Roll Call

[Lora]

If you charge any kind of fee to be a member or fee for a certain service etc., show us your Ning site and tell us a little about it.

[Lora]

I will begin... :)

My site is The Vintage Village. We are a niche group focusing on antiques. vintage & collectibles.

We didn't begin by charging but because we hand approve each picture into our site and it became very time consuming, we decided to ask a small fee for this service. We only allow pictures of items that are related to the field and are for sale.

We manage our paid members by keeping a spreadsheet of paid "Premium Members" as we call it. We give two options, 6 month and a year and when their Premium Membership is up, we notify them and most folks renew.

I collect my fees via Pay Pals Merchant Services where I have created Buy it Now buttons....  which anyone can do.

Just copy the code for the widget and paste into a text box and then keep a record any way you prefer.

[Lois Linquist]

Hiya,

I don't currently charge a membership fee but I look forward to hearing what others are doing and how it's working out. I do charge for advertising on the site and that has worked out well, when I remember to send the bills, <g>.

Lois

http://copperwirejewelers.ning.com

[Lora]

Love your site! If you use your photo area as a venue to sell items, you can charge folks to use that as a promotional tool.

I used to sell on Etsy btw... :)

[Christine Agro]

I'm using Paid Access through Ning.

I have two site s- one up and running and the other forming.  I've  chosen to make my sites paid access for a few reasons.  First I believe in equal exchange of energy.  I offer insight, guidance and support, not to mention manage the community and I believe that has value.  I also see this as a way to keep spammers and scammers out.  I want a community of people who want to be there to learn, heal and grow, not of people who are looking to abuse.  By charging a fee for site wide access, it mostly addreses this behavior.

The two sites are www.femsocial.com and www.theconsciouslivingguide.com  FEMSocial has been up and running since November; The Conscious Living Guide is just being set up.

There are slight differences in the sites.  After working with FEMSocial for several months, where members pay $400 for a full year of service - they receive talks, workshops, meditations, and video instruction in several groups. - I decided to make The Conscious Living Guide a little more ala carte.  The annual membership fee is lower $188 but the benefits are less - members get a download meditation MP3, access to weekly meditations and a monthly q&a with me, conscious living tips, access to 27 episodes of The Conscious Living Guide radio show and access to any future interviews I do.  Then I've created paid access groups that offer courses that I've actually taught live in the past. So a member can add-on 40 Days to Creating More; Tools to Live By; and 50 Ways to Live Life Consciously.  

After setting these up - I went back to FEMSocial and added the first paid access group - so on top of the annual fee (although annual members will only pay $44 and new members will pay $444 - so the annual FEMSocial membership plus $44)  

So far I love it and my  members love what is being created.  

I am have one weird problem I just posted on Creator and submitted a ticket.  On my new site TheConsciousLivingGuide.com the paywalls aren't working.  Anyone can go to the site and access the whole thing whether they are signed in or not.  

[Lora]

they sound like wonderful sites and the set up sounds perfect. :)

[Julie Hochstadter]

Christine,

How is it going now?  Roughly how many paid members do you have?

[Mike Wolleben]

I have a Niche site with 10k members. Also have a database of 61k to promote it to.  I am thinking of paid access but hesitant.  Can you tell me what % of your members pay?  Very curious.  

Mike Wolleben   

[Julie Hochstadter]

yes me too.  I have almost 8K in members and am considering that or some fee structure with different levels.

[Lora]

There are so many types of sites this can be used for and I am loving seeing what you all are doing. :)

[Diogenes Ruiz]

This is a great group. Thanks to all of you for sharing what you are doing. I look forward to learning more from those with more experience in this area as I plan my 'paid access" site.

[Peggy Randall]

We are considering testing some paid access models using our Ning social network.  That may involve testing a "pay wall" for some of the content from our main website (TheNation.com) as well as restricting access to certain community features on our social network (socialnetwork.thenation.com).

Very interested in learning how others are using paid access features on Ning.

[Jeff Bean]

Don't have one yet - sketching it out. Will post when I have something. I've been wrestling with how to integrate premium membership, membership categories, premium content, paid access, and how it all fits together. Particularly interested in work-arounds given that there doesn't seem to be an official way to integrate content controls. So hoping to learn!