On Wed, Dec 30, 2020 at 06:04 AM, Samuel Murrayy wrote:

My reasoning for the silver group is to allow groups who might want to be come larger or use more features to be able to do so without a very sudden change in pricing...

I can't afford $20 a month but I want to pay something to GIO for the service being offered which is the ability to find and join basic groups. 

I agree with everyone on this thread who has suggested there needs to be something between $0 for 99 member groups and $20 a month for 101 member groups (not counting the owner). I don't know what that something looks like. 

I want to pay something for the use of my personal GIO accounts and not because I am made one of the group Owners so I can assist them with the technology side of group administration.

There is no way for me to show my appreciation for GIO as an account holder other than to create a group with myself as the sole member so I could "donate" periodically by upgrading and downgrading.

I buy a number of monthly services that cost me $0.99 to $2.99 a month. I would pay something in that range for the privilege of having a GIO account so that I could find and join the basic groups who are on GIO.

These are 2 different issues/suggestions.
One is introducing a group owner price point between $0 and $20.
The other is a mechanism to allow GIO account holders to pay for the privilege of GIO membership should they want to "donate" to a business model (not to a non profit) or should they want to become a paying member of GIO.

Of note, I have created a group with me alone in that group so I can pay Mark for what I consider a valuable service. I found it very simple to do. Create a basic group. Go to Admin, Upgrade, select Premium for one month and enter your credit card.

--
Sandi Dickenson

groups.io, as was Yahoo, revolves around a very large number of totally
informal groups whose members have only one thing in common - an
interest in the subject of the group. I am in 21 of those (which puts
paid to Samuel's suggestion of an average of 5. A few of those are very
active. Many are less active but I remain subscribed for historical
reasons and some of those I have set to 'special notices' as they are
for past interests but want to keep a passive interest. A few were
joined for a specific interest which came up, like information on a
particular type of software, which I joined at the time that interest
appeared but could probably leave. Around half of my groups have over
100 members, some well into the thousands.

A very few of those groups are tied in with a national
club/organisation which has an annual membership fee. To some extent a
Premium or tiered Free subscription could be absorbed in that. There
again one of these national organisations is indirectly responsible for
many groups to cover all its interests, 50 or so as a finger in the
air. No way could a reasonable annual fee for all these diverse groups
be done that way, the membership fee would increase above that which
most members could justify - result, a reduced membership of the
national organisation as people decide it is too much.

Remember also that membership of GIO groups is a dynamic variable, with
people coming and going all the time. Is it fair to charge for those 50
or so who happened to have joined on the eve of a billing date who
leave a week later?

I appreciate that Mark has to cover his costs but the model of free
sponsored by the relatively few Premium and even less Enterprise groups
is not going to work. This is very clear in that the proposed rates are
totally out of the question for most non-commercial enthusiast groups
that must make up most of their market.

Dave

http://davesergeant.com

[This reply is partly in response to Patty, but my suggestion is similar/related to Jim's.]

Mark, I'm trying to think how to increase profits for you without too much complexity (and with only a tiny increase in support desk calls) but while allowing the potential for large non-commercial groups.

Your proposed pricing structure puts the onus on group owners to manage membership fees, and so you'd be essentially limiting Groups.io to groups with owners who have the technical and managerial expertise to do that.  I'm afraid that if Groups.io wants to be able to tap potential income from large non-commercial groups, then Groups.io would have to take care of some of the subscription payment side of things.

Can I assume that on average, the average user is a member of no more than 5 groups? (Yes, some users are members of dozens or even hundreds of groups, but thousands others are a member of just one or two groups.)  This means that if you can squeeze just $2.50 per year from those users, it would be the same as having a premium group owner pay $0.05 per member.

I suggest, therefore, that you create two types of users, namely free users who pay nothing and paying users who pay $2.50 per year.  Free users can only join groups that have free-user slots left over.  Paying users can join an unlimited number of groups without filling up any free-user slots.

Oh, wait, let me explain "free-user slots".  All groups have a number of free-user slots.  These are slots (i.e. room for members) that are available to free users.  Free basic groups have 100 free-user slots.  Premium groups have as many free-user slots as the owner had paid for.  So if the owner pays e.g. $20 per month for his group, then his group gets 100+400 free-user slots.  This means that up to 500 people who are not paying users can join that group, but once the 500 free-user slots have been filled, any additional members would need to be paying users.  Paying users can join a group regardless of whether that group has any free-user slots left over (and when a paying user joins a group, it doesn't fill up a free-user slot).  Non-paying users (i.e. free users) can only join a group if that group has any free-user slots left over.  (Obviously the group owner can still refuse people membership of the group, regardless of whether they are free users or paying users.)

