Group: Ipernity Members Association Project

As many of you know I've been running an unofficial user poll this week in an attempt to capture people's views on two questions.

The first relates to how much people might be willing to pay for Club membership and the second to whether or not they would contribute to any kind of crowdfunding initiative that Team Ipernity might.

My intention is to process the votes and not only publish them on my account and through this group, but also copy them directly to Team Ipernity.

I have real doubts about whether or not they will take notice of or act upon the findings, but I believe if you don't try you don't get.

To be honest although it's good that around 160 people have participated by answering the questions on the thread considering the number of people I've made aware of its existence and the number of people that have visited it I would have hoped for more.

So, can I appeal one last time for those people to do so. Even if you don't think it'll make any difference to what happens it will only take you a few minutes to read my article, formulate an opinion and answer the questions.

Please don't answer them here and please don't leave any comments or enter into discussion on the Poll thread as that will only make it more difficult for me and others to navigate.

Sorry, if it sounds like I'm having a go at anyone, that's not my intention. Just trying to give people a nudge in the hopes that they might get behind what I'm trying to do.

Many thanks


PAUL

User Poll - Make Your Vote Count!

UPDATE - THE RESULTS SO FAR!

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) have participated.

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

Sink Or Swim ...

UPDATE - REVISED FIGURES

In total, 207 people (189 of them Club members and 18 free users) have now participated in the poll up to the point at which time these updated results were compiled earlier today. These then are the latest set of figures based on all 207 votes.

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; 9% (+1%) said £25.00; 37% said £50.00; 31% (-1%) said £75.00; 13% (-1%) said £100.00; 4% (+1%) said £125.00; and 0% said £200.00.

Interestingly, this suggests that 48% (-1%) 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, 49% (+2%) said "Yes"; 19% (-1%) said "No"; and 32% (-1%) said "Maybe".

This suggests that 81% (+1%) of respondents would support or at least be open to the possibility of supporting such an initiative - although it’s important to keep in mind the fact that many did say they would be reluctant to make such payments to the existing owners without significant assurances over the future of the site.