I could buy lifetime (5+ years) subscription. I'm a paid member on every forum I'm a member of except this one, because I cannot buy a permanent status. I don't care if it's $30 or $99, I'd still buy it.
What is the limit, I've bought the pass for a month or 3 but I thought there was a year option. I don't really know what you're complaining about tbh...
Well, you can just buy the yearly premium membership 10 times if you don't want to worry about it for 10 years (additional ones just add to your expiration date). There will never be a "lifetime" premium membership here though, sorry.
If you've ever had a product, you'd understand lifetime licenses sell better than monthly subscriptions. Same goes for a leased vehicle rather than paying full in cash. Some of us like to get payment out of the way forever.
Have had a ton of products... that's what I do. Lifetime licenses just don't work for software though. Sure you might sell more initially, but is it really worth that initial little extra money to be giving support and upgrades to people 50 years from now for free? No. If premium membership was only stuff to do with the forum and nothing "real" (no actual products/services), then sure... but since most people get it because they actually get products (which are updated and supported), it simply doesn't make sense. Plus a "forever" license isn't even real... like are we still going to be offering support for the same product 500 years from now? Probably not. If someone wanted wanted to buy a 50 year license for like $5,000, I'd consider it. The high end of the pricing you are talking about is less than what we already sell a 1 year premium membership for (which is $125), which we've sold thousands of.
True about the software thing. I sold 1200 licenses and I regret converting the payments from monthly to lifetime, just to boost sales. However, when I'm in the buyers position, I always push for the lifetime license. Also about the "if you developed a product" comment, that wasn't directed at you lol. However, I also didn't know you developed products. I'd kill to have a passive income like what you got in one domain. However, I've only been doing online work for 3 years so I haven't really earned it.
I wouldn't exactly say it's "passive". More like an insane amount of work. But just to give an example, a massive amount of people getting premium membership do so to get at the Sphinx Search system I built for vBulletin 4 (more or less a must have for any board over 1,000,000 posts). http://products.digitalpoint.com/vbulletin-sphinx-search.php Other people get premium membership for some extra features in our keyword tracker tool/service: http://tools.digitalpoint.com/tracker The point is that the bulk (not all though) of people getting premium membership are doing so because they are after products/tools/services that are actively being developed and supported on our end. Just wouldn't make sense for us to do lifetime licenses unless we stripped premium membership pretty bare (no products or things that require support from us).
An insane amount of work for your staff... Well the only thing I really need is the marketplace features for when I clean up my portfolio. Other than that, I don't have much use for a search function and that keyword tracker has always been something I've been meaning to develop however. Anyways, Thanks, Josh