Mr. Francesco

I think s2ki.com in general should be a member only website. I learn alot from this site and check it on a daily basis, and I tend to wonder all over the boards and topics here.

I am going to start posting more in the M/I forum though

SD_S2K

I don't agree so much on the M+I forum use alone resulting in a donation, but the site as a whole, yes

I have learned enough about my s2k alone in the car forums to make it worth the $60 over the last 3 years, all the other threads are just extra knowledge gained and used

Honestly I think you would have to make the whole site fee only based, not just particular threads or forums .. as many said it might weed out good contributors and leave us with the rest ... even then obviously as you can see in the M+I forum, many of the best forum contributors choose not to donate to keep the site going and improving ... might be hard overall

frankly I don't see how several people that replied don't understand why it would be reasonable for them to donate the $20 for as much as they use the site

mxt_77

It's your party. Do what you want to. If I was actually making money from the knowledge I gained here, I'd be willing to pay the membership fee. Unfortunately, I browse this forum, but I'm not really putting any of this info to use (yet?).

If I was actually taking the tips and made a turnaround profit > $500, I'd gladly pay the $20-50 membership fee. Likewise, if/when I need to use the "For Sale" forum, I'll gladly pay the membership fee for that. But, since I currently consider my s2ki time "entertainment", then I'm too cheap just to pay for that. If s2ki went away, I'd just go find some other hobby to kill time.

Chris S

Another take: there's an active consolidation in web forums, and many are being sold for attractive sums of money. I'd guess that s2ki is worth six or seven figures, that value being attributable to its member base, content, and the advertising revenue that can be supported.

Make s2ki a member-owned cooperative, and I'll happily buy a membership.

Elistan

Sounds like a fair number of guests would NOT convert to members just for M&I. Going from paid to free for anything seems to always be an issue for folks. Making it member-only would loose you some advertising I think, and not gain much in memberships. I'd say start a NEW section (either on s2ki, or a new domain name) for member-only discussions.

hondakevin21

I'm getting started investing and I heard you give excellent advice so i'm a member

AssassinJN

I am not sure how I feel about this. First and foremost this is a car forum, that's why the M&I is in off topic. So I don't feel as this specific section should be member only as we will lose a lot of good advice from other guests who reside here.

Someone suggested making all of s2ki a member only forum. This is also a self-damning proposition most of the time because the only way it can work is if posts/thread weren't visible to non-members (otherwise they can still just read the tips/picks and gain money/knowledge anyway), and honestly who would join a forum before reading a single post?

So I propose to you a third option, one user selectable. Namely make it so that when posting, you can choose to make your individual post or entire topic (if you started it) viewable to only paid members. That way information deemed of value can be with-held from non paying members.

cthree

Well without responding directly to anyone I do want to say that S2KI will not be member-only, ever. I know there are some people who think it should be but that is simply never going to happen. It's inconsistent with the mission of S2KI.

The other issue I'll speak to is the one of advertising. S2KI/we don't get paid to display advertising, zilch, zero. We get paid for redirecting people to other sites in response to advertising (I'm avoiding calling it what it is because I'm not allowed to) but it's important for people to know the reality. Unless you follow those ads to where they go your financial contribution to the site is nil. Simply showing up and reading pages does not directly generate any form of revenue for the site. I'm not arguing your feelings on it, just trying to provide you accurate information.

We/I will have to do what we need to do to execute our business plan. It would be nice, ideal really, if people would drop a few bucks in the tip jar every year without having to ask or without having to withhold services and features to pressure people to do so but for about 2/3rds of the regular users of the site its what is necessary. In my mind it would be a whole lot more pleasant if 2/3rds of the users to said "hey, I enjoy the site and to show my appreciation here is $20, keep up the good work." rather than me saying "if you don't put money in the can I'm going to take away stuff until you either leave or pony up." which is pretty much what I've had to do in regard to PMs, photos, classified ads and so forth.

The general consensus among the moderators and admins is that signatures are the next thing to be cut so there is that to look forward to I guess. If that doesn't work photo and image posting will probably be next.