I pretty much second all of what Steve from Sounds Heavenly said.

I'm not much of a regular on the forums, but I do enjoy my Bang & Olufsen items, and work on items from time to time as well.

My first time as a Gold member came when an item on my Beogram 9000 broke, and a member was kind enough to send me a replacement just for me signing up and helping with the site. From there I've kept my Gold membership because the access to the service manuals was a help to me.

I somehow won a prize last spring, and didn't realize it till much later. I can't lie that I was pretty excited about it, but it also didn't have the most impact on my decision to re-up my Gold membership.

Option 1 would be my vote, but I'm not going to be heartbroken with whatever happens, and I really hope that we can keep on with this brand we love.

Hello Lee,

I also love being part of this forum.  I was first introduced, to less than a year ago, by Steve through his remarkable UTube videos.  It has been a wonderful resource of information through the technical manuals and chats I've had access to.

I feel the Prize Draw should be during the Christmas Holiday Season.  Just once a year.

I believe a donation button would be a nice reminder for all the members along with a rise in the membership costs.  BeoWorld is a valuable resource to us all.

Thank you, Lee. And, thank you, Steve.

 

Lee and Keith,

Thanks for bringing up our situation to the surface (say ours since I think we should share the continued existence of the Beoworld community and its sites) - I've been a member since 2010 and have not been a gold a member all the time. The gold membership I got to access the enhanced information in terms of manuals etc (this is a real gold mine in finding older B&O technical information).

The prize draw was a bonus I did not pay so much attention to at the time, but during the last years, I have been a lucky guy, and I am now the lucky owner of 2 B&O prices.

I stand behind the 1st option, reducing the amount of price drawn to 1-2 / year - a Christmas celebration/price draw would be the one to go if it will be one / year.

I´ve earlier been running nonprofit community web pages by myself for many years and know exactly Keith´s situation and how much TIME it takes to keep up with patches, hacking attempts, enhancements, etc...  For Lee, I see you have put your own heart/soul into this site and clearly earnings as well via your earlier business.

Some ideas for possible adjustments/enhancements.

1. Auto renew payment - I can only see to myself, I´ve missed renewing the membership every time. Would it be possible to have an auto-renew setup (not sure if your payment solution allows it - not all payment gateways allow this). 

2. Several payment alternatives for the subscription
Depending on the % fee for the payment handling. Due to many people's financial situation right now and what I read between the lines members are not always willing to pay a possible increase in yearly fee...   Can an option be as it´s on other sites, that you have a slightly higher total yearly cost but you as a member have the option to split it out on a longer time / see it as a monthly subscription that doesn´t have the same impact at the time it occurs?

3. Try to reactivate older inactive users (many can be like me - missed renewing my account).

4. See if we can engage community users with deep knowledge in different areas to write special projects/articles (if we are willing to sponsor with our time to write on what you can achieve/enhance the usage with your B&O equipment).

These articles could then be available for paid members, but with a teasing ingress should be publicly available and could also be sent out via monthly e-mails to the registered members.

5. Also if we see users start to be active in other closed forums (Facebook etc) can you partially integrate the forum/sites with Facebook and other social sites and members' possible Facebook profiles?  Know Kith this may be a fundamental change in the ground.

I used this way in the site I used to run, as soon a member logged in on the community site it was a notice showing this on Facebook. Also if we wrote something on the webpage it got a push with ingress to Facebook and we took back users' activity to our site.  Then you got indirect advertising about the site to users. 

6. Make it easier to see different member levels, and push the customer for the member levels you wish they should take. Also as other have stated, make it easy to donate to our world's existence..

When I today should renew my gold membership (again I missed it) I pressed renew my membership link and on the renew side I did not notice the default membership choice is the free membership plan... guess what happened. Realized after a second attempt that the Bronze level is the default re-new suggestion!

To finalize my thought, I feel a bit worried that so much of our site relies on Lee and Keith´s time and possibly own money. I´ve seen what may happen when one of two enthusiasts for some reason can´t keep up and I think we should have in mind how to secure and continue Lee´s and Keith's creation in Beoworld.org and allow them to have some peace in mind.

Anyhow, I´ve greatfull for the energy and time you put into Beoworld and Stevens's sponsoring/support of Beoworld.

Greetings from Stefan in Sweden

I also want to thank Lee and Keith for all the work they do to keep this site going.

I have flipped between a gold and silver member over the years. For the last 3 to 4 years I've stuck with gold as I wanted to support the site. I have not been too worried about the Prize Draw in making the decision and would be happy for it to be bi annual or just at Christmas. I have had a win and that was really exciting.

