This will help FFR as a whole
 

Alright, so there's a need for money. Understandable. A site like this needs the money to keep it running.

So, my suggestion, why not start selling stuff again? Remember when FFR Shirts and bumper stickers or something were being sold? Why not start this back up again?

I'd buy an FFR shirt, and maybe even one for my friend. I just don't even know if they're even being sold anymore. If they are, the page should be made a little more obvious. If they're even selling, I can't find them when I'm TRYING to find them. That being said, random noob A isn't going to be able to find them when they aren't even trying.

A good idea would be to put it up there with "Home, The Game, etc." It used to be there or something, and was titled "FFR Stuff" or something similar.

Another suggestion is premium accounts or premium forum accounts. A couple of places do this, and it wouldn't give anything TOO good that it'd force people to donate. GunZFactor, for example, puts peoples' names in gold and gives them the right to upload more images at a time. I'm not saying we should steal that idea, but I'm saying something related would be nice.

It'd be nice if someone could run this past Synth if he doesn't read it himself. He's the one that's going to do it if anyone's going to do it.

Re: This will help FFR as a whole
 

Both ideas have been discussed.

Merchandise takes too much hassle, and the other idea is still under consideration.

Re: This will help FFR as a whole
 

i'm liking those ideas.

Re: This will help FFR as a whole
 

what Shash said. Merchandise a) is too much hassle and b) doesn't generate nearly as much money as you'd think... and some form of Premium Account is being discussed.

The biggest downside to a premium account is that we've always prided ourselves on not making anyone pay for ANY content. a premium account would almost certainly give certain content only to those who pay for it... even if it is a small fraction of the total content pie.

Re: This will help FFR as a whole
 

I ordered a FFR T-Shirt that never came... the money was taken out of the credit card too... lol.

You guys don't have a PayPal Donate-type thing either, do you? I'm sure some people are generous enough to donate.

I would pay for the Premium Account if I could. Another downside to that is that most of the people who play FFR are teenagers who don't have access to money through credit cards.

Re: This will help FFR as a whole
 

Word for word what I was going to say. Well, mostly.

Re: This will help FFR as a whole
 

The T-shirt thing was a complete disaster for me. My problem with it was that the price was way to low and it took SO much of my time. I was trying to run a business, keep people working, take care of my family, keep the FFR server running, develop for FFR and at the same time running to the post office every night or so with boxes of shirts and stuff. If anyone reads this and did not get what they ordered, it was not intentional. PM your paypal address and amount and I will make it right immediately.

I had a donation link up for almost a year and gained an entire $5 with about $1000 in promises.

As far as premium memberships go, that is a good idea but it would have to be implemented carefully because I would never want to make FFR a pay site. It just goes against what I believe in. Something along the line of getting SOTW 2 weeks in advance or something + special forum access / titles + improved stats or downloadable stat applications that show realtime updates of rankings etc or who is on FFR. (just brainstorming here)..

It's really an eternal struggle for me.. I care about the community but have to make sacrifices in order to live.

What other ideas do you guys have? Help me out here, I could really use it.

Cheers,

Synthlight

Re: This will help FFR as a whole
 

Synth should have some sort of PayPal Donations thing. It may not work COMPLETELY, but donations, although involves money, shouldn't really count as "content", as users have a choice of donating or not. But that's just me. I'm pretty sure Synth has everything under control...





...I hope.

Re: This will help FFR as a whole
 

About the T-Shirt thing, I understand. It would have been nicer to have learned that I wasn't getting any of my stuff months ago, but i'll let you keep my 30-something dollars because I don't have anything more important to spend it on.

If you read my post I made and linked to in about two threads, you know my feelings on this. I said in there that it may be a good idea to pay yearly or bi-yearly to gain premium forum membership or something like that. You know, something like SomethingAwful has. People DO pay to be on that board. I would pay to be on this board. It makes it more exclusive. I like the idea of the whole access-to-special-forums and having a custom title. Something simple like that...for, I dunno...10 dollars every 6 months or 20 dollars a year? Maybe even less expensive than that, I don't know how much the cost of running the site is.

Maybe you could set up something with Cobalt Flux...something like them making a special soft pad that's not that expensive that you can hook up to FFR/Stepmania and/or your gaming console and the pad has FFR on it as well as Cobalt Flux...and FFR gets some of the profits and in return you take the nasty ads off the front page and put more cobalt flux ads. I'd buy the soft pad if it was maybe like...50 dollars or something. (My CF broke so it'd be nice to play again)

Also, i'd suggest no more spontaneous contest where you end up dishing out 75 bucks or more a month. It MIGHT be worth it to save that money and put it towards the site instead of giving it out to random people who doubtfully deserve it.

Re: This will help FFR as a whole
 

Idea for premium account: Infinite credits/automatic access to all songs, as well as songs before they're made public.

Seems pretty obvious to me.

Re: This will help FFR as a whole
 

Poor Synth. ='[

You don't have to resend me a shirt. Lol.

