Forum 2021?

[Bill]

A while back Gary posted this.

Quote

If you want to be advert free I would have to charge circa £500- £1,000 a year membership each to replace the lost revenue.

This has always been a free forum but with less than a dozen regular posters, it’s unlikely that your monthly forum costs of £60+vat can be covered by voluntary contributions. Any attempt to do this would almost certainly kill off the forum and none of us here want to see that. So, over the past few days, I’ve been in contact with all but one of the forum regulars to see if collectively we could come up with anything that might help you. This was deliberately done away from the forum and in private so that posters could express their ideas and views in private.

All supported the idea of trying to find ways of helping but unfortunately there were few practical ideas put forward.

Just two people said they would be happy to pay a small amount towards the running costs but didn’t specify how much or for how long. Three I suppose if I count myself.

I thought it might be possible to use spare capacity at my company to host the forum for you, but I was advised by a member that Invision’s requirements for a move and ongoing charges would make it unrealistic and may cause some disruption.

Someone else suggested running a free forum, setup to look and work as near as possible to what we have now. No cost but equally no advertising revenue. Doing this would also be a start from new and one member said they were not happy about losing the old posting.

So, there we have it, a lot of effort but no earth-shattering solutions. Sorry Gary it looks like we’re stuck with what we have at the moment and the future of the forum is in your hands, but we all gave it a try. Thanks to all that helped with this.

Finally, a couple of points worthy of note although you will already know this. Everyone dislikes the level of advertising but said they understood and several expressed strong concerns that not enough was being done to promote the forum.

 

Bill 😊

[Gary]

On 12/12/2020 at 10:35 AM, Bill said:

A while back Gary posted this.

This has always been a free forum but with less than a dozen regular posters, it’s unlikely that your monthly forum costs of £60+vat can be covered by voluntary contributions. Any attempt to do this would almost certainly kill off the forum and none of us here want to see that. So, over the past few days, I’ve been in contact with all but one of the forum regulars to see if collectively we could come up with anything that might help you. This was deliberately done away from the forum and in private so that posters could express their ideas and views in private.

All supported the idea of trying to find ways of helping but unfortunately there were few practical ideas put forward.

Just two people said they would be happy to pay a small amount towards the running costs but didn’t specify how much or for how long. Three I suppose if I count myself.

I thought it might be possible to use spare capacity at my company to host the forum for you, but I was advised by a member that Invision’s requirements for a move and ongoing charges would make it unrealistic and may cause some disruption.

Someone else suggested running a free forum, setup to look and work as near as possible to what we have now. No cost but equally no advertising revenue. Doing this would also be a start from new and one member said they were not happy about losing the old posting.

So, there we have it, a lot of effort but no earth-shattering solutions. Sorry Gary it looks like we’re stuck with what we have at the moment and the future of the forum is in your hands, but we all gave it a try. Thanks to all that helped with this.

Finally, a couple of points worthy of note although you will already know this. Everyone dislikes the level of advertising but said they understood and several expressed strong concerns that not enough was being done to promote the forum.

 

Bill 😊

Thank you for your feedback Bill - which from the info provided is pretty much what I would have expected.

Regarding promotion of the forum it would be a little bit like flogging a dead horse and I am so busy working hard promoting our clients I just haven't got much spare capacity - as you can see it has taken me from Saturday until late Wednesday night to respond to this. We seem to be sadly stuck between a rock and a hard place. Once again thank you for your endeavours.