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The cost of membership.


Bilbobaker

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This is like a tax debate but.. if you lower your cost of yearly admission you will explode you contributing members.

Why not try and see.

Ten bucks membership will eventually explode the numbers and partisanship,

It just the facts,,

 

 

....just the facts,,

1) Membership is free.

2) Membership levels are just fine... or too high as it is.

3) This is no 'tax debate'... if you want bennies, you pay for them. If you don't, don't.

4) Explosion isn't a good thing anyway you look at it.

 

....just the facts,,
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Ten bucks membership will eventually explode the numbers and partisanship,

 

 

...and many feel that this would be an undesirable outcome. Enough of the explosions! We've already had the "explosion effects" of smart phone applications and they're not all positive ones.

 

MrsB

 

+ 1........I miss the old days.

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Let's see. A pack of smokes per day at $10/pack(canadian) is at least $3000 a year. Gas for me just to go to work is $1200. phone bill is about $600 a year. going to see movies once a month is probably around $240 per year. My old hobby of paintball could easily be $600-$1500 a year just for paint. $30 a year is not that bad. In fact I pay more than that on haircuts. An I'm willing to bet a lot of people spend more than that on coffee at Tim Horton's or worse, Starbucks per month.

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This is like a tax debate but.. if you lower your cost of yearly admission you will explode you contributing members.

Why not try and see.

Ten bucks membership will eventually explode the numbers and partisanship,

You've got it backwards. These concepts are already well understood and, in fact, are the reasons premium membership is only $30 bucks instead of some perfectly reasonable but much higher number. I don't actually know what rate new members are signing up, but from where I sit, the population already appears to be exploding, just as you suggest it should if the rate were low enough.

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This is like a tax debate but.. if you lower your cost of yearly admission you will explode you contributing members.

Why not try and see.

Ten bucks membership will eventually explode the numbers and partisanship,

It just the facts,,

 

Why do we want an exploding membership? I can see why Groundspeak might, but I'd kind of like to see fewer, myself.

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In 2000 not many people owned handheld GPS units, and there were much less people than today who had internet access. Currently you don't need any GPS or computer, only a $10 app added to the cost of a smartphone. I don't know how much easier it can get, but it appears that there are many more caches than ever before with much lower quality, in the locations, in the swag, and in the sparse logs.

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don't forget we would need to add paying members at a rate higher than 3x's the rate now. At 3x members added we stay even with the amount of money the premium memberships make now.

That's a lot of new members!

 

Actually it would have to add members at multiples of that. You have to account for the reduced income from the multitudes who are current members.

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lets remove the free memberships compleetly

and see what happens..

my guess is : better :-)

 

we want quality players,

not kids and one week members creating caches that are bad and newer maintained,

so we need to go and CITO all the bad ones all the time.

 

stuff you get for free, is seldomly worth anything,

but if you PAY for stuff, you take more care of it..

Edited by OZ2CPU
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$30 is very fair, and inexpensive. In fact, if Groundspeak made it $60 a year, they would still keep most of the premium accounts so give Groundspeak credit for not just thinking of profits either (although I'm sure they do make a good profit, as they should).

Edited by gpsblake
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lets remove the free memberships compleetly

and see what happens..

my guess is : better :-)

 

we want quality players,

not kids and one week members creating caches that are bad and newer maintained,

so we need to go and CITO all the bad ones all the time.

 

stuff you get for free, is seldomly worth anything,

but if you PAY for stuff, you take more care of it..

 

so, you think a family which has 4 accounts, one say for the main interest person...and then one for the wife and then one for the 8 yr old and another for 10 year old, you expect them to suddenly pay $120 when they paid $30?

 

I think the current system is fair.

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This is like a tax debate but.. if you lower your cost of yearly admission you will explode you contributing members.

Why not try and see.

Ten bucks membership will eventually explode the numbers and partisanship,

It just the facts,,

More members, more bandwidth, more cost for Groundspeak. Anyone that can't afford 8.2 cents a day for membership can't afford a GPS

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This is like a tax debate but.. if you lower your cost of yearly admission you will explode you contributing members.

Why not try and see.

Ten bucks membership will eventually explode the numbers and partisanship,

It just the facts,,

 

Why do we want an exploding membership? I can see why Groundspeak might, but I'd kind of like to see fewer, myself.

