Premium Member Benefits, what's yours?

xIsabel38

xIsabel38

Well-known member
So getting people to buy into Premium Status is difficult, I'm trying to come up with a list of offers.

I want to go above and beyond the normal.

The normal to me is a CSS Styled name, Premium Member type rank or banner, a private premium type discussion board, maybe even utilizing the Medal add-on to create some Medals.

Okay that's fine and dandy but what are some other thoughts and ideas?
Blogs?
Articles?
Access to some password protected feature?

What do you guys do for your Premium Members?

Here's a list from the community on what they do which may or may not help you. Please note that if you don't like a specific suggestion, simply move on to the next. There's no need for flames here.

  • Username Styling through CSS such as colors and effects
  • Premium Rank Banner or Image
  • Access to Private Premium/VIP/or Adult type boards (Moderated or Unmoderated)
  • Increased Attachment Size/Avatar Size/Conversations allowed/ Or Post Edit Limits
  • Allowing Temporary 24 hours bans on a BIG board with thousands of posts daily.-Note: This is not a good idea for smaller communities
  • Giving away Free Mousepads or T-Shirts or reducing the price of such items
  • Giving Spam Tool permissions to allow users to combat spam themselves
  • Ability to purchase points or Tokens for use with other Add-ons such as the Arcade
  • Ability to Splatter another user's Avatar for 24 hours with "Eggs, Bulletholes, etc..."
  • Member Poke Functions
  • Disable Advertisements
  • Listed on a Donor Page
  • Special Icons such as a Medal in the User's Postbit
  • Messing with a User's "User title"
  • Ability to change Username
  • Ability to Download Free items
 
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On very busy forum. And by busy, I mean a few thousand users online and posting daily...

We allowed you to ban a member for a single day. But you could only do it to 1 member and not repeatedly to the same member. It would cost them $25 to do it in addition to already being a subscriber (had to be subscriber to do it)

This surprisingly actually did bring in more people to subscribe than anything else we offered.

And before anyone thinks that sound stupid....

Who hasn't wanted the authority to ban someone outright on any given community?!

(be honest)
 
Adam Howard said:
On very busy forum. And by busy, I mean a few thousand users online and posting daily...

We allowed you to ban a member for a single day. But you could only do it to 1 member and not repeatedly to the same member. It would cost them $25 to do it in addition to already being a subscriber (had to be subscriber to do it)

This surprisingly actually did bring in more people to subscribe than anything else we offered.

And before anyone thinks that sound stupid....

Who hasn't wanted the authority to ban someone outright on any given community?!

(be honest)
Click to expand...

How did the banned members take it. I was a member of a large forum that had some members that I'm sure people would line up to daily ban them. I'm sure the could be banned for a few months, even with each member only allowed to do it for a day.

James
 
Haha, I can't tell you how many times I wanted to suspend someone for a couple days if not ban them entirely. Working as a forum V-Moderator for SOE, a V-Moderator for DarkSoulsWiki.WikiSpaces.com, and a V-Moderator for a PlanetSide Related Fansite, I definitely learned a thing or two about what users should not be posting and how they like to get around the censors put in place.
 
Flexin said:
How did the banned members take it. I was a member of a large forum that had some members that I'm sure people would line up to daily ban them. I'm sure the could be banned for a few months, even with each member only allowed to do it for a day.

James
Click to expand...

  • You already had to be a paying subscriber to ban people
  • You needed to pay an additional $25 to ban each person ($25 each)
  • You couldn't go on a mass ban spree as you could only ban 1 person at a time
  • While you were banned others couldn't add to your ban time
  • If the person was a subscriber who was banned, they would be credited for the missed day
 
xIsabel38 said:
Haha, I can't tell you how many times I wanted to suspend someone for a couple days if not ban them entirely. Working as a forum V-Moderator for SOE, a V-Moderator for DarkSoulsWiki.WikiSpaces.com, and a V-Moderator for a PlanetSide Related Fansite, I definitely learned a thing or two about what users should not be posting and how they like to get around the censors put in place.
Click to expand...
People have their strengths and their weaknesses.

And one human weakness is people don't always seem to be able to co-exist. So they'll troll each other back and forth to the point where they want the staff to step in. Well, why not let themselves step in at a cost?!

Make their weakness of unwilling to walk away or just drop whatever the issue is .... a profitable one.

Note: This only works on a large community. Don't try this on a small site.
 
Go well that's good, definitely a different option. Any one else? How do you treat your Premiums!

I may have to look into this, provided my site becomes that active in the first place.
 
Adam Howard said:
On very busy forum. And by busy, I mean a few thousand users online and posting daily...

We allowed you to ban a member for a single day. But you could only do it to 1 member and not repeatedly to the same member. It would cost them $25 to do it in addition to already being a subscriber (had to be subscriber to do it)

This surprisingly actually did bring in more people to subscribe than anything else we offered.

And before anyone thinks that sound stupid....

Who hasn't wanted the authority to ban someone outright on any given community?!

