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Lifetime Membership


wadjed

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I just wanted to find out if anyone else would be interested in lifetime membership I e-mailed Groundspeak about this and Allison Urban thought it might be a good idea and was going to forward it on to the powers that be. So heres my question are you interested? How much would you be willing to pay for such a membership?

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Yeah, some where in the $300-$500 range for those over 65.

 

But before they do the lifetime membership I would much rather they do a family membership. Does me zero good, but there are an awful lot of families asking for this and it really makes sense to me.

 

The best of all worlds is a family membership and also a lifetime membership. But if I had to chose I would say family membership.

 

Jim

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Not sure how many cachers would pay for a lifetime membership since there are sooooooo many that do the "freebie" thing. I like the idea, but $1000 is way overboard. Other lifetime memberships to organization don't cost near that. I could keep paying the $30 for 20 more years (hypothetically) and only be at $600, 30 years would only be $900. As fun as it is now, I honestly don't see myself committing to 30 years of geocaching. A good "lifetime membership" should be in the range of $300-$500 with discounts for age groups (whether old or young). Something better, may be a membership payment for an option of more than 1 year with auto renew. With discounts for the more years purchased.

 

Now a Family Membership I would really seriously consider, whether it be one or multiple years. That is very "do-able" for us. :( Instead of the $30 yearly, maybe have it $100 with a limit of 4 names with multiple names an additional cost (cheaper than individual of course).

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This is one of the few subscriptions I have that dose not have a lifetime option.

Really? Very few of mine have it.

 

As far as a pricing point of reference, Sirius satellite radio used to have a "lifetime" option for about $500. Considering the costs associated with operating something like that vs. geocaching.com, $500 might be a hard sell.

 

While I agree that family memberships (with associated group caching/logging features) would be more desirable, setting up a lifetime membership option would likely be a lot easier.

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I would maybe go $150, but not much more than that. It's crazy to think some people would shell out $500. I'd rather just pay the $30, which I haven't done, but just sayin. I paid $150 for lifetime web hosting and it's already paid for itself and am very glad I jumped on it. I think the amount of people who would pay over $200 is pretty small.

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My point in the whole "Lifetime Membership" is this Geocaching started in 2000 ok if you started in 2000 and you are still geocaching you have already paid 270.00 I personally quite interested in Geocaching for much longer than 9 years yes part of the lifetime membership is reduced cost but the main part is dedication and prestige in being part of something that teaches as well as gets everyone "off the couch". You can look at my details and see I have been a "free" member for a very short time, but when I commit to something it is for life and to go along with that should come some sort of pride in belonging to something that I feel will probably outlive me. ;)

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My point in the whole "Lifetime Membership" is this Geocaching started in 2000 ok if you started in 2000 and you are still geocaching you have already paid 270.00 I personally quite interested in Geocaching for much longer than 9 years yes part of the lifetime membership is reduced cost but the main part is dedication and prestige in being part of something that teaches as well as gets everyone "off the couch". You can look at my details and see I have been a "free" member for a very short time, but when I commit to something it is for life and to go along with that should come some sort of pride in belonging to something that I feel will probably outlive me. ;)

Actually "paid" memberships started around March of 2002. Those that got a membership that first year have the title "charter" member attached to them so long as they continue to renew.

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My point in the whole "Lifetime Membership" is this Geocaching started in 2000 ok if you started in 2000 and you are still geocaching you have already paid 270.00 I personally quite interested in Geocaching for much longer than 9 years yes part of the lifetime membership is reduced cost but the main part is dedication and prestige in being part of something that teaches as well as gets everyone "off the couch". You can look at my details and see I have been a "free" member for a very short time, but when I commit to something it is for life and to go along with that should come some sort of pride in belonging to something that I feel will probably outlive me. ;)

 

Will it outlive you?

 

Last year, the Rangers at Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada collected all of the physical caches and stated that they "were not allowed". This diminshed the value of GC.com to me.

 

Four months ago, California State Parks came out with a "policy" that put very stringent rules on cache placement. A month later, their spokesman went on record with The Los Angeles Daily News that it was not "policy", but simply "guidelines" for the park supervisors. The issue over "official statements" has caused a condition where our local reviewers are confused and reluctant to publish caches. Since I spend 90% of my hiking and geocaching in California State Parks, this greatly diminishes the value of the web site to me.

 

Frankly, I would be afraid to shell out big bucks for a lifetime membership, simply because of the fact that the the current trend of land managers is to tell us that we are not welcome. At this point, I can imagine that I will be a Geocacher for life, the question is, will I be allowed to be one.

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Four months ago, California State Parks came out with a "policy" that put very stringent rules on cache placement ... The issue over "official statements" has caused a condition where our local reviewers are confused and reluctant to publish caches.

That confusion only lasted a couple of weeks. Then the state parks published this list which makes it quite clear where geocaches are allowed. Last I checked over 70% of the parks allow caches with little or no limits. Only a few require explicit permission. No big deal.