Can I give exploding memberships as gifts? A couple of people come to mind... :ph34r:

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This is like a tax debate but.. if you lower your cost of yearly admission you will explode you contributing members.

Why not try and see.

Ten bucks membership will eventually explode the numbers and partisanship,

It just the facts,,

 

Why do we want an exploding membership? I can see why Groundspeak might, but I'd kind of like to see fewer, myself.

Can I give exploding memberships as gifts? A couple of people come to mind... :ph34r:

Wow! I hope those are not geocachers...

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Not the facts, just one new person's opinion.

And the price has never increased since the beginning of paid premium membership.

I think we have enough phone app dilettantes around here already.

 

tftp

 

Ten bucks membership will eventually explode the numbers and partisanship,

 

 

...and many feel that this would be an undesirable outcome. Enough of the explosions! We've already had the "explosion effects" of smart phone applications and they're not all positive ones.

 

 

tftp

 

tftp

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This is like a tax debate but.. if you lower your cost of yearly admission you will explode you contributing members.

Why not try and see.

Ten bucks membership will eventually explode the numbers and partisanship,

It just the facts,,

 

Why do we want an exploding membership? I can see why Groundspeak might, but I'd kind of like to see fewer, myself.

Can I give exploding memberships as gifts? A couple of people come to mind... :ph34r:

 

Do you really want to be known as the UniCacher?

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Perhaps a different approach would make a membership attractive for new members. That may not be desirable for all geocachers but probably for Groundspeak ;-)

 

The term "Premium Member" leaves space for another member level above "Basic Membership".

 

I could imagine a "Plus Member". Perhaps especially for (those) smartphone users. You purchase the geocaching app for i.e. $7,50 and get half a year "Plus Membership" included. This means that you can import geocaches to that smartphone app/account only (limited Live API access). Membership can be extended each 6 months for $7,50 (or 5$) by "In-App Purchase" or "upgraded" to a normal Premium Membership.

 

That would make geocaching perhaps more attractive to those users which currently use "unapproved apps" on their smartphone.

Edited by SKAMS
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Perhaps a different approach would make a membership attractive for new members. That may not be desirable for all geocachers but probably for Groundspeak ;-)

 

The term "Premium Member" leaves space for another member level above "Basic Membership".

 

I could imagine a "Plus Member". Perhaps especially for (those) smartphone users. You purchase the geocaching app for i.e. $7,50 and get half a year "Plus Membership" included. What means that you can import geocaches to that smartphone app/accound only (Live API access). Membership can be extended each 6 months for $7,50 by "In-App Purchase" or "upgraded" to a normal Premium Membership.

 

That would make geocaching perhaps more attractive to those users which currently use "unapproved apps" on their smartphone.

 

I'm still wondering what problem we're trying to solve here.

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I agree with the dog.

 

I have no clue how many premium members their are. Honestly, I don't much care. To some extent, I want their to be 'enough' so that TPTB make money and the company survives, but that's my level of caring about the issue. If TPTB feel that something must be done to boost membership, I imagine that they will make decisions that promote membership. (That is not to say that they don't already do that.)

 

I will say that I seriously doubt that they will either lower the cost of premium membership or do away with free memberships to further this goal.

Edited by sbell111
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Ever notice that if you get the year's membership ($3 a month), it's less than the three monthes membership ($3.33 a month)? Always nice to try it out, though.

 

Yes, I would agree. I would love a premium membership, but I also wish it were less expensive. If you think about it, though, you get plenty of benefits with a basic membership. I would say that until people start caching more (from what I'm at right now), it would be a good idea for a PM.

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TFTC = Thanks For The Cache

TFTP = Thanks For The Post

Okay, I was close but still confused. Apparently we've replaced the 1+ without telling me.
In this case, I don't think +1 means the same thing.

 

As the saying goes, it's not funny if you have to explain it.

 

Ok, Ok. Let me know when the internet has sarcasm, irony, humor font.

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Gotta disagree with the OP. I say raise it up to $100/year, no more freebies, and eliminate the riff raff......is what I would really like to say, but courtesy forbids me to say that out loud, so I won't.

Paying membership keeps this ship afloat, and has not gone up since day one. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

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