(be honest)
Click to expand...
It may suit boards that the average age is 12, but not a business or any other board that most of the vistors are adults. It's just plain stupid in my opinion.
 
xIsabel38 said:
Go well that's good, definitely a different option. Any one else? How do you treat your Premiums!

I may have to look into this, provided my site becomes that active in the first place.
Click to expand...
OK, so your site is smaller.....

On another site, subscribers had the option to (soft) delete spammers.

This sounds kind of silly, but we gave subscribers the power to use the spam tool, with the understanding that it was not to be abused (or else).

Surprisingly enough, people loved it. :eek: They take pride in "defending" their community and rather reporting it and waiting for a staff member... They took care of it themselves.
 
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Adam Howard said:
Physical age - mental age + internet drama = wow
Click to expand...
You may earn $25 from one person that banned another person who could, potentially, create a unique content that would be worth $2500 for you. This person got the idea that everybody with $25 can ban him/her for saying "things that don't suit X person(s)", so he or she would leave and would never comeback.
So yea, good luck with $25.

I see this as pure damage to any community, in terms of free speech and SEO power (and of course, building a supportive community or any at all).
 
Okay yeah, so this isn't a flame fest thread. This is a "What do you do for your Premium Members" thread. In that effect, Adam's response is valid regardless of how people may feel about it. Thus, please keep the flames out and keep the ideas flowing.
 
Moshe1010 said:
You may earn $25 from one person that banned another person who could, potentially, create a unique content that would be worth $2500 for you. This person got the idea that everybody with $25 can ban him/her for saying "things that don't suit X person(s)", so he or she would leave and would never comeback.
So yea, good luck with $25.

I see this as pure damage to any community, in terms of free speech and SEO power (and of course, building a supportive community or any at all).
Click to expand...
The odds of 1 person posting a $2,500 thread are slim.

Further this brought in on average $3,000 extra per month on top of the subscription fee already collected.

And that is only with an average of 4 bans per day out of the 25,000+ members. As I said, this only works on large communities.

But you're welcome to your difference of an opinion :)
 

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xIsabel38 said:
Okay yeah, so this isn't a flame fest thread. This is a "What do you do for your Premium Members" thread. In that effect, Adam's response is valid regardless of how people may feel about it. Thus, please keep the flames out and keep the ideas flowing.
Click to expand...
Free mouse pad.

People love having something that they can actually physically touch and feel. Subscribers would get a free mouse pad with our site's logo on it (of course the subscription fee covered the cost).

We would change this over time from a free mouse pad to a free t-shirt, thus allow our subscribers to advertize our community by wearing a t-shirt with out logo.
 
Personally, I'd never join a forum that offers banning people as a perk. Very unprofessional for a community regardless of the content of the forum.

Several forums have purchased and using a paid mod that I have in the RM that let's you purchase points via PayPal to use in any point mod like [bd]bank, mypoints, etc. There are several mods including xF Arcade that you can charge members points to use. On my site I use the Arcade, a threw eggs at avatar and a member poke. These all cost points to use, members can earn points by activity along with purchasing more points via Paypal.
 
Can't say I have much experience as an admin to answer this question but things influencing me to buy a premium membership are:
  • access to a private area/forums - if a knowledge based forum access to extra helpful purpose made content like plans, free addons/downloads, fact sheets, etc
  • more time to edit posts and conversations (I got this request yesterday by a member in fact)
  • ability to add (not just view) special content for a purpose like an article or to sell or show-off (bobsters showcase is a good addon example)
  • No Ads
  • more styles to choose
  • recognition as a valued contributor to the community via a banner/badge or by being invited over for dinner at admins place - I'm joking :D
 
Being a premium member at any forum that I would run would be an oxymoron.

In all seriousness I have a decent idea that I think would work but I would need to code it first, and before I got motivated to do that I would actually have to start up a forum.
 
For me, it's:

• No ads
• Ribbon on their avatar
• Listed on the donor page (which has a tab)
• A little helmet under their avatar

Sheldon has a add-on which allows shooting holes in other people's avatar which I might add soon.
 
* enable/disable ads switch
* can upload more and larger attachments
* can upload more and larger pictures
* can have more private messages (conversations in XF)
* can spy on others posting new posts / threads (Digital Point Spy)
* can change username (once / year)
* has bold username and rank banner
* has access to a bunch of free downloads
* has access to a private premium member subforum
* can buy t-shirts at a reduced price

(Members pay a one time fee of €39.95 , yes I tried monthly or yearly payments but it did not work very well.)

Adam Howard said:
OK, so your site is smaller.....

On another site, subscribers had the option to (soft) delete spammers.

This sounds kind of silly, but we gave subscribers the power to use the spam tool, with the understanding that it was not to be abused (or else).

Surprisingly enough, people loved it. They take pride in "defending" their community and rather reporting it and waiting for a staff member... They took care of it themselves.
Click to expand...
This is interesting. As I'm thinking of starting a new forum that would be a general discussion forum but different from all others in that it would be without censorship or even mods. The idea is to have kind of an anarchy, where members just take care of things like spam etc. I'm also thinking by myself this is silly it will probably not work, but hearing from you that they took the responsibility again is interesting. It may still require some limitations for certain age groups though.
 
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