This sounds complicated on paper, but I'm sure you can figure out a way to write it down simply :-)

The advantages of such a system include:

• It makes it possible for group owners who do want to (or who can) deal with their own subscription or donation systems themselves, to do so.  Such group owners simply pay for a premium group, and they either pay out of their own pocket or they ask for donations or they get members to pay a subscription, but the financial and managerial side of things is taken care of by the group owner to the extend that he can or wants to.
• It makes it possible for group owners who don't want to deal with their own subscriptions, donations etc. to still have a large group.  Such group owners simply get a free basic group, and tell potential subscribers that membership costs $2.50 per year (and that a limited number of deserving members that are chosen by the owner can join for free).
• Group owners who want large free groups (i.e. large groups where no-one needs to pay) can simply get a more expensive premium plan.  The more expensive the premium plan, the more free-user slots are included.  If a group owner estimates that his group will have e.g. 2000 members and he doesn't want them to pay (or: he wants at least 2000 of them not to pay), then he simply gets a premium group and pays $95 per month.  This gets him 100+1900 free-user slots.
• If half of a group's potential membership are in rich countries and the other half in poor countries, the group owner can ask for donations from the rich country members (outside of Groups.io) and then use those donations to buy a premium plan of a certain size.  Suppose each rich country member donates $10... that's enough to pay for a premium plan that allows everyone to use free-user slots.  So, in such a case, all members can still be free users, but some of them give donations separately, which the group owner uses to buy free-user slots in the premium plan.

Whether group owners want to add all of this on their home pages is up to them.  Group owners who are willing to pay for all members in a premium plan can simply write on their home page that membership is free.  Or, they could write "join our group for only $2.50 per year" (without the need to mention that $2.50 actually allows users to join other groups as well).  Or they could write "a small membership fee may be required" and then include instructions and a link to Groups.io's paid plan in the notice.

When a free user tries to join a group, the moderator would be told that this is a free user and be told how many free-user slots the group has left.  The moderator can then choose to accept the member, or tell them that the group no longer does (or doesn't currently) accept free users (or that the aspiring member doesn't qualify for it), or (as a third option, provided by Groups.io's systems) put the user in a "waiting list"... for when some other free user leaves the group or for when the group owner decides the person has become deserving of a free-user slot.

People who join via mail (and don't register an account at Groups.io) would always be free users (initially) because they don't register an account at Groups.io.  Obviously if they try to join a group that has no more free-user slots, the reply notification would explain that to them, and direct them to the Groups.io sign-up page.

When a paid user doesn't renew his subscription, he gets moved to the "waiting list" of the groups that he is a member of, and the moderator gets a notification, and then the moderator can choose to assign a free-user slot to that user, leave him in the waiting list, or remove him from the group.  (An idea for the "waiting list" is that people who are on the waiting list are provisional members, i.e. they get read-only access via the web, but can't post and can't receive e-mail.)

See, $2.50 per year is not much, and even if a user wants to join just one group, $2.50 per year is not much.  I'll wager that many users of large non-commercial groups would be willing to pay $2.50 per year for their membership, even if they belong to only one group.

Allow me to speculate about Patty's group (and assuming she started this group after the grandfathering cut-off): it may be difficult for her to manage paid subscriptions herself (setting up a system to get payments, keep track of who paid and who didn't, then reconcile the updated payment lists with the e-group's own membership list, send reminders, explain to members why she had to remove them, etc.).  However, she could get a free basic group and simply tell everyone that they need to be paid user of Groups.io to join her group (although she will be able to make a few exceptions for deserving people, i.e. her group's 100 free-user slots, which she can allocate however she desires).

Samuel

(PS. My suggestions about payment plans in previous mails were based on the assumption that only group owners pay.)

I am owner/co-owner of several Basic (Free) lists and one that moved to Premium when image storage exceeded 1 GB.  A couple of these lists have 2000 members but less than 500MB of image storage.  If these two lists were to upgrade to premium after Jan 18^th each  would cost $1100 per year.

Will the new price changes be the last? We have had two changes in the last  two years.  The fee per member concept will likely be modified in the future.  Perhaps a Basic list should have a fee per member assessed when the list is over 400 subscribers.  My list continues to grow so I am doing some long term (5 year) planning.  If  three years from now my Basic list has to upgrade to Premium, it will cost me $1100/per year for the last two years of the next five years ($2200 total).  If I upgrade now to Premium I will have to pay $220/year for the next five years ($1100 total).

