Email posting should be free

[bodhi]

Title:
Email posting should be free

Area:
posting, email, pin, blogging, free, paid

Summary:
My apologies if this hasn't already been requested 6,392 times.. but truly the #1 obstacle for me getting attached to using this site is inability to use email posting as a free feature.

Description:
It may make sense from a let's hold off a feature to get people to buy phase, but considering that every single blogging site known to chimp and mankind provide this as a feature, and in today's fast mobile world, most of us wish to post on the go and perhaps edit "on desku" at leisure.

without this feature as free, i suspect many prospective trial users will just not get as hooked into DW.

OT: frankly I'm quite perplexed and disappointed here. I don't really get what DW is for - is this like GM's Saturn? Building a Better LiveJournal? Because it's not really doing that for me.

Sorry, and thanks for listening.

/regrets

Poll #1068 Email posting should be free

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 36

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
4 (11.1%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
1 (2.8%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
12 (33.3%)

(I have no opinion)
19 (52.8%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[willow]

Maybe there could be a limit of free email posts per month for free users? That way free users could try it out and if they find they use the system more that way, then they could pay for unlimited use in order not to be halted when their x amount per month limit is reached.

[cesy]

That could work, though I wonder if it's more effort than it's worth to code it.

[kaigou]

I'd think the question is really where the trade-off point is: how many more users can you gain if you're willing to accept the loss-leader of coding those extra amounts? ...because, yes, it's true that "nonpaid users" are a drain on the system in terms of computational and financial issues, but non-paying characters are always going to be the largest group of any online group -- and thus it's likely that they're also contributing the bulk of the content. And that content, in turn, is what prompts other users to want to pay for the nifty aspects of the service as part of getting all that content regularly.

So... I'd say the extra bit of coding is worth the trade-off, if it can be shown that it's a service that would be a substantial boost to users, pay and nonpay alike. That, though, I'm not so certain of. No way to get the stats to gauge it, I mean, which leaves me as undetermined.

[bodhi]

it's surely more art that science. think segway balancing lol.

i know from other sites i've volunteered on it's very hard to convert "free" users if they expect it all to be free. so i respect the sound basis of the math denise did here, really impressive to have the b plan spelled out like that.

question is then how does the "tipping point" get achieved if striving for site growth? maybe this model intends to suit a niche market of sincere bloggers and avoid the spammy junk that congeals around so many blog and forget sites out there.

i was very excited to get a gift code from a friend and even asked for 2 for my own friends as yet to convert any yet :(

today is a more "mobile" world than ever. i think the posterous example cited above shows another level of awareness of that. even clumsy old kodak added as a paid feature some time ago (after a free trial..) of being able to MMS images to your account.

so there's lots of options, free vs paid are the two endpoints. I appreciate my inquiry being taken immediately and am very grateful for the warm reception and conversation about it.

[bodhi]

OMG cesy thank you for your gift!

[cesy]

No problem :) At least you can have email posting for a while, and maybe someone else will help when it runs out, particular now there's "sponsor a random active user".

[bodhi]

yes i saw that checkbox yesterday. well i hope to put it to good use. it was a very noble and appreciated gesture.

[bodhi]

i think something like that'd be a great idea. surely some sort of on-ramp limits whether unit count total/ongoing, or just a timelimited option, etc.

maybe even adding ad-hoc services, like buy 10 whoozit units to do stuff on the site you can't do as a free. i dunno

[cesy]

A points system to buy small items on Dreamwidth is a planned feature, if that's what you mean.

[bodhi]

yeah was kinda muttering that. am really just shooting from the surface, sure you guys have been mashing out all iterations of ideas for some time now

i was just musing you might offer something like buy (rent?) an additional userpic for X, buy 5 email post credits for Y.

[cesy]

Buying/renting additional userpics is not going to happen, because userpics are the single most expensive paid account feature - the cost of extra userpics would have to be the same as the cost of a paid account.

I think (though I may be remembering wrongly here) things like buying 5 email post credits aren't going to be done because it's too fiddly to keep track of which features you're paid for - free/paid/premium is much more straightforward, and allows you to keep track easily of what features you have. However, some of the discussion on dw_biz may be of interest, as they tend to go into these kind of questions in more detail.

[bodhi]

k. it's all good. i hope my inquiry is recognized as interest in helping your site succeed. i do understand the complexity-cost metrics and again applaud the solid writeup quoted here.

i for one would be happy with fewer avatars in exchange for email posting. but again the point is to get people to sign on, not get cushy in free mode

^_^