benos

I like it. Nothing else exists, at all.

INDEED!

A member is going to help me with banner ads, and we are talking about a few other options. After that, I'm not going to charge any yearly membership fee to view or post. I am still considering charging $5/month (not $15/month) to sell in the Classifieds.

http://dfghosting.com/ipb-hosting/ https://www.a2hosting.com/ipb-hosting On those, a member PM'd me that those are good for someone brand new, but not for an active established site. And this particular member has a massive amount of experience with creating and hosting multiple forums.

That's HUGE - thanks for that. I'm on it.

Monthly cost to host the forums in IP's cloud is $330. I have zero interest in hosting them anywhere else, due solely to the excellence of their support. Back in the day when I hosted them myself on a dedicated server... whenever there was a tech issue, it was an absolute fucking nightmare - every time. Nowadays, if there is ever an support issue, they resolve it immediately.

And thanks to all that contributed to the flurry of PayPal donations over the weekend.

I considered selling them, but have no idea what they might be worth, or who might buy them.

Let me know if you sent it, because if you did, I didn't get it. (Or I missed it in my spam folder.)

No clue on that. Can you send me some info on that. forum@brianenos.com I'm out till Monday.

For those that voted: "Yearly membership fee" - what would you consider a reasonable amount? And please quote this post for your reply.

I have zero interest, in my life right now, in putting in the work it would take to recruit dealers for banner ads.

Any more posts about moderating quality will be deleted. Keep it on track please.

A few comments... Setting the Classifieds to pay per ad is not an option. Nor is a pay for the percentage of the sale. We (or I) did not consider a yearly fee just to be a member of the Forums. I'm not interested in banner ads. I could easily walk away from it, having been out of it for 20 years. I would be interested in selling them, but doubt if that would work out.

I posted in the Mod forum that I was planning to shut down the Forums August 1st, because of a couple reasons. Mainly, since I am semi-retired, and no longer a Dillon dealer, I cannot afford any cost associated with hosting them. I’ve kept exacting track of hosting cost vs. income - including Dealer Forum, Forum and Classified donations - and last year and definitely for this year, I’m in the hole. (Actually I’ve been in the hole with them for 20 years, but when I was a dealer for Dillon Precision, I didn’t care.) The Forum Dealer’s renewal date is August 1st. Last August, only half of my Dealers renewed for this year. That hurt. And I would not be surprised if half of them do not renew this August. And the Donations… when we started it, it worked well, but as is always the case with “donations” - they fizzle out after a while. Okay, back to a possible solution. The Mods overwhelmingly objected to shutting down the Forums, and offered a variety of ideas to bring some $ in to cover the hosting costs and keep them up and running. So I am considering, at this point, in changing the Classifieds Forum from being n/c to members with 50+ posts, to charging a reasonable monthly fee to sell stuff in the Classifieds. Say for maybe $15/month, you could sell any amount or dollar value of items. I’d also open up the Paid Classifieds to any member (regardless of post count). NOTE: All paid Classified subscribers must have their Name and Location in their Profile. Updates to follow as our discussion ensues. And comments are welcome.