Time to charge?

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Egghead3

Member
Mar 22, 2008
275
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It would appear that there have been problems at A-O over the last few days. I’m guessing server problems as it seems similar to the problems experienced earlier in the year.
I wanted to ask how A-O is funded. There are a few ads around the site, but they surely can’t generate enough income to support a site with 37,000 active members (according to the stats on the front screen.)
I was wondering if it would help to levy a small annual charge to be a member. It would weed out the ‘lurkers’ and help pay for new equipment.
Maybe this has been considered before, in which case I’ll shut up and mind my own business in future! ;)
Egghead3
 
The moment you exchange money for access to the material provided on this site, you open a huge legal can of worms. Chompy, both for his own sake and for the sake of his peers, really can't openly accept money for the services he provides.

If somebody knows more about international, Japanese, and U.S. law than I do, by all means correct me if what I have said is wrong or back me up if what I have said is right. Obligatory "IANAL".
 
Hmmmm, OK, I didn’t even consider any kind of LEGAL considerations.
But, just suppose, Chompy happened to open a personal PayPal account, and just happened to inadvertantly leave his email address here, and I happened to send $10 to that address... there’d be no harm in that surely! ;)
But also, how does the situation differ from the DVD Club run by Desioner?
 
The DVD club's main purpose is purchasing dvd's for its members to share while A-O is much more than that as you know. Also, there is no fee or charge to join the DVD club (you only have to meet certain requirements regarding your internet connection). You only pay for the titles you vote for.

I think that regardless of the legal implications, Akiba would lose a vast majority of its members if registering wasn't free.

Chompy used to take donations but after the paypal fiasco I'm not sure if he is taking donations now. You can click on the ads instead =)
 
right, click ads is the better way ..... it don't cause any kind of legal problem to the forum owner (instead, asking for a quote can cause problems, and the same using cashlinks, or openly ask for donations ..... some of hosters and ISP's also don't allow you to put a "please donate" sign on your site, then .....)

other than this, is not a reason for make most of the subscribers to go away ..... i mean, start to ask money, and you will see lots of peoples abandon, but click ads costs them nothing, so more possibility that they stay and click ..... :D

ofcourse, is all matter of proportions ..... i know that a forum with few peoples cannot make a good amount of money clicking ads ..... but, hey, after all i read somewhere "members 149,633" ..... :D
 
Thanks for all the info guys. I guess only Mr. Chompy himself knows what it costs to run and maintain a site of this size, and if he’s able to do that with the income from the ads here, then I’m happy to click an ad every time I visit!
 
In case someone has notived we have found a possibilty to minimize the break down times caused by a database error. If everything goes well we can react at once to a database error as soon as it is detected. So hopefully there will be no more break down times of several hours as we had in the past... (I won´t promise too much though...)...
 
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