180 replies to this topic

[kroogur]

The reason I suggested skipping the chat room is because it would be an extra expense and I thought the idea was to offset the cost of the new servers and such by offering the paid memberships.

[Sargon]

kroogur, on Tue Jun 30, 2009 9:12 PM, said:

The reason I suggested skipping the chat room is because it would be an extra expense and I thought the idea was to offset the cost of the new servers and such by offering the paid memberships.

I wouldn't have much use for a chat room, but I would be willing to contribute a small yearly fee to support AA.

[sdamon]

I love this site, and would be happy to buy a subscription to support it.

[Ikrananka]

Sargon, on Tue Jun 30, 2009 7:31 PM, said:

kroogur, on Tue Jun 30, 2009 9:12 PM, said:

The reason I suggested skipping the chat room is because it would be an extra expense and I thought the idea was to offset the cost of the new servers and such by offering the paid memberships.

I wouldn't have much use for a chat room, but I would be willing to contribute a small yearly fee to support AA.

Same here.

This is by far my most frequently visited site.

[Allan]

Bumper Stickers.
T-Shirts.
Car Window Stickers.
More Magnets. Especially of games published by AA. Either the box or the cart.

I'm not a fan of chat rooms becuase what is said is not saved. It's nice to go back and read all the great info on AA. (Well, some of it.)  

Allan

[Albert]

Allan, on Thu Jul 2, 2009 9:28 AM, said:

Bumper Stickers.
T-Shirts.
Car Window Stickers.

Yes to all of the above.  If there any graphic designers who'd like to help come up with designs for such items, I'd be glad to trade free product for your help.

Quote

More Magnets. Especially of games published by AA. Either the box or the cart.

Funny you should bring this up as I already have plans to make magnets of various cartridge artwork.  

Quote

I'm not a fan of chat rooms becuase what is said is not saved. It's nice to go back and read all the great info on AA. (Well, some of it.)  

I'm not a huge fan of chat rooms either as I don't really want them to take away from forum posts.   On the one hand some people really enjoy live chats and it might bring them to the site more often.  On the other hand, if you only have so much time per day for internet surfing, you might spend more time chatting and less time posting.

..Al

[ThumpNugget]

I certainly would not mind paying a subscription fee to keep the site up and as free from advertising as possible...

Since we are all throwing out ideas out I have one as well: Last year I removed the labels off a couple hundred 2600 cartridges (I see most people use a hair dryer - I was in a hurry so I used engine degreaser on the whole batch at once which actually worked great). I ended up with about 150 of the labels pretty much perfectly intact and I thought a great Idea would be to put a light lamination on them and turn them into book marks... I also thought about drilling a hole through the cartridge board and turning it into a keychain (if cut just right it would still function if put into a 2600). These ideas were more along the lines of what to do with the wasted parts of the cart when converting them into a homebrew game - maybe include them with the new homebrew cart as a small add-in..

Most of the side labels were in tact as well.. Not sure what to do with those... small book mark for a paperback? eh...

[holygrailvideogames.com]

Have you thought about raising the cost of the games that you sell?  I think that you probably could raise the cost by $5 per cartridge and still get pretty close to the same number of cartridges being sold.  This might help to offset some in not all of the expenses.

You could also set up a PayPal account just for donations.  

I know that you don't want advertising but you could consider charging for the Auction Spotlight.  The Auction Spotlight on the front page would get a lot more hits if updated on a regular basis and it could be used to help with your expenses.

[tjb]

I'm in for it. I could definitely use a larger PM inbox! The other proposed benefits are nice as well. I think it's a great idea.

tjb

Edited by tjb, Thu Jul 2, 2009 6:33 PM.

[Albert]

holygrailvideogames.com, on Thu Jul 2, 2009 5:16 PM, said:

Have you thought about raising the cost of the games that you sell?  I think that you probably could raise the cost by $5 per cartridge and still get pretty close to the same number of cartridges being sold.  This might help to offset some in not all of the expenses.

The thought has crossed my mind periodically, as it is a busload of work to make homebrew games and they are a bargain (in my opinion) given how much work goes into making them.  

Quote

You could also set up a PayPal account just for donations.

This comes up every now and again and I've had offers from people to make outright donations.  But I want people to feel they are getting something for their donation, even though I understand some people just want to help out for the sake of doing so (which is great) .

Quote

I know that you don't want advertising but you could consider charging for the Auction Spotlight.  The Auction Spotlight on the front page would get a lot more hits if updated on a regular basis and it could be used to help with your expenses.

That is not a bad idea, really.  I don't update it very often at all, but it does get a lot of attention on the front page of the site.  

