User Poll Results ...

As the User Poll I’ve been conducting has been running online now for nearly a week and almost 200 users of this site have participated I thought it time to publish the results so far.

In total, 182 people (165 of them Club members and 17 free users) had participated in the poll at the time these results were compiled earlier today.

When asked how much they would be willing to pay to subscribe to ipernity each year to help secure the site's long-term future, 6% said £00.00; 8% said £25.00; 37% said £50.00; 32% said £75.00; 14% said £100.00; 3% said £125.00; and 0% said £200.00.

Interestingly, this suggests that 49% of respondents would be willing to pay £75.00 or more per annum, which is more than 3 times the current subscription rate of £19.99.

Next, when asked if they would be willing to make a one-off payment to a crisis-fund were such an initiative to be launched to help save the site, 47% said "Yes"; 20% said "No"; and 33% said "Maybe".

This suggests that 80% of respondents would support or at least be open to the possibility of supporting such an initiative - although many did say they would be reluctant to make such payments to the existing owners without significant assurances over the future of the site.

The above statements are fact based upon the answers given on the poll, but it might also be worth considering what may or may not be deduced from how the votes of Club members and free members differed.

For example, of the combined 14% who said they would only be willing to pay £20.00 or less in future it is worth observing that over a third of them are currently free members and of those that are Club members their vote was perhaps more an indication of their unhappiness at how the site has been managed of late rather than meaning they would not put a higher value on such a platform were it to be better managed and properly resourced in the future.

Furthermore, whatever way you read or try to interpret these results, I think they clearly show that a large percentage of users would be willing to pay more to subscribe to the site if it meant ipernity had a brighter and more secure future. I think they also suggest that even a significant increase in subscription fees would not necessarily result in huge loss of users and of those that might leave under such circumstances the majority would be free account holders.

Anyway, these are the numbers so far.

Thanks to everyone for their support and please note that I am copying them to Christophe directly so that Team Ipernity can study them.

If I hear anything back that I can share with the wider community then I will obviously do so.

Best wishes

PAUL