Hi Øyvin,
.... I can imagine who tries to spread negative feelings into the world...
Back to your questions:
We have no "pattern". I try to cover the costs in running so many different communities. And as I explained in detail in my other posting in this thread, I am not willing anymore to pay licences, server, traffic, hacks etc. also for the next 7 years all out of my own private pocket.
Since this is also new to us, we have to find out the best compromise ourselves. We do not know in advance what will help us the most to cover the costs.
It is clear, that we want to offer the forums for free. But how can we cover the costs then?
If you think about it, there are not many choices to cover the costs on internet sites.
a) Direct support from the users
Some users (hopefully enough) either pay for extra features on a regular basis or donate from time to time, so that costs are covered
b) indirect support from users
Users click on advertising banners and with an income per click through this adverstising (i.e. 2 cents per click) we can try to cover the costs.
c) A mixture of both (a and b)
What is the current status?
As you might have seen, we have tested over the years both in German and in English forums the alternative for donations. In Germany, there was almost zero response, so we switched there to a club-membership system 18 months ago. Everything is still there for free, but if you want to have extra features, you have to pay a very small yearly fee. If this turms out not to be enough, we have to think about other alternatives. We check this currently.
In the English forums, we have had donatiosn also already for years. But it was not used at all. 2 months ago, we introduced this new donate-link with the measure bar and sent e-mail to the users to get more attention. This helped only in a few forums like the Sigma user forum here.
If this donation does not work out, we have also to think about other ways here too (if you have great ideas, please post them). But I guess it all comes down to one of the above described alternatives or a mixture of them.
It is not by accident, that all sites on the internet have the same problem and all come sooner or later to the same alternatives in covering the costs.
I am not dpreview with an income of a couple of 100.000 USD in banner income. I am neither amazon, who bought dpreview 2 years ago.
So please understand that my financial ressources are very limited. I payed for years now for this "party" all myself. And now this party period is at the end.
The other option would be to close down forums to save money. Actually I closed some of our forums already over the last 4 weeks because of this, also some English ones or merged them with the German counterpart (check Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Pentax or our italian, spanish and french forums.).
But I do not want to close down the English Sigma User forum. This is why it is still here and running. This forum is so unique and helps so much all Sigma fans, there is simply no alternative out there. No trolls, to brand wars. Just fun.
And this is why I will do everything that this community can stay alive. Whether this is with donations, special support of users via club memberships or advertising, you name it. I do not care, as long as it is a good compromise between running this community and the goal to cover the costs
Best wishes