I polled my list members of the dilemma “Do I remain Basic and hope for no price increase although there have been two in the last two years; Or do we upgrade to Premium now at $220 per year recognizing that our list size represents a far greater cost than small free lists.  Nobody supported an upgrade to Enterprise (for large  lists).  So far 76% of responders support an upgrade to Premium.  Some said that the service deserved more financial support than ‘free’.  Others felt that the value of the list to them deserved financial support and the support from Mark deserved compensation.  The poll runs another week after which the list will be upgraded to Premium.

The issue of image storage brought up another issue.  Should video files be stored in photos or separately?  With limited storage,  video files gobble up space.  I have restricted image size for photos, however no control over video files.  Perhaps video files should not be allowed in Basic lists and stored separately in Premium and Enterprise lists to help list owners manage them.

To put it simply, the issue with Mark's proposal is that it assumes that owners of future groups will be prepared to pay for their members - a minimum of $0.55 per year, per member [1].

We shall see... I know that, unless I was getting a larger amount - somehow - from them, I would not be.

Which follows from the basic trilemma of any service like Groups.io: who pays: group owners, group members or a third party (e.g. advertisers). Mark has ruled out (strongly) the last; and (so far, as direct payers) members...

note [1] unless they are restricting themselves to a small basic group (which again, absent a special need, is not something I would do.

Jeremy

Mark Fletcher,

  I know that you are opposed to a 'per member' type of payment that goes from the
group member directly to you.  (Yes, I get it that you need to make a living.)  I'd like
to propose a variant that you may not have considered.

  How about a payment - per member, directly to groups.io, using PayPal or a
credit ... that is a single payment for unlimited number of groups joined.  And
perhaps you add in a discount for pre-paying several years in advance.  The
point is that only you have to figure out how to accept and monitor membership -
but the membership is at the groups.io level and not at the individual group
level.  
                                                                       - respectfully ... Jim

I’m curious if there are other large groups (mine is just over 3000) that are entirely non-commercial? I manage Berlin Scholars, basically a mutual aid network for expat scholars living in Berlin, Germany. People use it to find housing, choose a doctor, navigate the visa and health insurance bureaucracies, and much more. I allow job offers to be posted but forbid ads for professional services (people outside the scholar/artist/writer communities were trying to join just to advertise their services). We’re not any sort of official nonprofit (too many countries involved!) but the ethos has always been that people shouldn’t be using the group to make money (e.g., sublet offers should be close to regular market prices, not Airbnb rentals).

Royal Pita as in pita bread? I mean, if we’re talking about loaves of bread and pieces of cake. 😊

--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

Wirtz:



Mark:

When I previously said "bait n switch" I wasn't referring to the current issue.   
I know that wasn't the nefarious plan so I even hate to clarify it, but here goes:  I meant in the big picture like, "I know gio couldn't be a success if I start out with huge charge$$$, so I'll get it started by offering a bunch of free groups to gain a foothold/share then start building into paid groups once the platform is out there.  But I'm keeping that plan in my vest for now."
I know that isn't the history of it. 

But the alternative (poor business plan or poor projections?) is a definite issue here.  I don't mean that in a criticism sense -- plenty of good folks have grand schemes to make a profitable business (better than sliced bread) and end up crashing.  Some don't crash. 
But then what?  Bread isn't an issue because we can always go buy a loaf.  But it isn't exactly a pc of cake to switch/migrate groups when they fail.  It's a royal PITA, at least for our group with members who barely hang on without jumping ship to a FB group or wherever.  All I can say is, as in our instance where it would have been nearly a grand a yr for 1600 members (of which two dozen are active,) there is NO WAY the owner would have given gio a first-look, no less a second-look.     

Again, I don't see how membership is the driver of costs.  It's activity (storage/bandwidth) not the raw number of users -- unless I am missing something.  What I am saying is that the price platform/structure needs to consider what actually costs you money to provide the service, not something arbitrary like 400 vs 500 members.  That was what moved our owner to migrate to the premium level (storage GBs, not how many members we have.)

Maybe the reality is that FREE anything, just isn't a good business model for gio because it costs a lot (in infrastructure) that you just cannot support??
What would be your breakeven if you did away with all free?  Would it save enough money in infrastructure and operating costs to make gio profitable so that you can take a vacation (at least one day a year  :-) )

Thx for your service to all of us!
-ken

On Wed, Dec 30, 2020 at 02:57 PM, J_Catlady wrote:

To do that from the site, simply copy the section you want to quote into your browser and then click "Reply."

Good deal! I didn't realize this was the way to do it--thanks so much, everyone!

This same thing happened with a member of one of my groups using Thunderbird awhile back. I first reported it here thinking it was a groups.io digest-reply bug, It turned out to have nothing to do with groups.io or digests and instead was a Thunderbird bug.
Here's the thread.
https://beta.groups.io/g/main/message/26708
--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

On Wed, Dec 30, 2020 at 01:27 PM, Shal Farley wrote:

... Failing that, if you attempt to invite or direct add an aliased address, the error message could say something more helpful, along the lines of "already a member (as an alias of xx@ yy.com)."