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As far as placement of caches, it appears that if proper permission is obtained, there should not be any problems. On the timeline sorry I do see that I was off by a couple years, I am not advocating a 1000.00 lifetime membership, I am however pushing for the optiopn to purchase a lifetime membership at whatever Groundspeak decides is a fair price although this type of membership is not for everyone I myself would pay 300-500 for a membership of this caliber.

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Not sure how many cachers would pay for a lifetime membership since there are sooooooo many that do the "freebie" thing. I like the idea, but $1000 is way overboard. Other lifetime memberships to organization don't cost near that. I could keep paying the $30 for 20 more years (hypothetically) and only be at $600, 30 years would only be $900. As fun as it is now, I honestly don't see myself committing to 30 years of geocaching. A good "lifetime membership" should be in the range of $300-$500 with discounts for age groups (whether old or young). Something better, may be a membership payment for an option of more than 1 year with auto renew. With discounts for the more years purchased.

 

That assumes the yearly rate stays the same for the next 30 years doesn't it?

Besides being paid for life I think some places that have lifetime membership also put you on a list, or give you a special gift.

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Well I do hope Groundspeak considers what I have submitted I would like to pay once and forget about the payment after that so I can spend more time caching.:)

 

Yeah, that yearly auto-renewal thing is a pain.

 

Unless it's a tremendous savings like $100 for a lifetime membership I'm not interested in forking up a bunch of money now just to save a few dollars over the next twenty years..

Edited by BlueDeuce
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I kinda-sorta HAVE a lifetime membership. :D

$3 per month for the rest of my life! :)

 

It's a gamble to see who is gonna last longer and still be interested...$360 for ten more years of this.

 

1) Will I still be interested and able to Geocache in ten years?

 

2) Will Geocaching still be around in ten years?

 

EDIT: to fix capital b parenthesis snafu

Edited by AZcachemeister
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Yeah, that yearly auto-renewal thing is a pain.

 

Unless it's a tremendous savings like $100 for a lifetime membership I'm not interested in forking up a bunch of money now just to save a few dollars over the next twenty years..

 

You may be surprised. I am an Amateur Radio operator and have a lifetime subscription to QST magazine. Without it I would pay $39 a year. Other than the magazine all I got was a plaque and some additional access on the web site, mostly allowing me to look up past articles.

 

With the average age of an amateur at 53, many still shell out the current price for a lifetime subscription that is now sitting at around $1000 (they list them in the mag each month as they sign up). Even when I got my subscription about 13 years ago, it was at $800. They do offer a payment plan, I think.

 

Having said this, I would also like to see a multi-year subscription option as well to accommodate that one size doesn't fit all.

 

I think there some that would "risk" a few hundred to support the site.

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I'm a member of a different site that offers 6 month, 12 month and a lifetime option at $15, $30 and $150 respectively. Unless Groundspeak offers something comparible to those numbers, I doubt I'd go for it.

 

I'm one fo the people that geezfools mentioned: anything over that amount and it's a little much. I'll stick to the $30 a year option.

 

Thank you for your interest though.

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Why don't they just give you an option to renew for X number of years.

 

Right now, all I can do is renew for 1 year. Let me pick how many years I want to renew for.....Drop Down List Box?

 

---------------------------

 

<Lets just round it down to a nice even $1000. Of course with some kind of over 55 discount - maybe $500>

 

the problem with a Life Time Membership is that If I pay $500 bucks for a liftime membership and I croak eating a HotWing....then I'm out $500 bucks.....LOL

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<Lets just round it down to a nice even $1000. Of course with some kind of over 55 discount - maybe $500>

 

the problem with a Life Time Membership is that If I pay $500 bucks for a liftime membership and I croak eating a HotWing....then I'm out $500 bucks.....LOL

 

You aren't out the $500 is you croak. Your heirs are!! :)

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<Lets just round it down to a nice even $1000. Of course with some kind of over 55 discount - maybe $500>

 

For those of you who are REALLY willing to pay such an amount of money in advance...:

 

I don't know what kinds of bank accounts they offer in the US. In Germany, there's a thing that's called "Tagesgeldkonto" I don't know how to translate that. It's an account where you keep your spare money and which is reduced in functionality, you don't get credit cards and you may transfer money only to one reference account. In exchange for that they give you good interest, like 3,5% to 4% and the money is still accessible at any time, no risks involved.

 

So, what you may want to do is to just get such an account, put 1000$ on it and wait. Each year you'll be receiving a little more money in interest than what you need for your gc.com membership.

 

Oh, and the 1000 bucks are still yours, too! :)

 

best,

Pulvertoastmann

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Most places that offer lifetime memberships are non-profits or magazines. I can't think of another business aside from TiVo that offers one and even they discontinued the service after a couple years (please don't start listing lifetime memberships, I'm just making generalizations).

 

We're a pretty small company so there's no telling what we'll look like in 5, 10 years from now. Committing to a lifetime membership is just not something we're in a position to do.

