Membership/Subscription fees

Is anyone in this group charging membership/subscription fees for their network?

Putting aside the mechanical problems caused by the fact that Ning does not currently support this function, I am just trying to get a sense of whether anyone is actually doing it and making it work.

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Permalink Reply by Tracy Curtis on April 1, 2010 at 5:25am

Yeah... that's what I was thinking about my network as well...the whole "value" of a lot of networks is that there are actually folks there to network with LOL.

Thank you for all of your insight! Have a wonderful holiday weekend.

Permalink Reply by Peter Svoboda on April 8, 2010 at 9:29am

Hi Tony,

I am exploring setting up recurring billing through paypal. I believe that through that method people can also pay by Visa and Mastercard and I want to set up through Pay pal because there are many people who don't have a PayPal account and don't want to take the time to set one up, so they would be able to pay through Master Card or Visa because those are also options on the PayPal connection

My question is I have heard that if on a recurring account, if a person's card is no longer working that there is a charge back to me from Visa, astercard, etc which is pretty hefty. I have heard this was in the $20-$30 dollars.

Is this true? What has been your experience with this sort of problem?

Are there any other hidden charges I have to be aware of.

Thank you, Peter

Permalink Reply by Kos on April 24, 2010 at 3:55pm

Tony thank you for outlining your member subscription process. Good stuff. Would bear with me and explain how you assigned diff membership levels without giving away Administrative authority? Are you approving each and every photo & video for those higher levels? Thanks in advance.

Permalink Reply by Tony C on April 25, 2010 at 9:50pm

Yes - I am afraid so.

There is no other way around it that I can see.

Permalink Reply by Marilynn on May 6, 2010 at 5:59pm

Very cool! My problem is that a lot of businesses already have pictures and videos up (easy to remove) but what about the personalized business pages? Is there anyway to edit people's pages if they don't move over to the new system?

Permalink Reply by Lora on March 23, 2010 at 9:50am

I began a Premium membership service in October of 2009 and it works really well for me.

Members on our site are into Vintage, some are just enthusiasts and some are sellers from various venues like Ebay & Etsy, RubyLane .... etc., The site is open to the public, and is free to join, but I have a Premium Membership option.

What I charge for, is the privilege to list items for sale (30 pic limit per person) in our slide show.

Plus I include some other promotional services like using the Twitter & FaceBook apps to promote my PM's and having promotional threads like one I call "Shop Til You Drop". I control all this by approving pictures and monitoring threads. Myself and other admin take turns overseeing this.

To charge folks, I added code for a pay pal button to my Go Ad Free box on the main page.

I simply created a pay pal account and created buttons for other things like paying to have your "My Page" or item (pictures) be featured. I created another member page for myself and added those options to the text box.

I also charge for ad buttons. I have an affiliate program with vintage related sites who reciprocate in the same way or are sites I support. :)

I keep a spreadsheet of payment and a spreadsheet for Premium Members. So far so good!!!! :)

Permalink Reply by Tony C on March 24, 2010 at 2:14am

Hi Lora

thanks for your post. Well done on implementing a system that works

Permalink Reply by Lora on March 24, 2010 at 9:15am

I think having flat fees for certain aspects could work well for anyone who wanted to earn money on their Network.

It does require a lot of set up and planning. But once you get your ducks in a row, the up keep becomes second nature. I have a routine for monitoring my Premium Members. Making money from your site just requires a little creativity! :)

I would love to see more Networks who do this... :)

Permalink Reply by Cher Cahn on April 1, 2010 at 5:15am

Hi there -

The Mosaic Association South Africa (MASA) has two ning sites running - one the social network (FREE), the other is the Active Members site.

The Active Members' site has the competitions, help, opportunities, pattern downloads, special offers on accessories and a whole lot of other fun stuff. To get at this, you pay approximately $20 per annum membership fee. On application you get an email advising you of your member number, annual fee (3 categories of membership), relevant bank details etc and on receipt of payment you are approved.

These fees are then used to subside prizes, printing and general operational costs, community service projects. We found Ning to be the ideal solution to getting our members an interactive option instead of just feeding them information via a website. The trade-off comes in by not having someone trying to maintain a website but having someone do an admin function like sending out an email and monitoring funds.

Does this help?

Permalink Reply by Tracy Curtis on April 1, 2010 at 5:30am

Invitation Link - I noticed you can change my Network Privacy tab, you can change the invitation link. Does this mean I can create a link that does not include the word "ning" on it? Instead of mynetwork.ning.com could I have just mynetwork.com???

I recall someone mentioning this either here or on another discussion in this group: They asked if it will slow down traffic to your group if the word "ning" is in your site link.

Permalink Reply by mike on April 20, 2010 at 2:30am

I pay around 60 dollars a month to maintain my group
although i do not charge a fee
I do have sponsors and members donate... surly now though ning live have to allow us to put a direct paypal or other,, direct on our home pages,, and give us more freedom to make money
I do ok,, but will never make a profit,,any surplus money i receive i give back in competitions promotions etc

Permalink Reply by Brad McColloch on May 4, 2010 at 12:21pm

You will never make a Ning Network happen if you charge your members a dime. WHY would anyone ever want to pay to join our Ning Networks when they have access to millions of free sites on the net, friends sites, business opportunity sites social networking. The idea of the Ning MGMT team charging the creators a fee before they even establish a site that will profit in any way is crazy. The future looks bleek for ning in my oppinion, because if you have a slow growing ning network or a social network by invitation only, Most creators DO NOT want to pay fees if they make no profit. The MGMT of Ning needs to rethink the future of their company and future creators and their reputation as well. I have THREE other Networks that are free up to 10,000 members,Then a $10.00 fee is charged to keep my network and after that it is a dollar more for every 10,000 who join, so if you get up to 50,000 members your network is still only $14.00 a month 60,000 is $15.00 and so on. It dont take long to grow a network once it starts to run however these fee's are crazy. I don't see Ning around much longer if they don't change that.