Hello Will. Thank you very much for taking the time to think this through carefully. The only reason we need to make a distinction between "full" and "basic" members is that we need at least some income to be able to pay for the costs of the site, the hardcopy newsletter which we will publish, member recruitment materials like brochures, flyers, etc. We decided early on we did not want to have the site paid for by selling a lot of advertising on it. If we however want to convince people it makes sense to sign up as paying members, then there needs to be a sufficient incentive, i.e. difference between the free and the paid membership. One way is through offering some discounts to paying members. Another is getting access to some more information. But, obviously, if information is now freely available, then I agree with you it should be available free here as well. As to your specific points:
1 - access to the car registry - I agree with your point and I will suggest to the board that we make this accessible to all; we will come back on this
2 - access to technical information - I and others are spending literally hundreds of hours each to go through and sort into bite-size chuncks, all of the information now on Yahoo!. The results of all this work will be there for everyone to use, free. Taking it to the next level, is writing a comprehensive ownership, maintenance and repairs manual, completely from scratch, again by a bunch of volunteers. I agree with you that making this information available to as many Pagoda owners is exactly what our mission is. And we will do exactly that - make this information available to in fact anyone who is interested, whether a full, a basic member or not even a member at all. Because most people will want to have it in printed format, we will make it available as such. But this will cost money, and needs to be spent up-front, exposing us to some normal risks - like will we sell the copies we have printed, and so on. Only on the site, our current plan is to offer it on-line to full members, again to offer something in return for the $30 that we expect to need to cover our out-of-pocket expenses.
3- discounts on purchases of parts - again this is intended as an incentive to help us pay for our costs. We have not yet decided what the discount percentage would be, but we do have to offer full members a "good deal". We can afford to keep the full membership dues pretty low (compared also to any other classic car club) but we cannot afford to give EVERYTHING away for free, if it costs us money to put it all together. I really do expect people will accept this as reasonable and fair - you have a choice: either you put up the $30 and receive some added benefits, or you elect not to, and pay some more for things that YOU can decide whether you want to buy or not. In the meantime, you get the discussion forum for free (which costs us money and is therefore basically subsidized by the paying members with their money, and by the volunteers with their time) as well as access to information which has been upgraded by fellow-enthusiasts, all without being confronted with intrusive ads all the time - I personally think that is a pretty good deal and an improvement over Yahoo!.
4- sharing of information between full and basic members. I have come to know the Pagoda owners community as a really great bunch of people. We are all on the honor system, I don't worry for one minute about this, and I am sure not going to try and police it! Another thing would be if someone would start selling, for his own profit, for example copies of the manual or newsletter, that I would think is something the members would want us to tackle.
5- Basic members are invited and are MORE than welcome to attend ANY event. This is definitely not about two classes of citizens, it is about (1) the lowest threshold for membership possible, which is good for everyone and (2) having a way of generating at least the basic income we need to pay for our expenses. The way we have chosen to do this is by (1) selling full members a tangible newsletter, which you will appreciate costs a fair amount of money, including the postage costs (actually absorbing most of the $30 in annual dues) and (2) with what's left over, we cover the remaining out-of-pocket costs of running the site, the flyers etc.
The way it works, is that the more people sign up as full members, the lower the full membership dues can be for everyone (including me!). We will discuss your thoughts thoroughly in the next (chat) board meeting and I hope there will be more replies to this topic, so we can make any changes that make sense.
Have I allayed at least some of your fears Will?
Best regards,
Cees
'69 white 280 SL
