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SI - Site Forums : Silicon Investor - Welcome New SI Members! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill Ulrich who wrote (21718)	12/1/2004 8:56:05 AM
From: Done, gone.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 32918

remember what the SI feature set was really like at the actual time of grandfathering and how much it's changed since then. What was that, late 97/early 98? Message 4174238 PMs arrived around here: Message 3295981 Thread specific search around here: Message 3332035 15 minute message preview around here: Message 3332600 Ignore feature came around here: Message 3393411

To: Bill Ulrich who wrote (21718)	12/1/2004 11:35:24 AM
From: SI Bob	Respond to of 32918

Perhaps the more miserly members here don't remember what the SI feature set was really like at the actual time of grandfathering and how much it's changed since then. Or the fact that it remained unchanged for years and a lot of changes prior to that simply worsened things, but now the changes are happening at a pretty decent click and usually for the better.

To: Bill Ulrich who wrote (21718)	12/1/2004 3:19:00 PM
From: Jeffrey S. Mitchell	Respond to of 32918

There are a lot of features that could benefit the users and the site, that wouldn't impact bandwidth but would use hundreds of hours of design and build time. As I said, once a place is sold, the new owner can charge whatever they want for any feature set they want. So if Bob wants to set his new model based off the 1997 pricing, that's his prerogative. It starts to get dicey once you have existing members. For example, if I run a health club and add a swimming pool, a costly expense, can I charge my existing members more? Well, that depends. If they have a contract for $x per year for a "regular membership" and the pool continues to be offered as part of a regular membership (e.g. to compete with the guy down the street), no, I can't. If the pool membership is an optional add-on for everyone and thus there are no contractual issues, then yes I could. So, yes, we agree it's a marketing decision. However, you still have to be able to justify it to your members. If members demand a feature that a competitor has, good luck trying to charge more no matter how many hours of hard work it takes you to match it. All I was suggesting is that it's easier to justify charging more -- regardless of your competition -- when you can base it on something tangible to people, like actual hits to a server. I mention this because I'm sure Bob will be adding all sorts of new features over the years and will have to make many hard decisions on how to charge for them. In any event, for twenty bucks a year, it's a no-brainer that I'll be upgrading very soon. Which perhaps is another way to say that if the principal is low enough you don't much worry about the principle (g). - Jeff