John, you could easily use the mute this topic button in any of the threads if you were no longer interested. Which it sure seems like you're not.

On Wed, Dec 30, 2020 at 11:49 AM, Glenn Glazer wrote:

we may have gone off topic and into the weeds.

Haha. But maybe the weeds are fun. Mark has provided us with some great entertainment during these awful winter doldrums! Right?
 
--
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 would like to suggest that at the point where we start debating economic philosophies, we may have gone off topic and into the weeds.

Best,

Glenn

On Wed, Dec 30, 2020 at 11:36 AM, Chris Jones wrote:

On Wed, Dec 30, 2020 at 11:04 AM, Samuel Murrayy wrote:

I think we can be clear that the purpose of Groups.io is to make money,

And why do you go to work, exactly? I would argue that the purpose of Groups.io is to provide a service. At some point in the chain providing that service costs money, and the person coordinating everything (Mark) has to put food on the table.

There is a difference between providing a service, and hence making money, and making money by providing a service, I think Mark is, to his credit, trying to do the former: but needing to make enough money, and finding it difficult, under his current businsess plan, to do so.
 

What is so dreadfully wrong with persons using a service being the people who pay for it?

Nothing. The problem is that Mark's business plan (current and future) is that group owners are the people who make the payments.

But they are not the the people using using the service: those are the group members (and Mark's future pricing plan, based on 'per user' pricing, reflects this)

Some group owners, for some groups, are, and will be, willing and able to pay for their groups, because they make money from their members (somehow - by charging for a greater membership, or selling stuff, or... ) or (occasionally) just have money to burn (and these are likely to be put off by an open ended per member price, when the old $110 pa unlimited members premium group charge might have been acceptable).

But others are not: while they are willing to put in the effort of setting up and running groups, they have neither the funds, nor (easily) the means of raising them, to be able to pay for them. And while $0.55 per member per year is not a lot - so you might ask why can't they just pay out of their pocket - it mounts up: 100 members is $55, 1000 $550. And I would suggest that most do not set up groups without at least the hope, if not the expectation, of achieving those sorts of numbers.

So the Achilles heel of Groups.io comes down to the difficulty, and cost, of taking (and accounting for) such small payments (c$0.50 pa) - whether by Groups.io, or group owners... 

And, if you believe that 'free' (or minimal cost) and open basic groups are a 'good thing', It is a pity - in the absence of alternative suggestions - that the suggestion of soliciting donations from members, or charging them (perhaps an annual charge $5 for 'some' groups, extras a bit more) has been rejected. 

A further point: that - in all these posts - the implications of 'excess' members becoming (for future groups) a cost, rather than a benefit (or something that could just ignored), for group owners haven't really been discussed, as owners come to face the issue. 

Jeremy

On Wed, Dec 30, 2020 at 10:06 AM, John Wirtz SF wrote:

I find the thread tiresome

As Chris said, all you have to do is stop reading! Or what about learning about the "mute" and "unfollow" features, so that you can completely strike from your vision this tiresome thread that you are continuing to contribute to? :)
 
--
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

Ellen wrote:

 

There is no way I'm going to charge "my subscribers."  I do not own anything in groups.io; if I was forced to pay, I might see myself as

a renter, a tenant. That's the analogy. Google groups would not do because they have no archives, no files (we do share essays) and no photos

(which we share with one another) -- they are part of the 3 different groups' identities, their memory as it were.

 

This paragraph doesn’t make any sense whatsoever!

 

I find the thread tiresome because 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.

Sorry, that’s not fair trading.  As far as I can see, Mark has set out a pricing plan and isn’t going to change it.

 

John Wirtz

--
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

Hi Duane,

Email aliases can confound group Owners, who often don't even realize such a feature exists. For example, it's very disconcerting to attempt to invite or direct add an alias address and have the system tell you that address is already a member. 

"??? I don't see it in the Member List..."

Even if you do already know about aliases, this leaves you with the frustrating task of painstakingly opening every member record one by one to find out which account is using the alias. 

To that end, it might be handy if all aliases were listed right there in the Member List, perhaps indented below the subscribed address and in a different color (or bearing a new status badge or something along those lines...haven't thought that completely through). 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)."

A final thing I would like to open for consideration is the ability of Owners of Premium groups to edit a subscriber's email aliases (as they already can for the primary address).

Thanks for your consideration,
Bruce

On Wed, Dec 30, 2020 at 12:51 PM, John Wirtz SF wrote:

But, please kill or close this boring thread, there’s been enough opinion and it’s getting tiresome now.

I suggest that you stop reading it then. IMHO it is still worthwhile.

Chris

On Wed, Dec 30, 2020 at 11:04 AM, Samuel Murrayy wrote:

I think we can be clear that the purpose of Groups.io is to make money,

And why do you go to work, exactly? I would argue that the purpose of Groups.io is to provide a service. At some point in the chain providing that service costs money, and the person coordinating everything (Mark) has to put food on the table. What is so dreadfully wrong with persons using a service being the people who pay for it?

Not many businesses survive very long by losing money.

Chris

On Wed, Dec 30, 2020 at 12:29 AM, Mark Fletcher wrote:

My thesis [when I started Groups.io] was that I could create a good business around it.

