A New Change For Luminous-Landscape

[Phil Indeblanc]

As a member of almost a decade, I have purchased content ...as a curiosity, learning, and mostly to contribute to Lula.
Turning the forums to only membership base is like cutting off artery channels of content. New content, new knowledge, new information.
Signing up to the forums should be as easy as any open forum to keep a rich content base. It is the heart of many sites like this.

For the most part I also agree with David Mantripp's post. Michael's inquisitive mind to exploit the tools to the photographers needs without "fan boying" any brand(for the most part :-), is what we loved to read and discover what advantages and weaknesses each tool possessed. I found his articles worth reading, and unfortunately I have not felt this spark in most other reads.

I don't understand it when people say "$12 is fair enough". Its not this dollar amount that anyone would be rejecting. For those that know, the marketed content is surely a great deal at that rate.
While the content the Forum has is created by its own visitors. Any restriction of this area, I think will degrade the content. Trolls, are a minimal issue we have had and are easy enough to ignore. 
I can see the forum choke and drive more people to DPreview, and the like if it was pay.

A registration to track a user or the have a fee attached creates an unhealthy environment that restricts flourishing. 
In a world of today's technological capabilities, site owners already have methods of identifying users with IP address and can reject trolls. Some people want to stay under a certain level or illusion that they are anonymous, and adding a registration with payment and address and such only creates a commercial gain, yet hurts the forum value.

I would be all for a pay $12 a year to all access, but remain a free and open Forum section. 
(This would also give new visitors a chance to see the value of Lula, and eventually sign on as a paying member. )

I will be signing up myself to contribute regardless, but I think this is a wrong direction if it ends up including the Forums. And by signing up, am I contributing to its inevitable demise?
Or should I not sign up, just give a flat contribution as we all should to steer clear of a paid Forum? 

Maybe more information from Lula would help explain the format and we have nothing to worry about?   
And for anyone who is claiming that Lula sold out cheap and would pay more, then just put your money where your mouth is and contribute some money to keep the Forum free and open!

When Wiki asks for a donation, I give it, when Mozilla does, I give it. When sites encourage to click on banners I click. If you are the leach of such content with nothing to contribute, it is you who drives such sites to a pay base.

[AlterEgo]

I would be all for a pay $12 a year to all access, but remain a free and open Forum section. 

some forums have commerical sections like "sell/wtb" (you can't post or view if you are not paid member or pay a one time fee, etc)... or for example sections only for those who puchased tours/workshops or content to discuss those... some allows to post pictures in larger than whatever size if you are a paid member or have signatures pointing to member's own commercial websites... etc

[Ken Bennett]

Although one could argue that there's some people who haven't had a shot at me yet and they should get their turn.

Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.

[Farsh]

I think $12 is fair enough.
infact, probably the best deal out there for what you get; I'll be signing up.

however, the forum should remain free.

[SZRitter]

Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.

Why do I feel like there is about to be a flying cow?

[Jeremy Roussak]

Thank you for the feedback . . .  We do have a plan in place for people that are new coming to the site to see content.  We do have plans to offer educational institutions something special for their students.  We are also working on a way folks can try out the forum.  We will announce these once we are live and have tested them to make sure they work the way we'd like.  We are excited about the potential of some of the projects we have planned.  December will be a very busy month for us as we have some big projects in the works regarding printing (tease).  All of us are very dedicated to making Luminous-Landscape a success and a benefit for all our readers.

That's very encouraging, Kevin, and pre-empts one of the things I was going to suggest in response to the very valid points made. How about (I'm sure you have thought of these) read-only access to the forums, access for a free trial period of a month, full access to the forums but no (or restricted) access to other content? No doubt there are other possibilities.

Jeremy

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... Read this article as to how StackOverflow overtook ExpertExchange in the IT/Dev environment: http://www.inc.com/alex-moazed/how-this-engineer-turned-his-blog-into-a-400-million-business.html  Their #1 platform take away is to 'Don't put up paywalls on content platforms with large amounts of user-generated content'...

Such a line of reasoning suffers from what is known as a survivorship bias, and is best addressed with a standard investment prospectus disclaimer: "Past performance does not guarantee future results." In other words, the fact that someone made a $xxx million business using a certain approach in the past does not mean it would work today or in the future.

There are only two ways to cover the cost of running a website like this: advertisement or subscription. Apparently, advertisement revenue has been drying up as of lately and isn't what it used to be in the past. On the web in general, not just this site. We had a thread about that recently. Hence the subscription.