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Most places that offer lifetime memberships are non-profits or magazines. I can't think of another business aside from TiVo that offers one and even they discontinued the service after a couple years (please don't start listing lifetime memberships, I'm just making generalizations).

We're a pretty small company so there's no telling what we'll look like in 5, 10 years from now. Committing to a lifetime membership is just not something we're in a position to do.

"Lifetime memberships" are typically bad business for small businesses, especially one where subscriptions are a significant revenue source. You get a rapid inflow of money right at the start, but then the money starts to dry up unless you can sell memberships to lots more people. Ultimately, membership levels will always level off (not a lot of new membership sales), so suddenly all those legacy members become dead weight to drag the company down.

 

I don't know how much money Groundspeak gets from subscriptions vs. advertisements vs. shop sales, but my bet is that subscriptions is a decent percentage. Unless they can find a significant revenue source to replace subscriptions, a lifetime membership option is a bad idea for Groundspeak.

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I just wanted to find out if anyone else would be interested in lifetime membership I e-mailed Groundspeak about this and Allison Urban thought it might be a good idea and was going to forward it on to the powers that be. So heres my question are you interested? How much would you be willing to pay for such a membership?

 

I recently e-mailed Groundspeak about a family membership option whereupon up to four cachers in your family could share a premium membership. My suggestion for a price point would be $75 per year for this option.

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I recently e-mailed Groundspeak about a family membership option whereupon up to four cachers in your family could share a premium membership. My suggestion for a price point would be $75 per year for this option.

 

It's been discussed before. They like the idea but have yet to implement it.

 

See: This post

 

and here.

Edited by BlueDeuce
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Why don't they just give you an option to renew for X number of years.

 

Right now, all I can do is renew for 1 year. Let me pick how many years I want to renew for.....Drop Down List Box?

 

 

Couldn't you just set up multiple 1 year memberships under the same account?

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Yea, it would be nice to have a "discount" if you pay for say 3 or 5 years at a time. I'd have nothing against a lifetime membership either.

 

I would definitely buy into a lifetime membership, but only at a VERY reasonable price. $500 isn't. Also, if it were anything over about $100-$150, many of us would need a payment plan over a period of 3 months or so. I'm a disabled vet, so it's hard for me to just scrape up an extra couple hundred $$$'s when I need it. (Contrary to what some think, we DAV's DON'T get paid alot of money....but we do get free medical, which helps out alot) The same thing can be said with "regular" retirees also. Many of them can't exactly shell out a couple hundred at a pop.

 

But if either of the two options above were offered, I'd definitely go for it. I have several lifetime memberships now....DAV, Masons, VFW, couple others....they all offered a payment plan which made it easy. And the benefit that Groundspeak gets from this is lump sums of money at one time that they can invest for the interest. Everyone wins.

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We're a pretty small company so there's no telling what we'll look like in 5, 10 years from now. Committing to a lifetime membership is just not something we're in a position to do.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, please, but it seems that you already do commit to a lifetime membership... but only for certain users. The iPhone app seems to be a one-time $9.99 purchase that gets live data from the geocaching.com servers for any nearby caches. While this isn't the only premium member feature, I daresay the most used premium member feature is pocket queries which are then used to load GPS devices with all caches in an area where caching is anticipated. Those GPX files are often also loaded in PDAs to provide paperless caching. Both of these features seem to be provided by the much cheaper iPhone app (provided you already have the iPhone) and without any prior planning.

 

Another premium feature invalided by the iPhone app is the caches along a route feature. Why would you need to pre-plan caches along a certain route when you can just open the app on your phone at any location and request all nearby geocaches.

 

I could be wrong, but the only remaining premium features I see that hold any value once you've spent your $10 for the geocaching app are the "My finds" pocket query for generating stats and the members only caches.

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We're a pretty small company so there's no telling what we'll look like in 5, 10 years from now. Committing to a lifetime membership is just not something we're in a position to do.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, please, but it seems that you already do commit to a lifetime membership... but only for certain users. The iPhone app seems to be a one-time $9.99 purchase that gets live data from the geocaching.com servers for any nearby caches. While this isn't the only premium member feature, I daresay the most used premium member feature is pocket queries which are then used to load GPS devices with all caches in an area where caching is anticipated. Those GPX files are often also loaded in PDAs to provide paperless caching. Both of these features seem to be provided by the much cheaper iPhone app (provided you already have the iPhone) and without any prior planning.

 

Another premium feature invalided by the iPhone app is the caches along a route feature. Why would you need to pre-plan caches along a certain route when you can just open the app on your phone at any location and request all nearby geocaches.

 

I could be wrong, but the only remaining premium features I see that hold any value once you've spent your $10 for the geocaching app are the "My finds" pocket query for generating stats and the members only caches.

I could be wrong, but you still need a premium membership to take advantage of the PQs to download to the iPhone. The $9.99 then, is for the purchase of the app to take advantage of what is already available to unpaid memberships but out in the field in a usable format.

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