...

The per-member pricing structure ... aligns revenue with costs.

Okay, well in that case, I think we can be clear that the purpose of Groups.io is to make money, and free groups have a limited and specific set of purposes, namely (a) it allows people to play around with the system without paying, (b) it serves as a bit of marketing in that it shows the groups.io brand to a few more people and (c) it offers a way for groups to temporarily go into a type of hiatus without the need to recreate everything when the group starts back up again. 

To put it differently, free groups are not the main reason for Groups.io, and the purpose of paid groups isn't simply to help subsidize free groups.

Having come to terms with the above, I would then suggest a different pricing structure:

• Bronze group: no credit card required, 100 members max, 1 GB storage, basic group.
• Silver group: credit card required, 100 members free, plus $0.05 per additional member per month, 10 GB storage, basic plus collaboration and donations.
• Gold group: $10 per month for up to 250 members, plus $0.05 per additional member per month, 20 GB storage per 250 members, all premium features.
• Platinum group (i.e. Enterprise, with an entirely different pricing structure)

Additional notes or ideas:

• 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.  Also, allowing donations for such groups would allow the owners to start gathering money for a potential switch to gold.
• For silver and gold plans, allow owners to set a preferred maximum annual payment (e.g. $10, $20, $50, etc.) and then receive warnings when that amount is approaching (or the calculated average of it is approaching), and/or when the chosen amount is reached, the group is switched to no-mail (i.e. posting by mail allowed, but reading via web only) and no further uploads to files and photos are allowed until the owner updates the limit.
• I suggest giving bronze groups a "limited" collaboration suite, i.e. 150 MB files, 150 MB photos, 150 rows database, 15 pages wiki, so that they can get used to using these tools and get to see the advantage of paying for it.  Silver and gold groups get the full collaboration suite (i.e. up to their respective maximums).
• Another way to reduce bronze groups' cost is to always convert attachments to links (silver and gold groups can choose to have attachments delivered).
• An alternative way of pricing gold groups would be $10 per month for every 250 members or part thereof (so that 300, 400 or 500 members would all be $20 per month).  The advantage of this for group owners is a more predictable cost at the end of the invoicing period.
• Let users be counted as members only if they are members for more than 10 days.  This allows people to join a group, look around a bit, and then leave again, without affecting the group numbers or costing the group owner any money.
• An alternative arrangement is to set the free number for silver groups at 50 instead of 100.  This means that you get money from silver groups quicker, but it is still advantageous for silver groups because they get more storage and they get collaboration and donations.  The fee structure should encourage groups that are willing to pay to start paying as soon as possible, without making it too expensive for them initially or when they're a small group.  Or make both the bronze and silver group's free limit 75 members (it's just simpler).
• 10% discount for annual instead of monthly payments on the gold plan (I don't see how that can work on the silver plan).

Well Mark, here's one for you. I wouldn't mind volunteering my time approving groups or answering support questions if I had the ability on my account. So please keep that into consideration. I manage probably seven or eight blindness groups plus I gave support to the blindness community I definitely see no problem giving you a little bit of support voluntarily to help your service. The only thing I don't have is the technical skills to transfer archives. So if somebody had that ability or the technical knowledge in order to be able to do that, we would have something up and off of the ground.

Mark,

I don't believe that relying on donations is the way to go, and I
won't be pursuing that.

I hope you mean that only in the sense Mike suggested (becoming a non-profit).

I think a simplified Donation mechanism (which doesn't require the group owner to set up an account at Stripe) could help many group owners find a way to support their group.
https://beta.groups.io/g/main/message/27410

I haven't used Stripe, but I have set up an account through Square in support of a PTA unit. I found that experience a bit fraught -- and I wasn't even putting my own bank account on the line (the unit, fortunately, has its own). I can imagine how the current Donation mechanism might daunt group owners who have no prior experience with CC merchant accounts.

Taking it a step further, I think allowing Basic groups to use a simplified version could help them cross the threshold to a Premium plan.

Shal

For whatever it's worth, I think M K really nails it.

Mark has built a wonderful platform here and without team. If anything, I'd like to see him grow it more rapidly...with outside capital or organically. More likely both.  But, from ethical or societal perspectives, this isn't the Salvation Army or local church. It is a business.  Businesses have to generate positive cash flow to survive.  Business with real growth potential, as GIO surely has, can also do a world of good for the many people who eventually may be hired to support that growth in different roles.  There is nothing wrong or less admirable about building an honest and successful business.  Non-profits are also wonderful and obviously do a ton of good in the world. Successful companies increasingly have CSR (corporate social responsibility) teams that support non-profits with whatever resources.  

MK really speaks the truth when (s)he writes "Whatever business model is chosen by [Mark], there are going to be users who will be unhappy for one reason or another."  You can take that to the bank and we've already seen that on this long thread.  That aside, the ethics and honesty behind this for-profit company are very evident to me and rather awesome.

Mark appreciates input/feedback but isn't asking for votes since businesses aren't democracies.  Still, my vote is "carry on!"  A great platform by a wonderful and accomplished entrepreneur with a big heart. That's what groups.io is to me.