[mrtn]

love you guys, count me in.

kind regards, Martin

[AlterEgo]

Such a line of reasoning suffers from what is known as a survivorship bias, and is best addressed with a standard investment prospectus disclaimer: "Past performance does not guarantee future results." In other words, the fact that someone made a $xxx million business using a certain approach in the past does not mean it would work today or in the future.

There are only two ways to cover the cost of running a website like this: advertisement or subscription. Apparently, advertisement revenue has been drying up as of lately and isn't what it used to be in the past. On the web in general, not just this site. We had a thread about that recently. Hence the subscription.

and apparently website (with its content sans forums) is simply useless too... hence the forums 

[adias]

To cross post my thoughts from the MF/LF thread:

While I see direct value in the original content being created by the LuLa team, there are issues that need to be addressed.  I found LuLa due to the forums, and the role they have in the community.  Read this article as to how StackOverflow overtook ExpertExchange in the IT/Dev environment: http://www.inc.com/alex-moazed/how-this-engineer-turned-his-blog-into-a-400-million-business.html  Their #1 platform take away is to 'Don't put up paywalls on content platforms with large amounts of user-generated content'.

The forums are a peer to peer platform that are lightly managed, where answers are from subject matter experts (or what ever we are calling ourselves today).  Yes, there is a cost to infrastructure, but putting it behind a paywall is the wrong answer.  The forums need consistent participation from unpaid people, otherwise the page views don't happen, and the overall site becomes stagnant.  Yes, the same question gets asked over and over, so there is an opportunity to create content directly for that market.

While I can afford the $12, I'd rather that be an optional token that allows folks to see that I am personally invested in the LuLa community.  Getting a large enough commitment to make this a viable alternative shouldn't be too hard, but I would suggest doing that first before going full paywall on folks.

-Joe

I agree that the Forums should remain open and free. They are already separate from the content side.

I have no issue with the membership model on the content side.

Side note: it is appalling to see talk of greed and suggestions for the owner to mitigate income with his charity, both personal effort and personal decision.

[image66]

I'm a little disappointed for several reasons:

1. The Quality of Content has tremendously decreased over the past three years.

2. The Relevance of Content has also decreased. It is aimed at a steadily decreasing customer market. Instead of widening the umbrella, it is becoming even more insular. We're not all old rich white guys.

3. LL should be a model of how to be a marketing success. The click-ad revenue was the 2000's model. Where are the real advertisements sold by your staff of marketing experts? With as many page-views that you have, that should be monetized better. This is an admission of failure. Your business model has failed.

4. One million visitors a month is not the true number. If the real number is probably closer to 50,000 unique visitors. When you figure the conversion rate to the paid subscription is likely going to be in the 10% range, that's only going to give $5000 per month in gross revenues. That might be more than what you are getting now, but it also filters out growth of new subscribers. All the old rich white guys already are here. You have to widen the subscriber base and that's not going to happen.

I wish you well. I doubt I'll subscribe because I feel that this website has pretty much run its course. I will miss it like I will miss the National Geographic. Time to move on.

That all said, I'm personally involved in exactly the same situation. My own website has run its course and only a particular segment of content keeps it afloat. I'm in the process of rebuilding it and am substantially change directions with it because the current business model has also failed and I gave up on new content creation to focus on things that earned more income. The new version will reflect a direct shift of direction because market forces and market opportunities have changed. But I won't be changing it to a paid subscription model. When my partner and I started our site, that was one of the plans--to create a paid subscription section of content and value-add. We tested it and determined that while it was a great idea, the market would not support it. But that was a few years ago.

Ken

[AlterEgo]

I agree that the Forums should remain open and free. They are already separate from the content side.

content does not work... the life (= revenue stream) is here... seriously - who is going to pay for rantatorials and video tutorials/etc subscription clearly failed ? now I can get when people pay for the proper tests/reviews like Reid does - but here ?

[AlterEgo]

1. The Quality of Content has tremendously decreased over the past three years.

or rather you can get faster/better and more technically correct reading elsewhere... where I am going to read about high ISO shooting with A7R2 ? to this site's main page ? give me a break (BREAK!) - I am going to read Kasson's blog or from rawdigger's developer or forums (including this very forum)... now there are people who like to read something like "Loving the American Southwest" type of articles - but I doubt those are more than already subscribing for videos.

[jani]

Today we anounce a change for Luminous-Landscape. Luminous-Landscape will become a membership website on November 30th, 2015.  Please read the article and view the video on this announcement. View the article and video.

Please be careful about how you handle this change. Seek legal counsel.

