Suggestion to bring in more members.

[StefanWolves]

Until he actually comes out and says that he needs the guests for the advertising revenue then fair enough.

But and easy fix would be to raise donator to £2 if possible.

[Chippiewill]

And more payment methods for donator...

[Black_Apalachi]

Reading the thread would have shown you that there were negative sides to it, and yes when the thread is aimed at actually changing something fundamental about how the forum works it would be a good idea to actually read through it before coming to (let alone stating) an opinion on it. This is precisely why it's necessary for management here to act without public polling

OK I'm sorry.

As I'm not allowed to form my own opinion, I now think it's not such a good idea to force visitors to register.

[StefanWolves]

I don't see how opening up the forum to the world is a fundamental aspect of this forum. If I was the manager of this forum then I'd think of making changes rite from the top, and implement new things. Just generally freshen things up. Maybe that is going to happen (the whole filtering system is getting a work over soon), but I wouldn't hold my breath on anything else being changed.

[Mentor]

but yet you still don't provide me with the fundamental proof to prove my idea wrong.

I notice you appear to have overlooked my previous post, seeing as it primarily served to answer the questions you again raising, i'll have another go

- proof showing me that implementing this feature would mean we loose members

As previously stated, the two main reasons people join forums are; A: recommendation - these people generally dont stay as long or contribute as much (exceptions exist - tho not allowing viewing of the forums would put quite a few of these guys off - i never join a forum i cant view myself for one)
B: the big puller of the active and involved users, reading a thread thats interesting and registering in order to respond.

Now, people leave forums all the time, lets hypothetically say 7 people leave habbox a day? Now normally say 10 people join every day - that means the forum is growing.
Now your idea is implemented, only 5 people join a day and since these are less likely to stick around, being the type who joined only because they were aksed, now 8 people leave each day.

so that would be habbox loosing members, 3 a day in the hypothetical.

Its a simple concept, cutting the stream of new users, will eventually lead to the forums active member counts dropping.

- how much it costs to main this forum

Forum software alone costs a few 100, the big cost is in having the bandwidth and processing power to run and serve users with the forum content

- how how much we need to be earning from advertising to maintain the forum

more than the cost of the bills, the specifics of the numbers are irrelevant, what matters is whether theres as much coming in as is going out

- if we are struggling to maintain this funding

no premium features = quite a cut to habbox's ability to make money, so making ends meat is obviously going to be more challenging.

- information that proves to me that by loosing 'x' amount guests we would loose 'x' amount of funding to pay for the forum

Do you know how google makes money? facebook? myspace? or for that matter most sites on the web that dont charge?

Protip: google aint charging of vip

The more traffic you get, the more people will pay for ads, the more money you can make. The trend you may notice is that the higher the volume of traffic, the better the ratio of cost in serving the pages to the money made from ads with these pages is. Until the point it becomes profitable.

By shrinking the amount of viewers, you shinking the traffic volumes and thus you make less money back for each page you serve.

oh know, because you can't

only until nvr/sierk come online and say that they are struggling to pay for the forum and rely on guests for advertising will i support YOUR theory.

Fortunately basic deductive reasoning and some common sense is all thats really needed to undermine your proposed idea

Cant see sierk coming round here, and jin and nvr tend to avoid discussing costs publicly, as its not really there business to do so. So chances of answers that include figures coming out in response are pretty slim.

[lick]

but you're just making up them figures :S it could make people leave it could make people join.. no one knows until its tried out

[StefanWolves]

but you're just making up them figures :S it could make people leave it could make people join.. no one knows until its tried out

this.

makeslonger