Agreed. From the outside, it does not look like the forum is a problem. The mods are great, the admin is helpful, and everyone appears to benefit to some degree monetarily. And I am assuming, and this is just a guess, that the forum generates more without a subscription than it would with one. This is probably one of the better moderated forums I am on!
Earlier this year a small disaster gave me the focus necessary to review my project list. I analyzed each project based upon the investment I was putting into it and the return I was getting out of it. This resulted in dropping some projects completely and delegating other projects to less expensive resources. One person can only spread himself so thin. Determine which of your projects are core to your happiness and drop or delegate the others. Projects with negative ROI and limited potential for improvement should be dropped. Successful projects should be delegated. Some projects may be sold off at a profit. Have you considered an LBO arrangement to sell the forums to one of your trusted associates like Summer or Rob? Have you considered bringing in a software development manager to help you with your many software projects? At your level, you must delegate to fairly senior people or you will waste your life away in the hell that is micromanagement.
This is actually quite funny... I don't remember Shawn saying "could anyone tell me what to do?" but we've all been offering our unsolicited advice.... helpful? or just more headache for Shawn? lol I'm guessing he didn't get where he is by not having a clue - on the other hand, my boss, very successful but has a very hard time delegating responsibility (for one thing) so just because you're successful doesn't mean you're good at everything. Lisa
Why does everyone want to see this forum go to a paid membership? There are a lot of alternatives besides this, such as restricted access to "older" members, etc etc. There is a lot of spamming and scamming done by some new and not so new members, but would a paid forum really cut down on that? I doubt it to be honest. If a scammer wants to make 'good' money, he would spend the membership fee so he could get in and work his magic. Now what would happen when that scammer got banned? He would do a chargeback, and then shawn would be in hundreds of paypal/credit card disputes = more work for him. Just my 2 cents.
I fully understand this, sounds like restructuring internal services not viewable to all, such as implementing new email filtering, scheduling adjusting to attend biz/forums, and things like those. I had to make a stop on my own business recently due to similar reasons, of course mine can't be compared with a giant like DP so I can figure out the sort of headache but X 100 or even 1000 more times.
Shawn would not have to give the refund if the member is banned for spamming. The member would be informed of that before signing up and paying the money in the form of an faq and rules. I got $5.00 a month on paid for b/s/t.
We'll if it does go paid, I for one won't be using it. I wouldn't mind a very small price for listing items for sale, but JUST to view the threads... it's not worth it. SP turned to utter crap because of the paid listings IMO. Also - just because it says in the 'rules' or 'faq' they can't get a refund, doesn't mean every banned member wouldn't open a paypal dispute - you can almost gurantee they would just to spite ya.
Wow, I'm amazed this thread isn't 20 pages long by now! Shawn makes a small mention of some changes and people start going nuts....
Uhm... restructuring has nothing to do with lack of income. Not sure why everyone starts assuming Digital Point is losing money and we need to start figuring out ways to make more money. lol That's retarded.
uhuh you are telling a guy who coded his way to millions to get a 3rd party software....you have to be kidding me...
Well what he has now isn't working, right? If it were me, I'd try a bunch of different things especially when receiving 50,000+ emails.
Well he won't try a 3rd party software thats for sure, he didn't even use vbseo hehe and thats what hes asking, "bunch of different things" hehe tactics not softwares
I could code a gmail replacement, I could code a Ubuntu replacement.. but people that can code use 3rd party tools as it saves time and effort! Sometimes it is worth knowing your limits.