..Al

[Albert]

ThumpNugget, on Thu Jul 2, 2009 10:44 AM, said:

Since we are all throwing out ideas out I have one as well: Last year I removed the labels off a couple hundred 2600 cartridges (I see most people use a hair dryer - I was in a hurry so I used engine degreaser on the whole batch at once which actually worked great). I ended up with about 150 of the labels pretty much perfectly intact and I thought a great Idea would be to put a light lamination on them and turn them into book marks... I also thought about drilling a hole through the cartridge board and turning it into a keychain (if cut just right it would still function if put into a 2600). These ideas were more along the lines of what to do with the wasted parts of the cart when converting them into a homebrew game - maybe include them with the new homebrew cart as a small add-in..

Most of the side labels were in tact as well.. Not sure what to do with those... small book mark for a paperback? eh...

That is an interesting idea, and I can't imagine the patience to have removed 150 labels without damaging them in any way.  I used to have a lamination machine which would have worked well for such a task.  Wonder how much people would pay for such a thing.  It's also not beyond the realm of possibility of simply printing such bookmarks on a relatively thick, stocky paper and doing so double-sided.  I'm not sure the end labels are sufficiently large enough to use as bookmarks, but regular labels should be fine (even though they aren't very tall as far as bookmarks go).  

You don't want to know how many labels I've destroyed over the past several years..  

..Al

[Inky]

There's  a very easy way to make lots of money for the site, and it's been discussed before...


A "Women of Atariage Bikini Calendar"

Need to get with MOycon on that, as he was spearheading the effort.

[Impaler_26]

Inky, on Sat Jul 4, 2009 2:39 AM, said:

There's  a very easy way to make lots of money for the site, and it's been discussed before...


A "Women of Atariage Bikini Calendar"

Need to get with MOycon on that, as he was spearheading the effort.

Yep, absolutely! If Al sold such a Bikini Calendar he would be swimming in money in no time!  

[batari]

Impaler_26, on Fri Jul 3, 2009 7:55 PM, said:

Inky, on Sat Jul 4, 2009 2:39 AM, said:

There's  a very easy way to make lots of money for the site, and it's been discussed before...


A "Women of Atariage Bikini Calendar"

Need to get with MOycon on that, as he was spearheading the effort.

Yep, absolutely! If Al sold such a Bikini Calendar he would be swimming in money in no time!  

The hard part will be finding 12 women who regularly visit this site. As much as I love AA, it's kind of a sausage festival...

[Impaler_26]

batari, on Sat Jul 4, 2009 4:24 AM, said:

Impaler_26, on Fri Jul 3, 2009 7:55 PM, said:

Inky, on Sat Jul 4, 2009 2:39 AM, said:

There's  a very easy way to make lots of money for the site, and it's been discussed before...


A "Women of Atariage Bikini Calendar"

Need to get with MOycon on that, as he was spearheading the effort.

Yep, absolutely! If Al sold such a Bikini Calendar he would be swimming in money in no time!  

The hard part will be finding 12 women who regularly visit this site. As much as I love AA, it's kind of a sausage festival...

Yup, that won't be easy. There are 3 women i know of, would make a pretty small calendar!  

[Big Player]

batari, on Fri Jul 3, 2009 9:24 PM, said:

Impaler_26, on Fri Jul 3, 2009 7:55 PM, said:

Inky, on Sat Jul 4, 2009 2:39 AM, said:

There's  a very easy way to make lots of money for the site, and it's been discussed before...


A "Women of Atariage Bikini Calendar"

Need to get with MOycon on that, as he was spearheading the effort.

Yep, absolutely! If Al sold such a Bikini Calendar he would be swimming in money in no time!  

The hard part will be finding 12 women who regularly visit this site. As much as I love AA, it's kind of a sausage festival...

I would be fine with 12 months of Chickybaby.

[batari]

Impaler_26, on Fri Jul 3, 2009 10:02 PM, said:

batari, on Sat Jul 4, 2009 4:24 AM, said:

Impaler_26, on Fri Jul 3, 2009 7:55 PM, said:

Inky, on Sat Jul 4, 2009 2:39 AM, said:

There's  a very easy way to make lots of money for the site, and it's been discussed before...


A "Women of Atariage Bikini Calendar"

Need to get with MOycon on that, as he was spearheading the effort.

Yep, absolutely! If Al sold such a Bikini Calendar he would be swimming in money in no time!  

The hard part will be finding 12 women who regularly visit this site. As much as I love AA, it's kind of a sausage festival...

Yup, that won't be easy. There are 3 women i know of, would make a pretty small calendar!  

Yeah, and even if Stella, Pam and Maria join the lineup, we wouldn't get past June.

[TrekMD]

I'd be fine with a subscription, particularly given the extra benefits.     It may be best to have an annual fee and not monthly charges.

[brojamfootball]

GroovyBee, on Sat Jun 27, 2009 5:39 PM, said:

CPUWIZ, on Sun Jun 28, 2009 1:31 AM, said:

Ahh, I get it, free debugging.

