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Subject:Re: ADMIN: More on upcoming list changes From:Marilynne Smith <marilyns -at- QUALCOMM -dot- COM> Date:Wed, 4 Aug 1999 11:15:34 -0700
The $36,000/yr month was not from Eric, but from one of us multiplying a
fee times the membership.
Marilynne
At 10:28 AM 8/4/99 , Diane Haugen wrote:
>I do not run a list, but I maintain my own Document Design web site, and I
>have thought long and hard about how to help offset the costs. However,
>the costs are nowhere near $36,000 a month. I'm wondering why that
>projected figure is so high.
>
>Once you start charging for your list, you change the subscriber
>demographics significantly. The question is, do you want to do this. If
>you don't -- then charging a subscription fee is not the way you want to
go.
>
>There is a part of me that says lists, even excellent ones like this one,
>should be free. That's what access to information is all about, and it has
>changed the world we live in markedly. Once you start charging for a list,
>you revert back to the old model of hoarding information until someone
>coughs up enough money to be allowed to see it. Somehow this runs against
>my grain.
>
>Advertising is also something I abhor on a web site. I avoid busy,
>bouncing portal sites like the plague.
>
>So what you are left with is patronage. I would recommend first, you find
>some place cheaper to keep your list (I'm sorry, but I can't figure out
>what you are looking at that requires $36,000 a month), and second, that
>you solicit supporters. One-list is fine for the list, but you still have
>the web site to pay for. I belong to several one-list lists and I have had
>no trouble with them, no spammers getting into them, no endlessly bounced
>messages. Actually, I've had more trouble with majordomo lists than
>anything else.
>
>The Old House Chronicle has just faced this same situation. Presevation
>list members founded this online journal because we did not like the glitzy
>"see how much we can look like This Old House" move from a venerable
>magazine we all loved -- the way it was. Now you can't tell the difference
>between the two hard-copy magazines.
>
>With the Old House Chronicle, we have decided to accept supporters, not
>ads, and have the list on a secondary page -- not the main page -- where
>people can go if they are looking for companies who supply old house stuff.
>We provide links to the web pages if they have any.
>
>Yes, it takes time to maintain web pages and lists, but simply looking at
>how much you could bill that time out were you doing something else again
>reverts back to the corporate bean counting mentality I also have little
>patience for. At some point you do something because it has inherent value
>and you do not try to put a price tag on it.
>
>I get extremely irritated at the regularly appearing Newsweek type articles
>that put a price on how much parents spend raising children. These
>articles always distort the costs by trying to figure out how much the
>stay-at-home mom could make if she were out working instead of raising her
>children. Of course, they don't give you the details of how much working
>mothers are losing by going to work because it costs so much for daycare,
>clothes, eating out because you are too tired to cook, etc., etc.
>
>In the final analysis, a list like TECHWR-L does not have a monetary value
>that has a very accurate relationship to beans.
>
>And in the end, Eric and Deborah, you simply need to decide if you're still
>enjoying this enough to want to continue it because the inherent value of
>what you do is beyond price.
>
>Diane
>
>
>
>===============================================================
>Diane Haugen
>Whiskey Creek Document Design
><http://www.wcdd.com/index.html>
>
>Editor,
>Document Design <http://www.wcdd.com/dd/index.html>
>
>Associate Editor,
>Old House Chronicle <http://www.oldhousechronicle.com>
>===============================================================
>
>From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000==
>
>
>