I have to admit, I nearly gave up when the forums changed. I am used to it and happy now that it has become more familiar to me. On the old forums, I'd pop in for a look just about every day. When the new one came along, things were slow to begin with and I went on once or twice a week. Now I'm back almost every day as there is usually something new to see. I try to pass on anything I can to to help members although it is usually with the older Masterlink Products. I have noticed that it seems to take longer for someone to try to help than it used to, and that is probably due to a drop in members.

It is hard to say what is the best way forward because those who are happy to pay, usually do, and those who aren't, won't. It is the big proportion in the middle who are on the fence, that you need to encourage and I really don't know how you do that.

You could try something like every 20th gold member that signs up gets an extra year's membership and have that as a regular/permanent promotion (if the figures would add up for you). It would need to be somewhere prominent and also on the sign up page.

I wish you the best of luck.

Stoobie

 

 

My 2 cents:

Some members (like me) would be happy to donate an extra amount from time to time.  But I need to be prompted.  I had no idea that the site was so heavily subsidised nor did I notice a "donate" button.

So I propose that on a yearly basis you circulate a message requesting a donation from those who are willing and able.

And the easier you make it to transfer money (PayPal?  Credit card?) then the more likely folk will send some amount.

Hi Lee,

Being a vintage B&O collector, I have been a Gold member not because of the Prize Draw but in order to support this great platform and resource website.  Happy to continue being a Gold member going forward regardless of the Prize Draw existence. I would also have no problem with a membership fee increase if this helps to cover the costs of maintaining this website. Many thanks to everyone involved in running Beoworld!

Dimitri

Actually, the annual message asking for support is a really good idea. The Internet Archive does this to raise funds, as does Wikipedia. It's an opportunity to remind people of the work that the site does, and how much cash is needed to keep it afloat.

Mark

I was both surprised and sorry to hear the Lee has been paying for the prizes. I did not join Beoworld for the prizes an when I did win one it was my first ever time at winning any sort of prize so it was a lovely surprise.

Neither Lee nor Keith are paid for any of the Stirling work they do and the immense time it takes to run the site so thank you to both of them.

Having read the posts I like the idea of courses run by members for the benefit of members.

Of course we should pay whoever runs the course with some money going to Beoworld as well. This would help encourage new members to join and keep existing members who want to learn more.

In addition, I think the fee should rise. Personally, I would pay £50 per year. As an angler I pay this for club membership and that is considered cheap.

we should all do our best to spread the word on the other internet sites as to the benefits of joining Beoworld. I am a member on a number of these and they are not a patch on Beoworld with a lot of misinformation at times, something we don’t get on Beoworld.

As for the prize draws, well, until things get better perhaps we should only do one a year then increase them as funds allow.

For me, the main thing is to keep the site open as long as possible, it’s in all our interests.

Thank you

I am a relative newcomer here (~6 months) and not a "paying" member, so I'm not sure if my comments will carry any weight. I'll post anyway since it might provide an alternative point of view...

I considered paying for a membership but ultimately decided against it. My impression is that the membership provides three things: 1) Entry in the prize draw, 2) Access to the manual scans, and 3) a "rank moniker" by my user information. I'll address these in reverse order...

3) Titles don't mean much to me so this wasn't a consideration.

2) Access to the manuals was my primary consideration. However, it is not clear what is in the Beoworld manual library and if it any different than what is available (for free) elsewhere. I considered paying for a membership just to see what is there, but decided not to, mostly because I prefer original paper manuals. The library would provide some benefit even if I plan to purchase a paper copy. It would show what is included in the manual (i.e. full adjustment procedures versus just a schematic) before purchasing. The other use I have for the manual library is to be able to reference a manual (for equipment/manuls that I don't own) in an attempt to help other members debug their equipment. Perhaps as part of the "membership sales pitch webpage" there could be listing of the available manuals and an example of the scan quality.

3) The prize draw was actually detrimental to my decision to buy a membership. When I researched the prize draw it seemed suspicious. It seemed to be “too good to be true”. The prizes were too nice and too numerous. It also seemed that “the regulars” were winning a disproportionate percentage of the prizes. There seemed to be a “good ‘ol boy club” vibe to it.  I wondered if the silver member’s fees were being used to subsidize the gold member’s prizes. Lee’s post at the start of this thread did a lot to explain my misguided observations. The quantity and quality of the prizes were due to Lee’s generosity in heavily subsidizing the draw. The familiarity of the winner’s names was due to the decrease in the number of gold members (i.e. most of remaining gold members are active, long term members). Regardless of this epiphany, I hope that there remains an option (preferably anonymous) to support the core operation of the site independent of the prize draw.

I want to thank Lee, Ken, and any others that keep the site running. I know that it is a grueling, thankless job. I hope that I’m able to do my part by “paying back” those that helped me by helping others. My goal is to be able to “pay forward” with advice in case I need help sometime in the future.

I hope that people don’t lose sight of the idea that the site’s most valuable assets are the information in the posts and the camaraderie of the interaction with the other members.

Glitch