Changes...

[Chuck Miller]

Folks,

We barely have 10% of the registered message board users as paid members of the Early 911S Registry club… the club that brings you this message board…

Paid memberships and renewals trickle in; our Registry calendar sales are low, and our merchandise sales are very low.

Yes we do have some good paid advertisers for our ESSES, however our publishing cost is getting close to $10K per quarter…
Have you seen the new issue?.......... WOW !!!!

So yes, we do proudly publish probably the best car club news magazines in the country… AND, guess what else? The hit and page view stats for our message board is off the charts.

You’ all, we’ all, they’ all LOVE this board!!!!

So, after all this years of keeping the Registry’s board completely free from advertising (you are only a virgin once) the club has subscribe to Google Adsense for a single small 'auto related' banner at the top of every page that will change at your click.

The Registry advisers have been testing this thing for almost a week and I’ll tell’ya, I don’t even see it anymore.
Guys, this is the lowest level they have and as unobtrusive as it gets…. And the bottom line, club needs it.

This will probably be installed tonight….

So click away friends…….. Hopefully these little fractions will build, we will soon see…
AND, if we can replace this proposed income another way, we can always unsubscribe to the service.

Another small change will come around the beginning of the year… like this, we will tell you beforehand.

The 4 volunteer advisers thank you,
Chuck, John, Mike, and Fred

[curtisaa]

Seriously, as a practical and business matter, the issues should change over to digital. Members will have access and you will not have the postage and printing cost. Pictures can be much higher resolution and issues will be timeless.

[gsjohnson]

I wondered how long it would take for this...Alot of other boards are already doing this...F-Chat, BenzWorld, Bimmer.com, etc.

[popowitz]

I know this has been proposed in the past but perhaps it's time to require membership to post and view photos on the site. Selling on this site to this population of folks has monetary value and should require membership.

[mrgreenjeans]

I cannot disagree more to a digital format for the quarterly Registry issue.

Not everywhere I go I carry a laptop, nor do I care to ever try.
On a long weekend drive in the Porsche to a favorite destination, I do NOT want to carry around a pc a clunking around in my front luggage compartment , BUT I sure will take along a copy of my ESSES to read in our hotel or lake cabin at night.
To say nothing of reading a copy in the fishing boat when its slow, an environment I would never risk a laptop.

Another PCA club magazine , a monthly, tried to do this last year and it met with a lot of local dissent. And that experiment was every other month , printed on paper alternately. We get it both ways this year after a serious backlash.

Digital has its place and so does the printed copy. Do NOT forsake the printed copy, it will affect readership views tremendously....... I for one will not feel any where near the same connection.

[edmayo]

I read this as ads that will appear on this board, not a digital club magazine, did I miss something obvious? And if asked I MUCH prefer a paper magazine!

[DJ911]

I cannot disagree more to a digital format for the quarterly Registry issue.

Not everywhere I go I carry a laptop, nor do I care to ever try.
On a long weekend drive in the Porsche to a favorite destination, I do NOT want to carry around a pc a clunking around in my front luggage compartment , BUT I sure will take along a copy of my ESSES to read in our hotel or lake cabin at night.
To say nothing of reading a copy in the fishing boat when its slow, an environment I would never risk a laptop.

Another PCA club magazine , a monthly, tried to do this last year and it met with a lot of local dissent. And that experiment was every other month , printed on paper alternately. We get it both ways this year after a serious backlash.

Digital has its place and so does the printed copy. Do NOT forsake the printed copy, it will affect readership views tremendously....... I for one will not feel any where near the same connection.

. +1

[Bob Harriman]

The 912Registry is operated that way. No membership means no posting. I thought it was already like that on here. I find this message board to be 10x more informative with a much broader level of info than the 912Registry board even though my 912 is definately not a 911. No pun intended to our 912 site but it has a fraction of users compared to this site. Membership to post will generate revenue, not saving with digital esses. I collect those anyways.

[Craig T]

+2

The Porsche Owners Club considered this with Velocity Magazine three years ago when the ads dropped off putting the magazine deeply in the red. The POC Board polled the members and the digital format was overwhelmingly rejected. I mean a landslide, with over 90% in favor of keeping the magazine. Just the discussion of killing Velocity had volunteers stepping out to secure more advertising.

As Popowitz mentioned above...Many forums now block the viewing of images from those that are not paid subscribers. Photos are a HUGE part of this forum. Maybe something like that would push many of those "lurking" into joining. The classified as well. How many people using the forum classifieds are not paid members? That is a very effective and targeted classified platform, and has value.

[Bob Harriman]

By the way Craig, your car looks fantastic in this edition of ESSES I recieved today. As the legendary saying goes, "I have a dream".