Paid subscription - thoughts n discussion

[uRmad]

Originally Posted by coolrahine

paid memenership is not the solution and well we feel that this forum is for guys who need info for their career as for now they can ask without any hesitation but then after this site becums paid it will ad as a detterent .................. so now students will have to bear with membership cost over and above the application cost for mba..............

I guess Allwin has pretty clearly mentioned up-front that free membership shall ALWAYS exist....No one's gonna be denied the right to post for not having paid !! The attempt here is to to guage and determine what kinda paid model would be ideal. Yes, the pms/avtars/sigs may not matter to a lotta ppl, but yea, also do remember that while paying for any membership, you are , more than anything else, infact contributing your 2p towards the maintenance of the forum....

Originally Posted by MavericK

In a land where ppl go to the extent of drinking phenyl if provided free, making this site even partly-paid is not such a good option, for it might turn out into a case of if not PG, then TIME.

Err..Isn't that an over-simplification, Anil

Cheers

[donB]

I can see what Maverick's point is but this cannot go on for free for a long period of time. Apart from advertisements why not restrict the free access of forum...maybe the archives can be made out of bounds... @ pagalguy.com email id? [but wud that be feasible in the era of gmail?]...

Also we need to build the forum wrt ppl with payin capacity and those who've seen the benefits of the forum....how many Bschool grads come to PG? uve been around only since sept 2002 and how many of the early PGites are out of Bschool?

[keviv]

I second Maverick's opinion.


PG sir, Is it possible that you collaborate with one of the coaching centres and they will partially bear the cost of running the site? I understand that this may result into a bias towards that institute. But the contract can be designed carefully so that spirit of PG remains intact.

Another problem that I see is the mode of online payment if you make the membership a paid one. Not many students use credit cards and till the mode of payment is not convenient, not many new members shall pour in.

I feel that PG should wait for a few more years. The PG members who have gotten into IIMs will surely express their gratitude once they start raking in the moolah! And I guess there are quite many of such grateful PGites in IIMs and there will be many more in the coming years.

Moreover, PG and the few other mods, who have built up quite a reputation for themselves should talk to the coaching centres and arrange for lectures whereing they would come and counsel students for MBA education. This may also bring in some money. I am sure students in places like Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Chennai etc. will rush to such lectures because whether regular at PG or not, almost every serious CAT aspirant in a big city knows of PG.

But please do not make the forum a paid one.

All the best.

-Vivek

[pagalguy]

Let me reiterate again .. free accounts will be available . That said, even if we accept coaching class ads, at NO point will they will have any control over the data/posts here. So rest assured about that.

The subscription services are to provide more features and support pagalguy.com as well and will be OPTIONAL.

Originally Posted by keviv

I second Maverick's opinion.


PG sir, Is it possible that you collaborate with one of the coaching centres and they will partially bear the cost of running the site? I understand that this may result into a bias towards that institute. But the contract can be designed carefully so that spirit of PG remains intact.

Another problem that I see is the mode of online payment if you make the membership a paid one. Not many students use credit cards and till the mode of payment is not convenient, not many new members shall pour in.

I feel that PG should wait for a few more years. The PG members who have gotten into IIMs will surely express their gratitude once they start raking in the moolah! And I guess there are quite many of such grateful PGites in IIMs and there will be many more in the coming years.

Moreover, PG and the few other mods, who have built up quite a reputation for themselves should talk to the coaching centres and arrange for lectures whereing they would come and counsel students for MBA education. This may also bring in some money. I am sure students in places like Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Chennai etc. will rush to such lectures because whether regular at PG or not, almost every serious CAT aspirant in a big city knows of PG.

But please do not make the forum a paid one.

All the best.

-Vivek

[alcatraz]

totally agree with the point of view that the free part shud always be there and even ppl who do not pay shud have full access to the resource base.

The knowledge base shud be available for all,if they wanna pay..fine.....i think the "fun" part of PG shud be taxed....chit-chat to start with....i say this because of the kind of spamming we have been seeing these days

may I also suggest another section in PG which wud have stuff like B-School Ranking(is allwin fuming ? )

members getting pagalguy e mail ids ,avatar etc. for sure


more suggstions pls.


Anish

[DesiGuru]

First try this... provide a online money transfer for the donation...
Depending on the donation give additional benefits... Never say there is such a thing as a paid subscription for now... Unless you can come up with more interesting services do not mention the word paid subscription... Lets say you have a paid subscription user can you ban the user?

K

[pagalguy]

Originally Posted by DesiGuru

First try this... provide a online money transfer for the donation...
Depending on the donation give additional benefits... Never say there is such a thing as a paid subscription for now... Unless you can come up with more interesting services do not mention the word paid subscription... Lets say you have a paid subscription user can you ban the user?

K

Yes, can ban.

[rajsher]

Originally Posted by DesiGuru

First try this... provide a online money transfer for the donation...
Depending on the donation give additional benefits... Never say there is such a thing as a paid subscription for now... Unless you can come up with more interesting services do not mention the word paid subscription... Lets say you have a paid subscription user can you ban the user?

K

The user can surely be banned and his rest of the money refunded.........
Another option can be banning the user and giving him an option to have a new ID and start afresh and if the mistake is repeated, then kick ***.

I guess the approach discussed till now seems very very effective and more method will keep coming.

Firstly the free access means no hesitation in teh minds of new joinees.
Free access means open access and not restricted at all.
The new user will not like to contribute their 2cents towards the foruum and they will do away with add-ons like PM, avatars and signature etc.
(I would like to add here the importance of PM. Many people ask queries to the members. Ranging from prep towards cat to job exp and appreciating ppl for contribution, help, wishes etc etc.) The community feeling becomes more stronger

And when they bcome old enough members of PG to understand the need for contributions then they will automatically try to contribute and the easiest way wud be becoming a paid member.

[chinmay686]

I may not be the best person to comment ,since I am one of those silent spectators,who tries to extract everything rather than contributing anything to PG....still,in recent times I have seen a continuous drift of P.G towards threads non-relevant to the primary objective(those termed as spams...)of course with due respect to sm excellent old threads with vast pool of resources.....with workpressure,there might be too many pple like me who prefer to be inactive(by choice ofcourse...).
regarding paid subscription,thats a good idea ...but as already being mentioned,there sud be a free subscription...but the PGite who chose to pay must get smthng extra...like say compilation of resources..sm online tests...daily updated question bank..relative ranking..an exclusive chat room...etc..I mean sm features for which will be worth paying...

[scdhruv]

my take:
DONT EVEN THINK ABOUT IT.

firstly: PG is growing. and so is internet penetration, why to hamper the growth.wait for higher user base.
second: PG is changing i mean a lot of members keep on adding and a lot leave. so in such a circumstance experience ppl is what PG should have to help newbies. who might be willing to pay but i dont think anyone would be interested in giving advice at a cost. so ultimately it will lead to lower amount of experinced users. and hence degradation in quality.


alternate solution:
there isnt any.

this concept is simply not sustainable.
you need other services which is going to pay for it.
one way would be sell it to some google, yahoo, MSN, amazon etc.
other is get some financial backing and provide email, search, or anyother similar facility
i suggest an online Bazzaaar . where everything is available ( but thats a different matter alltogether)