I was just thinking that we have access to Atari related chat on Mondays over at CTCW and less than 20 people turn up even when its free then there's no point in Albert buying it for AA because it might not get utilised very much.

I'm not against paying something for this site that I get so much out of, but hope it will be something minimal.  

Regarding chat at CTCW, I've wanted to get in on the Monday chats but haven't felt like going through all the signup stuff.  It would be nice to have the Atari chats right here at AtariAge.

[Mord]

Albert, on Thu Jul 2, 2009 11:48 AM, said:

I'm not a huge fan of chat rooms either as I don't really want them to take away from forum posts.   On the one hand some people really enjoy live chats and it might bring them to the site more often.  On the other hand, if you only have so much time per day for internet surfing, you might spend more time chatting and less time posting.

That works both ways however. On another web forum I use to spend time at, they tried adding a chat system because people seemed to want it.  This was back in the day when that forum was heavier in traffic, yet only 4-5 people regularly used it, myself included, and that's only because the software that was used made use of irc to host the channel. So to get into the web chat you could also just load up IRC and join from that direction. The people who regularly used it were all IRC users and we joined and sat in the channel simply because we were already on the network anyway.  Other than a couple quick joins/quits (Seriously, most of the time if existing users didn't immediately respond to greets, the new users would immediately leave.) it was forgotten.

So while you might see some people spend more time chatting on the new chat channels, by far I'd expect most people to continue posting since that's what we're use to.

As for paid subscriptions, I'd likely be in for that, although definitely make it yearly rather than monthly as I'd be paying by money order as I usually do.

I'd recommend against one-time-only payments because if the idea is to create a source of funds to help with the recurring costs of servers, etc, you'll find that sum dry up before too long and you'll be back to struggling with the server bills but expected to uphold the higher level of service and bonuses for those who paid. (It's a very short-term solution to a long term problem!)

[Mord]

Albert, on Fri Jul 3, 2009 7:17 PM, said:

That is an interesting idea, and I can't imagine the patience to have removed 150 labels without damaging them in any way.  I used to have a lamination machine which would have worked well for such a task.  Wonder how much people would pay for such a thing.  It's also not beyond the realm of possibility of simply printing such bookmarks on a relatively thick, stocky paper and doing so double-sided.  I'm not sure the end labels are sufficiently large enough to use as bookmarks, but regular labels should be fine (even though they aren't very tall as far as bookmarks go).  

You don't want to know how many labels I've destroyed over the past several years..  

Those would be quite interesting for the original games. I wonder how many people would start trying to collect a full set of labels like that... Given how we have some people collecting multiples of cartridges just for tying label variations.

Even if you don't go for all the work in doing that, you still have another source to make these types of bookmarks without all the hassle of removing labels from games... label sized bookmarks of homebrews in the store! (And since it'd be a lot easier to print off a new "label" and laminate it, you could use "free bookmark included with each homebrew game bought" as a subscriber bonus.

[Albert]

Mord, on Sat Jul 4, 2009 9:01 AM, said:

As for paid subscriptions, I'd likely be in for that, although definitely make it yearly rather than monthly as I'd be paying by money order as I usually do.

I agree with you and everyone else who has recommended a yearly subscription instead of monthly.  A monthly subscription is just too much for a website like AtariAge, in my opinion.  I don't want it to be yet another monthly bill people have to pay.  A reasonably-priced annual subscription with discernible benefits is much more palatable in my opinion.

Quote

I'd recommend against one-time-only payments because if the idea is to create a source of funds to help with the recurring costs of servers, etc, you'll find that sum dry up before too long and you'll be back to struggling with the server bills but expected to uphold the higher level of service and bonuses for those who paid. (It's a very short-term solution to a long term problem!)

Yes, I agree with this also.

..Al

[STGuy1040]

GroovyBee, on Sat Jun 27, 2009 6:39 PM, said:

CPUWIZ, on Sun Jun 28, 2009 1:31 AM, said:

Ahh, I get it, free debugging.

I was just thinking that we have access to Atari related chat on Mondays over at CTCW and less than 20 people turn up even when its free then there's no point in Albert buying it for AA because it might not get utilised very much.

Good point.

I'm not big on chat rooms anyway so it doesn't matter to me if Al includes one or not.

[STGuy1040]

Since we’re still sharing ideas; if the 1 year subscription ends up being too pricey for some people, maybe you could also offer a 6 month subscription so people still interested can reap the benefits?

Just thought I would throw that out there.

Edited by STGuy1040, Sat Jul 4, 2009 10:36 PM.

[Tempest]

PingvinBlueJeans, on Tue Jun 30, 2009 8:33 PM, said:

I want the ability to zap people through their keyboard.  If you can make that a reality, I'll pay $$$.

I like that idea.  I'd pay a fee if I was able to kill one member of my choice per month.  No questions asked...  

Tempest