7700+ downloads of the Icon Hack, zero people have donated anything back to me (since posting the Vista WMDC Icon Hack). For the few times I have posted a donation link, in the various guides and write-ups, I have received around $160 total, $100 of which went to pay for WinCE CAB Manager, a software I used/use to create the cab files for our device, and the rest has gone towards software for the i730 (and paypal fees). So out of the thousands of downloads of the MRailing Phone Tools, the 70,000+ views of Setup Guides, the 7700+ downloads of the Icon hack for Vista, and others, donations are a great concept, but in the "free" world of the internet, they don't work well. I include my link for those few that feel generous and helped by my contributions, and not to make money off of it, but in turn to try and do more for the community here. If I wanted to make money, I would charge right off the bat, but then that gets in to the whole "tax" thing too...

I am not trying to convince people, just providing information to stuff brought up.

I agree with John (zucherro) and Michael (mrailing). If you start charging, you need to be careful of what people will expect. For example, if I must pay for a program, I will be upset about bugs and release dates than if the I can voluntarily contribute to pay for the program. When people publish their software and make it available for free, I am more "forgiving" of any bugs or release delays because the publisher is offering it to me for free and so I am grateful for whatever I get. In other words, if I pay for something, I believe/expect I am paying for a bug-free product that will be supported whereas if I don't pay for something all I am going to expect is that it is not spyware or malware, nothing more.

I like Michael's idea of paying to have an ad-free forum. I've seen this done on other sites, and it's nice if the price isn't too great. I'd be willing to pay $40-50 per year for an ad-free site, especially if I know the money is go to help the moderators who currently are volunteering their time. Another possible "perk" of paid membership might be discounts on software sold in the store portion of this site.

Just my two cents for whatever they're worth.