You know... I've always thought about like... an FFR-convention type of thing.
I've made so many friends through FFR, and there is like a 0% of meeting them in real life. It might be too complicated now... but I'm sure that if a lot of people put the effort into it, we can make it happen. Like, we can have separate meetings in different places of the US (since most of the members who play FFR are from the US) and have all the members meet and everything... it'll basically be something social and fun.
You could charge a fee, which is where the money comes in. Something around $80 each person would probably be reasonable, because the conventions can have different activities going on (ie. real life FFR tournaments, DDR/ITG tournaments, movies playing, etc). Furthermore, like anime conventions, FFR merchandise could be sold there. People will more likely buy things they see in real life than by paying through a credit card online (No shipping charges either).

There's a lot of things to work from from there. Just giving a general and somewhat possible idea. I've seen other sites make this work, and turnouts are usually pretty good because hardcore regulars usually make it to these type of meetings.

PS. - Synth's autograph = $15

Re: This will help FFR as a whole
 

At least you got something...Does the link cost anything to maintain? If not why not place it on the front page? a random dollar here or there is still something.

The biggest problem with anything fee-wise, or even donation-wise on this website is the complete and utter lack of credit cards. With such a vast majority of the site being between the ages of 13 and 18, My bet is that less then .001% of ffr has a payment style other than cash. Heck I still don't have a credit card yet and I'm 20.

This is a guess, but am I correct in assuming the ads for Cobalt Flux, google, and The 800,000 circulating ads bring in at least some amount of cash for supporting the site?

*Edit*
As for this:
Wind, you do know about the meetup Tass is hosting this December right? If not..... BRB with link.

Here: http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/...ad.php?t=52459

Re: This will help FFR as a whole
 

Of course, but I think it depends on the amount of traffic it brings in. More people that click on it, the more money it will raise. At least that was the case on some crappy MMO I used to play.

Re: This will help FFR as a whole
 

I was thinking about the FFR convention thing for a while now. How EverQuest has far faires and conventions and theres the Otakon in Ontario and Anime Evolution in BC (Just saying these cause I'm from Canada). I'd say the FFR Convention would take place in Texas, but probably not for a while. Not until FFR becomes really famous. It's getting there at a steady speed though.

That membership thing... I don't think unlimited credits is fair. It WOULD give no purpose to the credits. I feel credits do have a significant impact on new people. It gives people a goal and by the time they have all the purchased songs and the secret songs they are good at it and would continue playing. I'm saying if one person has infinite credits, you'd have to stop them from being able to transfer credits, or have it so they do have credits, but only the secret songs are unlocked for them.

I was thinking having to pay for the priviledges the myspace-ish people use. The profile chat only on paid members profiles. and the wall and uploading the pictures into your gallery. I dunno.

Custom titles under the username, different forum background and/or ffr page background and/or ffr thegame background colour.

Just throwing out ideas.

Re: This will help FFR as a whole
 

This is actually a pretty nice idea, as far as unlocking songs goes. Infinite credits is bad IMO, because then they can just give them to anyone.

I don't like the idea of premium membership giving people things that people would get for free if we weren't a bit short on cash...that kinda defeats the purpose IMO.

Re: This will help FFR as a whole
 

Also, if you have the "top contributers" usernames somewhere on the page, with the top ten people and their names, that gets people motivated for some reason.

And one of the biggest and best strategies I have ever seen for raking in ad profit is somehow (I don't know how you're going to code it...) have certain sites (lets say six) ads on this seperate page. Whoever clicks on one, gets their username into the draw for lets say... 1000 credits daily sent out. Can only get a ticket into the draw once every 24 hours per site. So, you can get into it six times daily. and Synth would be getting lots of money out of this. Have the prize whatever you feel it should be.

Re: This will help FFR as a whole
 

Let me put it this way. I missed all of thanksgiving with my family this year because if I left the server for more than 30 minutes, it was going to crash. It wasn't until Monday that I finally went outside again.

All of these ideas are good for the most part. I agree with shash about the unlimited credits. Basically it wouldn't be unlimited, it would just mean unlocked songs.

Lets develop a definitive list of things that would make a subscription worth it. Something for both veterans and new members. Because something like this has the potential to really allow us to go above and beyond with our development and equipment.

Cheers,

Synthlight

Re: This will help FFR as a whole
 

Somehow, if there ever was a site sponsored convention... I'd bet it would be in Chicago.

1. Synth lives in Chicago
2. It is pretty damn central, when you factor in the Canadians.





EDIT: List of stuff for a Premium Membership:

1. Special Forum access
2. Access to a custom, user edited, forum title
3. Credits
4. Access to SotWs early
5. Possible access to Premium Only songs
6. No ads?
7. Premium Member Only chat

Re: This will help FFR as a whole
 

I've always enjoyed how FFR has been free, and how much time Synth puts into it. But most people on FFR are poor teengers, so we don't have too much money to throw around. If there is this premium membership thing, I will always feel as though I am missing out on something considering I have no money to spare.

EDIT: Synth's story about thanksgiving is really sad. This might not be too bad of an idea.

Re: This will help FFR as a whole
 

Where if there's one in every time zone? xD