Hello I am new to vBulletin and have created a forum here: http://forums.devmadeeasy.com/ I would like to set up paid and free accounts the paid account will obviously have more features and i want it to have a pic saying paid user like they have here on digital point can anyone help me do this? and tell me what to give free users and what to give paid users?
What you give them is entirely up to you.... I recently polled my gold members and this is how they rated the various perks I gave them (note, the poll has only been answered by a small handful of members thus far). On a scale of 1-5 the totals are (with 7 posters voting, and a total of 35 in each category) 29 - Custom User Title The base option... for any paying member. Members LOVE to change it, so why not make them pay for it 24 - Larger Avatar Not HUGE, just a bit bigger. 19 - Larger profile image Again, don't make this overly large, just a bit bigger. 29 - Access to a special gold member forum The members also seem to love to have that place where they can feel elite. Give it to them! 26 - Access to the Old Timer's Forum There is a forum for members that have been around for a while with X amount of posts, and + rep. For money, you can buy your way in 25 - Ability to upload/download attachments Certainly saves on bandwidth! 25 - 500 Private messages Believe it or not, I still get requests to up the limit! 26 - Ability to ignore PM quotas *shrug* A perk is a perk right? 25 - Photo Album Saves more on bandwidth. 24 - Thread prefixes Personally I find them rather annoying... 17 - The ability to create Social Groups Does anyone really use social groups? 15 - ONE name change (optional) I get at least one name change request a month, and because they gotta pay for it, I get 2 or 3 gold members a year! (I likely also get 2 or 3 people with multiple accounts, but *shrug*) 17 - Gold Member ‘rank’ title & Colored name They actually don't really think this is all that neat. I also give an option to NOT get these, but for the members with EGO, this is certainly a must! To see the actual list of perks and other options I've offered my members read my thread on it: Board of Directors, Gold Memberships, Donations, and Title Changes There are likely more things you can do, just look through usergroup options in the ACP and see what you think.
That is not a very busy forum at all. You firstly need to attract a lot of people to join and post before you even consider charging people for premium features.
I started with only a handful of members and offered "gold" from the very beginning... granted, at first only one or two paid, but the more 'gold' names that people see the more they are willing to keep up with the Jones. You can fake the number of gold members you have by adding a 'street team' to help promote the place. Offer the members of that team gold status for payment...
the one thing you must remember .. just write about what your user want .. so you can edit it on the usergroup ( you can do it in your admincp)