I know the day of the free internet is fastly comming to a close. You can see it happening now. More and more sites charging a subcription. In the end, I think this will have a negitave effect. How many sites will one family subcribe to? How much can they budget for? I know nothing in life is free but money only goes so far. If all the skinning sites charge, how many will you be on! 1,2 or all of them. That also goresd for the game sites. How many will you be on? Something to think about.

Subscription-only sites are doomed. I can't think of a single website on the Internet that I would pay to access at a casual level.

Webmasters who need pay their bills have to look at things from a different angle. They have to ask themselves, "Which users would they want to leave?" rather than trying to get everyone to pay. They have to basically identify users who they can risk having not visit the site. That's because most people (IMO) when confronted with being asked to pay or leave will choose to leave.

So in a skinsite's case, the people you want to approach are those who use the site heavily. The people who download megs and megs of skins, visit nearly every day or more, and are just generally all over the site on a regular basis. These represent a very small percentage of any site, they are the core users.

Then you have to divide that group up into people who you don't want to restrict and those you do. You don't want to put any restrictions on those core users who are helping the site by providing content (either submitting skins, posting on the message boards, or contributing financially in other ways like buying other software from you).

That leaves you with the core users wh visit every day, download tons of stuff, but don't choose to participate in the message boards or make skins and haven't bought software. Those are the users that we target. Those are the users we put restrictions on, we say to them essentially: "This site is very expensive to run, you obviously use it a lot, so we need you to either buy a subscription which lasts for 2 years, register some of the software here, start making skins, or go somewhere else.."

Some people go away, others buy a subscription, others register th esoftware they've been using all those megs of skins on.

But the important thing is that a casual user to the site isn't even aware of any of this. They are totally unaffected.

I think I fall in to the silent majority. I don't mind paying for a subscription to this site regardless of the fact that I have purchased a number of Object Desktop items. This is my second year of Object Desktop and probably my second responce to a message I've read. I read all most all of them and sooner or later a problem that I've been having is answered. I really wish I could contribute some of the great skins that I've seen but unfortunately I just don't have that kind of talent. I want all of you "skinners" to know that I (and I'm sure many others just like me)really admire your work.

I hope no one took my post as negitive. I'am not a skinner nor am I a heavy downloader. I talk on the message board. I like this site, the people(for the most part) and the skins(for the most part). As you can tell by the icon, I subscribed. My point being is that I would be very careful with my money in subscribing to to many sites. I would be very pickey.

You 'may' just dismiss me as being biased, but I think that Wincustomize has the best approach to the problems of running-cost recovery of any of the skin sites.
It's a symbiotic relationship....you give, they give, you get, they get......give more, get more.

The only thorn in this utopia was the 'take, take, take, no give' but there's a 'cap' on that now...the 'take, take, take' ceases at 100meg and there's a polite request to 'give' in return for future 'take'....

I wonder which catagory of frogboy's that I fit in! I do rate and I do comment. I try not to be to blunt in my comments. That person does spend a lot of time and energy making what they upload (except Mr. 5 min. wall). Be honest and polite when rating.

I think I can cut and paste this here:

Rant:

I think why soon so many sites will be subscribtion only is because for some reason ad campains for the internet are so lame. We have all seen that ads from something that looks like a warning on your computer to stuff that flashes so much you get a headache. ARE THERE ANY ADVARTIZING COMPANIES WHO KNOW HOW TO DESING ADS??!!!? I am tired of being treated as if I do not have a brain in my head by ads that do nothing more than just sit there. I am tired of Flash ads that the designers think since they are using flash now the will get clicks. I am tired of going to web pages about art and seeing ads that not only do not go with the design of the website but have nothing to do with the web site. Who designs these ads anyway???

end rant



by Citizen joetheblow
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Maybe sites would not have to go to a point of subscriptions is the advertising world would stop and think about the designs of their ads and the sites they put them on.