John Beardsworth and AlterEgo have touched this problem: requiring a paid subscription for forum access can be problematic for you, insofar as that you don't have the permission of the content (text, images, etc.) rights holders, who have provided their content free-of-charge with the understanding that it is publicly available under a no-subscription model.

Putting up that paywall would essentially be equivalent to taking down the forums.

The change should pose no problem if you leave the current forums available, even if they're only read-only, while reopening new, subscription-based forums.

If you want to put a paywall in front of the current forums, please provide those who have provided forum content with a way out.


Others have expanded well on other, more community related problems with a subscription model for forums. There were few more annoying sites on the Internet than ExpertsExchange when googling for a problem. It's still pretty darn annoying that they show up in search results at all.


There are some other non-forum issues.

Subscription models invariably cause more problems for me as a reader than non-subscription.

There are zero technical solutions available that let me easily see the subscription sites I visit in my aggregator of choice, it breaks RSS, it breaks Reader and similar services for better readability on e.g. mobile devices (where LuLa still isn't good, sorry!), and it means I need to log in every single time I use a different device.

As a technical computer person, I can probably come up with work-arounds for these issues, if I'm willing to spend the time and effort, and if LuLa offers a decent API for it, e.g. based on authorizable access tokens that can be used by third-party apps. (Sounds complicated, right? Yes, it is.)

As it is, this technical barrier is what would drive me as a reader away from LuLa. It's what's kept me away from several other paid subscription sites, regardless of their excellence.

Cheers,

Jan


PS: I completely understand and respect the issues of generating sufficient income to run the site on a professional basis. Succeeding with putting the cat back in the bag is, however, really difficult, and very few sites seem to survive that change. No matter what you end up with, I really wish you the best of luck.

[Petrus]

4. One million visitors a month is not the true number. If the real number is probably closer to 50,000 unique visitors. When you figure the conversion rate to the paid subscription is likely going to be in the 10% range, that's only going to give $5000 per month in gross revenues.

This is quite exactly what I am expecting to happen, alas. I just did not want to be the first to say it out loud.

[amolitor]

3. LL should be a model of how to be a marketing success. The click-ad revenue was the 2000's model. Where are the real advertisements sold by your staff of marketing experts? With as many page-views that you have, that should be monetized better. This is an admission of failure. Your business model has failed.

It's not as simple as that. Web advertising is taking a bath, and it's going to get worse. Probably a lot worse.

http://idlewords.com/2015/11/the_advertising_bubble.htm

4. One million visitors a month is not the true number. If the real number is probably closer to 50,000 unique visitors. When you figure the conversion rate to the paid subscription is likely going to be in the 10% range, that's only going to give $5000 per month in gross revenues. That might be more than what you are getting now, but it also filters out growth of new subscribers. All the old rich white guys already are here. You have to widen the subscriber base and that's not going to happen.

You can just look this stuff up, it turns out, you needn't make wild (and, it turns out, completely wrong) guesses.

[Bo Dez]

I respect Michael & Kevin a great deal. I think they've created a great place. While the fee is really, really, low, I'm not doing a paid subscription. I don't think the site is offering anything over the countless sites I visit. I think there will be a lot of hard grafting to create content and up the ante to reflect a paid subscription, but I wish you good luck with it though. See you forum members, have a nice life!

[jeremyrh]

I seem to have a different opinion than most of you. Let me first mention that a subscription of $12 a year is perfectly doable for me. However, I smell Kevin’s and Michael’s GREED here and I must say I hate greed!

Not  Kevin or Michael but us as contributors (not me of course…) are making it worthwhile visiting this forum site again and again. So who are the ones that generate traffic on the site? We are! Then why should we pay for our participation in making it a great site generating lots of traffic?

I honestly don’t know if I continue with this site, not that it matters to anyone of course so I won’t bother you with this. Of course I don’t expect you’ll agree with me on this.

Apparently we are in a minority, but I agree with you. The forum content is created by us (well, you) and I don't see why I should put money in The Raberizer's pocket to read it.

[alain]

Please be careful about how you handle this change. Seek legal counsel.

John Beardsworth and AlterEgo have touched this problem: requiring a paid subscription for forum access can be problematic for you, insofar as that you don't have the permission of the content (text, images, etc.) rights holders, who have provided their content free-of-charge with the understanding that it is publicly available under a no-subscription model.

I expect the posts of non subscribers to be deleted, or be DMCA'ed ;-)

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... The forum content is created by us (well, you) and I don't see why I should put money in The Raberizer's pocket to read it.

Because the money goes into his left pocket and leaves from his right pocket to finance the infrastructure needed for you to post and read the content?