Support Forum
I don't think that I need introduction here. I have already given my feedback about SPV5 earlier and have mentioned that I simply love it.
I also understand that Mr Papa,Yellow swordfish and others had to monetize this project if they were to let this project get going. In fact, before Simple press introduced paid membership till couple of weeks back, I always wondered that given the amount of time you guys invest in this, in the absence of any paid membership/subscription, would you actually be getting the kind of rewards you deserve.
I happily paid $99 for the Gold membership. In fact, even if there wouldn't have been this $99 subscription fee, I was still thinking of paying $100 in donation.
But I think that Simple-press needs to reconsider the current strategy. It's something which is not very good. In fact, if I got irritated with the new strategy, anyone else would. I remember someone else had also remarked on your twitter page that SP should rethink the strategy it has adopted
What I don't like :
I simply don't like the fact that people are not able to view the discussions in support forums until and unless they have paid memberships.That's why earlier when at a time on an average 60 people used to be online on support forums, now on an average only 25 people are.
Some business models you may want to consider:
Simple-press should keep the codex and support forums open to ALL memberships, guests and everyone.
We can have initial 3 months free trial period for using Simple-press on your website after which it will become a paid monthly subscription. Do not keep a one time payment of $99 which would turn off some of the users. Rather keep it $5-$10/month. You'll end up getting the same amount of money, the customer remains happy that he has to just pay just a nominal fee for a great forum and for awesome support.Thirdly, during that 3 month free period, the user would actually become a fan of the quick support you guys provide here. I'm 100% sure that if he'd happy with Simple press and with the support, he won't mind shelling out say $7 month. And he knows that if he's not happy with SP, he can stop the subscription any month and move on to something else(which is highly unlikely)
The second method is to make some plugins paid. Everything remains free-support forums and all but some plugins can be downloaded for $7-$10 . Something on the lines of what http://www.ecwid.com is doing .
I think that the first option is much better and will help SP grow and will keep the money flowing for you guys also. It's a win-win situation from all the aspects.
I want you guys to think over what I have suggested calmly for 2-3 days and without any biases or prejudices.Even if you'd like to continue with the current model, I don't have any qualms as I'm already a fan and have a gold membership but just that sometimes an external point of view is necessary so I thought that I'd provide that! 🙂
We are always considering new and improved models. Trust me when I say we thought long and hard before doing this...
We have been developing Simple Press for 6 years or so now... and we have had to pour lots of our own money into it just to keep it going. Andy and I never got into Simple Press for the money. We did it to keep learning new things. But our wives certainly question the wisdom of using our own money for our hobby...
Donations and ads rarely ever covered the operating expenses (ie server costs)... It had gotten to the point where we had to consider shutting down Simple Press. Even before 5.0 released, but even more so afterwards, we were inundated with support requests here in the support forum. And the overwhelming majority of the support requests were duplicate or the same as previous. Simple searching would have found most of the answers. We were literally spending 10 hours in support forum for every 1 hour of development time. Not exactly why we got into this. Our wives were both giving us a hard time about not spending time with our families. Keep in mind Andy is retired and I have a full time job, so Simple Press is really a hobby for us - not really a business interest or necessity for quality of life.
First step was to stop the bleeding of month after month of pouring money from our pockets into Simple Press. We don't need to make Simple Press support us and our families, but nothing wrong with your hobby putting a few bucks in your pocket either. We certainly owe our wives a few nights out on the town.
Second step was to cut down on the number of support requests. I do NOT use that statement lightly either. Andy and I have always prided ourselves on the quality of support we provide in the forum. Every topic has always been answered and almost always within a day. We have received many, many words of praise for our support. We definitely wanted to be able to continue to provide that level of support. BUT, we could not continue to put 5 or 6 hours each into the support forum every day - especially when most support questions were not new or real issues for the software. Of course, after the release of 5.0, there was the expected explaining of how to do things since it was completely changed from before. But again, the same stuff was repeatedly asked...
We launched a new codex with 5.0. Unfortunately, we have had little time to actually populate it with a lot of meaningful data. We had, and STILL do, have great aspirations for the codex. But it takes a lot of time to write all those help pages. Finally this weekend, we managed to find a few hours to start putting some more stuff up. It is a priority of ours.
So we made the decision to limit the support forum to subscription members. It actually helps on both those fronts. And oddly, we had secretly hoped this, the vibe around the forum has changed. We are seeing more 'serious' users of Simple Press who are really doing some neat things with it. And that excites us. There is a lot of power in 5.0 and we really want to see what cool things folks can come up with...
The major downside to the model in place now is the little guy - the ones who cannot afford in the silver membership. We really hate to exclude them like that, but the alternative of shutting down Simple Press really weighed heavy on us...
As I said, we will continue to evaluate options and alternatives - always. One thing we are considering is an open forum for users to help each other. We won't be able to provide support in it or really monitor it, but perhaps its a method for users to share experiences and help each other. Not sure if we will do it, but under consideration. Some day we may have more membership options too. But one thing we dont ever envision doing is charging for the core plugin. We want that to always be freely available.
Any way, hopefully, this post and my wording is not too blunt, but just wanted to explain a few thoughts behind our actions.
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