Dmitri King wrote 8. July 2003, 23:07:03

"I will address this directly to The RAt, since you spoke on behalf of the non paying members, but any pawn is welcome to answer this:

HOW do you suggest Fencer increase revenue? I am sure you realize that 250 memberships does NOT provide enough revenue to run this site. We all hope that Fencer will run the site forever as a hobby, getting almost no sleep, just because he is a fan of board games. But, that might be too much to ask. So, I repeat my question: How do you suggest increasing revenue? You oppose measures to restrict what pawns get, calling such measures "attempts to discourage pawns from coming to the site," so what do you suggest?

I'll help you out with this one: To increase revenue, there has to be either 1) more memberships or 2) a higher membership fee charged. "

I agree. There has to be an increase in revenue. But the matter is a bit more complicated than what you make it sound like. Here are a couple of points I use when I think of how to do it:
a) there has to be enough players on the site for it to actually work
b) most players are not willing to pay to play - I mean that there are always places where you can play for free (I was actually going to put up one for myself and a friend of mine, but then I found this place...)
c) There are always some who are willing to pay, maybe 10-30% of the users - depending on things like price and what you get for it
d) increase in price reduses the number of players willing to pay
e) decrease in what you get if you don't pay increases the percentage of willing payers, but might actually decrease the number of people doing it
f) each player can be said to cost x $ to the site

Now, the obvious answer is to increase the amount of players, as about the same percentage is willing to pay. This would lead to increase in revenue... Unfortunately more players means more processing power required and therefore increases expences too. Furthermore, this is not easily done...

Other alternative is to increase the percentage that is willing to pay. This is what has mainly been discussed here (I haven't read the latest posts yet, sorry if I'm mistaken. I'll answer this one first). It might work, usually it does not. IYT tried it, and it didn't work very well, and they had a huge amount of players to start with (compared with brainking). I don't suggest this line of action.

The last and toughest alternative that I can think of is increasing the total number of players while decreasing the cost of a single player. To achieve this, the following seems essential:
1) reduce the amount of processing and data required for using the site. I mentioned before that there is a huge amount of useless information on the screens. I believe that processing times could be cut to a third by simplifying the design (depends on how it's implemented, of course). Just look at the main page and ask your selfs, how much of the data is dynamic and how much of it do you really need. Amount of HTML seems about ok to me...
2) improve the usability of the site - I mean the frequent down time experienced... It might be a good idea to start blocking out us non paying members if the site is getting full - with a friendly (and quick) message informing us that the site is nearing it's peak operating level and therefore only paying members are allowed to log in.
3) advertice. It's expencive (unless you spam - do that and I'm gone).
What this really means is hard work and a possibility of a potential outcome. You propably already know, or at least are quickly finding out, that it's difficult to make money on a site like this. Usually the best you can hope for is to make it finance itself... And then again, some do make it. :-)

like the idea of members only at peak times, is it easy to implement though?
rat mentioned 10-30% of users will be willing to pay, is that a percentage of registered members (given that here there are over 4000 and 10% would be a bundle more payers than we appear to have) or a percentage of regular users? What is the actual percentage here? if it is about right then the only clear way forward would seem to be to wait for the membership to increase naturally?

Simple solution is quite easily implemented. The server knows how many users are logged in at any given moment, and propably some value can be set, after which (auto)login for non-members redirects the user to the page I mentioned before...

The "correct" way to do this would of course be to monitor the actual strain on the servers - much more difficult, although possible.

Edit: Fencer of course knows best. I have no insights to the software. :)

Edit2: 10-30% was a rough estimate, or as some people like to call it, a guess. :)