Charge for signatures

[richard@imutual]

Further to the discussion on a forum signature policy here, one member came up with the following idea:

How about charging members an advertising fee of 1p per day for displaying signatures? Plus extra charges for links, multiple lines, large/bold fonts, or different colours... raise revenue for our business and clean up the forums all at the same time; eveyone's a winner!

Personally, I think this is a very clever suggestion. Obviously, there are details that would have to be worked out (how to collect payment, how much to charge etc) but firstly let's have a vote on the principle. What do you think?

Please vote by Mon Jun 04, 2012 9:47 am (you can change your vote any any time up to the deadline)

[kevinchess1]

We're talkin about chargin for external links here aren't we?
Not about ordinary non liknkin signatures

[richard@imutual]

I believe the suggestion is that even a basic sig would cost 1p per day (though it could be even less e.g. 1p per week). At present, we're just voting on the principle. If approved, can then agree on how much to charge for what. Personally, I think a small charge 1p a day would encourage people to question whether they value having a signature

[zulu17]

At the moment we have a forum which has defaults whereby

a member is defaulted to having no signature applied to a message but can optin to apply a signature

but
a member is defaulted to viewing all signatures when used in messages but can optout not to having these displayed.

I presume that were we to move to chargeable signature which generally would mean adverts or campaign messages that the optout of viewing signatures option would still be available.

[richard@imutual]

Yes, you could still opt out

[rayf]

Charging is not an answer to anything - apart from anything else it would not be workable.

Once there is a clear cut definition of what is/is not allowed, that should be sufficient.

Also could introduce an option to turn the viewing of signatures off.

problem solved - charging not required.

To date, I don't think I have profitted from my signature at all. But always optimistic.






.

[BeautifulSunshine]

non starter IMO.

[garindan]

It might be worth trialling something, whereby no costs are involved to begin with, say for a month or three, but the number of clickthroughs are tracked per signature link. However this takes time and effort to implement and I'm not sure of the value for money return on it would be a good use of effort. I'd prefer a better search facility for instance or having a user generated tag cloud for affiliate sites, which would potentially benefit all users of the site.

It also depends on the motives for this. If it is to clean up the forums then I'm not sure this is the right way forward at all. If it is for capitalising commercial value of having signatures that provide advertising then it may be that iMutual needs to grow a little more before being able to show the benefits? The upshot I think would be that there would be few if any takers for paying right now.

[Denant]

No imo,my sig is for National Blood Service which needs all the help it can get, I think if someones sig helps a charity or non profit organization then no payment is required,the idea would need policing every single day as signatures can be changed.

[Oggy]

non starter IMO.

Ditto. We are trying to attract members, not scare them off.