FanFooty paid memberships

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m0nty

m0nty

Premiership Player
Veteran
Jan 22, 2005
3,409
32
Richmond
AFL Club
Hawthorn
After the jump in traffic for FanFooty over the last two weeks, it has become much harder for me to justify offering all of its services for free, if only because the site is unreachable for me at all during games now so running the score update scripts is impossible.

The solution, as suggested in the DT thread, is for access to live scoring pages to be restricted to paid subscribers. This is not what I had wanted, but I'm not made of money and the ad dollars aren't exactly flowing in.

If such a thing is to be implemented, what sort of price would you be willing to pay?
 

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I got all my mates into Fanfooty at the start of this season, they love it, but not a single one of them would pay a thing to use it. I don't use Paypal either so that counts me out.
 
Have to admit i prob wouldnt pay either, tho i might, Im fairly hardcore but i doubt any of my mates would pay for it but if you are looking for a solution to cut users down to make the site more acessible and usable it may be your only option
 
I pay US$99/month for bandwidth, but the ads are currently covering that and then some. Of course, if traffic gets lowered then the ads will drop too. I worked out that I'd need 50 people to sign up for $5 paid memberships to break even for the rest of the year. Would 50 out of 2200 pay up? Dunno. However, it can't go on like this, the site is under too much load.

I paid for Yahoo Gamechannel last year for live scoring for fantasy baseball, and they charged US$9.95 for the season. As I said in the DT thread, my preference is for $5 for the half-year in 2006, and $10 for the full 2007 season.
 
m0nty said:
I pay US$99/month for bandwidth, but the ads are currently covering that and then some. Of course, if traffic gets lowered then the ads will drop too. I worked out that I'd need 50 people to sign up for $5 paid memberships to break even for the rest of the year. Would 50 out of 2200 pay up? Dunno. However, it can't go on like this, the site is under too much load.

I paid for Yahoo Gamechannel last year for live scoring for fantasy baseball, and they charged US$9.95 for the season. As I said in the DT thread, my preference is for $5 for the half-year in 2006, and $10 for the full 2007 season.
Click to expand...

enter a "win a server" competition...
 
m0nty said:
I pay US$99/month for bandwidth, but the ads are currently covering that and then some. Of course, if traffic gets lowered then the ads will drop too. I worked out that I'd need 50 people to sign up for $5 paid memberships to break even for the rest of the year. Would 50 out of 2200 pay up? Dunno. However, it can't go on like this, the site is under too much load.

I paid for Yahoo Gamechannel last year for live scoring for fantasy baseball, and they charged US$9.95 for the season. As I said in the DT thread, my preference is for $5 for the half-year in 2006, and $10 for the full 2007 season.
Click to expand...
You'd get at least 20 from bigfooty IMO.
 
I understand the costs of running a site since I have a few myself, so $10 a year is very reasonable and if people are not willing to pay then its their loss.
 
heres a probably "dumb" idea

make subscription 2 bucks

1. reduce team no.s to 1 for non-paying suscribers
2. allow non-payers to view scores, but not LIVE SCORE

payees get unlimited teams and live scores
 

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That's much the same as what I was planning, sheller. Though I'm leaning towards $5 for 2006 / $10 next year, and four external teams (i.e. DT, SC) - private leagues would be unlimited. Four teams allows one DT and one SC, plus if you want to enter in your opponent's team for either comp then you can. Of course I'd allow non-payers to view scores after the games are over, that was never in doubt since the problems don't happen after the games.
 
Doesn't sound too bad, you won't lose any people, as if they can access scores after the event then I don't think they'd leave the site. And any hardcore people will still want live scoring and will be happy to pay the cash.
 
This is what I think M0nty:

Make it $10.

To Those who dont pay

1. Make it free to create 2 Teams PER scoring system offered by Fanfooty, With NO Live Scoring.
2. Cannot look at player profiles / past stats.

To Those Who Pay

1. They can make upto 5 Teams PER scoring system, WITH Live Scoring.
2. Are able to access all player profiles / past stats.
3. Other Incentives
 
I appreciate Skooks' suggestions both here and on IM. I'm not in this just for the money though!

Player profiles should be accessible by all, I won't change that.

One of his suggestions is that because plenty of fantasy footy fans are younger than 18, that I allow people to send me $5 through the post as membership fees as well as accepting credit card payments over the Net. An excellent idea. I'll have to pay for a PO box for extra security, but I think it would be worth it.

On the subject of how many teams to allow for paid members and free members, that's a tricky one. The problem I'd have is if each paid member gives their login to 20 other people, it would defeat the purpose of having paid accounts.

For either type I'd allow unlimited numbers of teams in scoring systems other than DT and SC (and myfantasyfooty since it uses the same scoring system as DT :D). The numbers aren't great for them anyway: at the moment we have 2921 Dream Team, 375 Super Coach, 40 myfantasyfooty, 6 Webfooty, 1 FootyRocks, 5 Goalsneak, 1 Bomberland, 6 LFFL and 0 Dockerland teams. (I'm adding support for fantasysportsstar and TheBench.)

My first instinct is to allow only four DT/SC teams, two each. Then there's the question of whether you can see other people's teams, and what happens with the Head-to-head feature, since you effectively can see anyone else's team's live scores through that page. If one paid login can see anyone's team, that also defeats the purpose of restricting teams, and we get back to paid accounts being meaningless.

Geez, no wonder live scoring is so scarce in American fantasy games, it's so complex!
 
I've got over $1500 at stake on my DT this year in both my league and individual bets with mates.

$5 would be a drop in the ocean.

Seriously who is so tight that they wouldn't or couldn't pay $5 ... and if you couldn't pay $5, you should go and get yourself a freaken job rather than watch your dreamteam scores tick over live! :D
 
I agree with jmeery

$5 dollars is $5 dollars after all

This would not even buy me a pint here in london.

I must take my hat off to Monty. He is the one who has spent endless hours developing and maintaining the site, so far, all at his own expense and time, and to date has never asked for anything.

Now, due to the site being so popular, the issue isn't making money but the amount of traffic, and without developing some solution we will all be sitting around on weekends through endless crashes on fanfooty or trying to add up scores from the AFL site.

A good solution has been found!

$5 is just a token amount. It could be $2 or $10 and i don't think it would matter, the hardcore will pay, and the problem will be solved.

I don't know monty but i'm sure that any money made would be poured back into improving the site.

Maybe he can 'float' the site and we can all buy shares, and cash in on it's future success:D
 
Hmm, dunno about shares... :D

However, I do have some off-Web plans that will involve some of you hardcore DTers. More to come when I can set it all up...
 
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