 

I'd vote for that as the primary suggestion. Then the moderator wouldn't have to search for it.

 

That would be the quickest one to implement as well so I second that.  And I guess even if it'd probably be implied, save an Activity Log entry as well, so the display error message displayed wouldn't be just transient, but also searchable for troubleshooting purposes if need be.

As for possibly adding something in the Member List, Bruce's suggestion of a "[Has] Aliases" badge would be a quick and easy option, display that badge for the addresses that have aliases and when one hovers over the badge, display the alias list.  Or instead, possibly enhancing Searching Member List could also help by allowing to search for the alias and return you the actual member's account it belongs to.

Cheers,
Christos

On Wed, Dec 30, 2020 at 07:06 PM, John Wirtz SF wrote:

The sentiment that is coming across is that the owners of free groups want those who pay for premium or enterprise to subsidise the free/basic groups.

To the contrary, several of the messages and sub-threads were about possible ways to reduce the dependency of free groups on premium subscriptions.

It is true, however, that those who support the existence of very large free groups would like very large free groups to continue to be an option.  For some (for many, I suspect), this is more of a moral issue, or even a sentimental one, which has nothing to do with "fair trading".

Samuel

On Wed, 30 Dec 2020 12:57:54 -0800, "J_Catlady"
<j.olivia.catlady@gmail.com> wrote:

You can make it clear what message you're responding to quoting all or part of it. To do that from the site, simply copy the section you want to quote into your browser and then click "Reply." Your quoted text will automatically be pasted into the top of your response, with an attribution referencing the author of that message.

Yes, what Catlady says, and I'll add that most of your members are
going to post, read, and reply by email and not on the web site.

The reply feature works for the rest of those who reply on the web
site and not by email, so I doubt Mark would want to make changes to
it.

Donald


----------------------------------------------------
Some ham radio groups you may be interested in:
https://groups.io/g/ICOM https://groups.io/g/Ham-Antennas
https://groups.io/g/HamRadioHelp https://groups.io/g/Baofeng
https://groups.io/g/CHIRP https://rf-amplifiers.groups.io/g/main

And if you're replying via email, and you reply directly underneath a specific message within the thread, that specific message will be quoted in your reply (although encapsulated in ellipses saying "show hidden text").
--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

A past member of my group just resubscribed after a number of years under the same email address. Usually when this happens, the member's history comes back automatically. But in this case, it's blank, which I'm assuming/guessing is because in the past members page, her account shows as "Deleted Account." I can find the member's history by clicking on "Deleted Account," which is somewhat helpful, but it is not, as is usually the case, connected with the new membership.

Is it possible to resurrect history in a resubscription under the same email address, as usually happens, even when the member left due to deleting their account? The history is still there, but is just not hooked up to the email address.
--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

On Wed, Dec 30, 2020 at 02:53 PM, <mgeisler02@...> wrote:

when I click on the Reply arrow for a specific message, my reply shows up at the end of the list instead of showing up underneath that message

And if you don't want to highlight the info to quote when you click Reply under the message, the reply box will open under the message so you can easily refer to the original, though a bit more difficult on a phone or tablet.  You can also click Reply, then click the Quote Post icon to copy in the entire thing.  There are many, many features here that may take some getting used to.  Reading the Owners Manual (for group settings) and/or the Members Manual (for things that apply to everyone, such as replies) can answer a lot of questions you may have.

Duane

You can make it clear what message you're responding to quoting all or part of it. To do that from the site, simply copy the section you want to quote into your browser and then click "Reply." Your quoted text will automatically be pasted into the top of your response, with an attribution referencing the author of that message.

I don't think anything in particular needs, or even should, be done to implement the request beyond what already exists. I think it could actually cause confusion.
--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

I just set up a new account and am exploring the features to see if it will work for our group. One thing I can't do it respond to a particular message within a topic; when I click on the Reply arrow for a specific message, my reply shows up at the end of the list instead of showing up underneath that message--so it's impossible to see what exactly I'm replying to. Is there any chance that this will ever be changed? It's pretty important in order to follow what's being commented upon. Thanks for considering!

When I choose to REPLY in out Roadtrek CyberRally, I can see the topic, my FROM, but the area to type a reply is blank.

this is in  rti.groups.io 

As you are noticing, I do not have this  problem with this Beta Group.

Here is a clip of what I see:


--
Hank S.
Littlestown, PA
One mailbox from a Gettysburg address