[Cynthia Daniel]

Lisa,

Instead of paying for whole access, you might consider creating a 2-tier model. Part would be free, and value-added services would be for pay. You could probably get a lot more than $30/year for some of the best parts of this site, and you would have a larger stream of people interested because they weren't turned away at the front door.

The only ones turned away at the front door are artists whose drawing skills are below a certain level or whose style is very inconsistent with our focus. I think the membership software supports access to certain areas. I would have to check whether it's an automatic thing. But, it would be easier to have an annual fee that covered critiques over charging for them one at a time.

Critiques I think are incredibly valuable. Steven does them for free, I'm guessing (bless his heart), but a $40 fee for a critique by a panel of "experts" sounds fair to me. Of course, you'd have to pay the experts too.

The tracking of all that could end up being a lot of work and I'm trying to decrease the amount of work. Better would simply be an annual bonus for moderators or something along those lines.

Online, there aren't nearly as many demos as I wish there were. I think lots of us wish there were more demos. A live demo or workshop would be a for-fee event that could either be in a forum topic, or in a live webcast. A topic of ample, well-done demos is something I would be happy to pay for as subscription.

Webcast is not something I want to get into. We have had a section pending for a portrait demo start to finish, which would be steps shown in posts in a thread. The first was to be Allan Banks and Peggy is in charge of that. It's been a long time coming, because both Allan and Peggy are very busy. But, I just happened to speak with Allan yesterday and he said he had now completed a couple of portraits where he had taken photos at the appropriate stages.

There are some things I can never seem to get my hands on - Richard Schmid's book, Daniel Greene's videos, Peggy's videos. A kind of lending library would be something I would pay for.

Again, there's the time issue - running a lending library would increase workload. Do you mean used or new? Peggy sells her videos right from her site and they are advertised on the left side on every page of this forum. Dan's videos can be purchased through him and I think there are a few online places.

You could add more portal-type services, links to more books, supplies, etc. Try CommissionJunction.com. You'll get commissions on those sales.

More books? Have you ever visited by bookstore? There's over 400 books there. I put the Dick Blick link at the top of all pages of the Forum thinking I'd start getting a lot of sales from that, but it's been barely a trickle. A lot of the art supply places do not have affiliate programs. There's actually a lot of portal type links over in my Resouce & Biz section of my main site. There's really not a lot of space on the Forum to put a ton of links unless I started a thread just for that, but would anyone really read it and click - and then bother to come back the next time they ordered?

Also, I think you might just ask for contributions. It seems like lots of people would be inclined to give it to you.

Well, of the two that said they'd be willing to pay in this thread, they are my moderators, so they get free membership anyway.

I'm not sure what part of your business model this Forum would be... I can see it as a marketing expense, and then you'd have to assess its effectiveness for you.

I've gotten only a few new clients from the Forum. I see that as a bonus, since I didn't start the Forum to get new clients. However, the time spent in other ways would have been more financialy productive for me.

But as a private paid-for service, I don't think it would add anything to your brand identity, and would continue to be expensive and time-consuming to run.

I feel it would be less time-consuming because only those who are truly interested in being involved would bother to pay the fee. This would decrease the number of new applicants. The membership software does automatic emails for membership expirations and it interfaces with PayPal for payments.

It might make sense to sell it off to someone and have them host and manage it with a revenue strategy. Or it might (heavens no) make sense to shut it down, and have a group of artists restart one as a co-op.

I can't see that the Forum by itself has any saleability.If it were to close down, why start a new one - why not just go over to WetCanvas?

It's interesting that this thread has had 171 views as of this writing, but only 5 people have responded. That's because most of the people viewing are not registered members.