Kittykat (the last gunslinger) (goldchaosdragon) wrote,

Congrats on finishing up testing. ^_^

I do still have issues with the friends limits on free user accounts. I can think of three or four ways you can entice people to set up paid accounts without having to put restrictions on the basic service, which would also make Blurty the most versatile journalling service I've seen online (and hook in even MORE Livejounal refugees than we have NOW).

Might I suggest:
1.Poll support for paid users (this is a paid feature on LiveJournal that sounds pretty useful, and all it needs is some cgi scripting)

2. Modest space for image hosting beyond userpics (this would work even better if there was a generic style that allowed for a large background image. Sacrificing a single gig on harddrive space to offer a single megabyte of image hosting could hook a thousand paid users-- after all, the image hosting would be as reliable as the journal itself, so all the Early Adopters with image-intensive layouts would have a chance to host their images with Blurty and not have to worry about extra fees, server blackouts, and broken links.) Diaryland uses this as an enticement and it works famously. And $25 x 1000= $25000 per gig set aside for image hosting per year. If you wanted, you could even institute a GOLD program that provides more image hosting space for a little more money per year.

3. Advanced statistic tracking. Y'all already have in place stuff to track stats, and a lot of people have expressed an interest in tracking the number of people who view their journals. A little rearrangement of the stats-tracking system is all that's needed, and add in a little cgi and you could offer the counters a lot of people have been clamouring for. (And to tie in with the GOLD program idea, you could offer a variety of counter styles for people with a GOLD subscription)

4. The ever-successful invite code tactic: I figure Blurty will be switching to this in the future to limit growth. I'd suggest adding in a "Lite" version of buying invite codes, so that people who don't want to pay a full price year's service Paid Account to get a journal can just buy the codes for a more modest fee and have a Free User style journal.

5. Paypal donations and donation widgets. For those people who would love to support the community but don't have the green to pay the full subscription fee all the time. A special donators-only mood icon set (since we're all trying to get more mood icon sets ANYWAY) would be a nice incentive to get people to donate. Webcomics on various corners of the 'net are able to rake in a few thousand dollars a year on systems like these, with very little expense to themselves other than time and computer space. (It varies according to popularity of course)

These are just a few of my suggestions to avoid having to cut basic service (being able to write in one's own journal and read other peoples' journals) to get people to buy Paid Accounts. I'm sure since the support team is full of inventive people y'all can come up with more ideas.

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