Just want to keep you all up to date about a number of changes I've made this past week as they are quite significant changes which contrast with what most of you are used to from the past 13 years.
Basically... 1) What free/full members can and can't do has been changed
2) Price is just 99p /week - minimum 1 week instead of 1 month.
3) No more personal discounts. The discount is fixed at 1% for each additional week you pay for for everyone.
4) Payment process is now much simpler and can be opened from ANY window when prompted. Within 2 clicks you've paid 99p. Uses your browser's built-in saved credit cards if you have one saved.
Here's a brief guide to what each membership allows you to do...
STANDARD/FREE ACCOUNTS ======================== -FREE - forever & always, I promise! -Daily Messages: 5 (was 20 messages over lifetime) -Photo Uploads: 3 (was previously 100) -No Facebook photos (was previously allowed) -View limited photos (only half of members' photos shown) -Search: 2 Page Limit (was no limit before) -Occasional Adverts if we get a sponsor -200 Forum Posts /lifetime
As always - Please let me urgently know if you come across any problems. Also good/bad feedback about the payment process and membership options is welcome.
Some feedback from discussions taking place last weekend at Squires and before/since between full paid up BMers;
1. Standard (non paying) Members having access to Full Members photos. Why should they have access at all, let alone half?
2. Access to first page of Profiles should be sufficient for Standard Members, there is no need to see further. If they are interested at page 1 then send a PM. At that point our understanding is that conversations can be had from that point forward with Full Members.
3. The payment process last time I upgraded was very smooth and efficient except the expiry date of my new membership did not update until the day after. Which gave me a few palpitations but resolved itself the following day! However, there have been comments about it being a struggle for some BMers.
As an aside other topics of discussion have been;
* Duplicate/Triplicate Profiles ...
* Profile photos which are definitely not of the member (well known film stars/musicians).
* Profiles with no photos at all. Is it possible to ensure a profile can't be created without a photo in the first place?
* A Moderator Page, which shows who the Mods are i.e. has the profile pic link and what their role is on the site. It may help if it's possible to identify which Mods are online, on this page, so that there is no need to start telephoning around to see who is 'duty' for want of a better word. (I know a form of mod page exists but it's a pfaff to find it. Especially if a new member asks you how they find it, when they are unsure of the site)
* Is it possible to stop numbers (mobile or landlines) being able to be put in Chat? I know it's a huge ask but new members, rather stupidly seem to be doing this more and more recently. It took me almost 45 mins to clear one number from the chat room a few weeks ago! I know if they put it out there it's down to them but seriously!?! If Not, can it be written somewhere that everyone can see to say why it's not a great idea!
* Older profiles which have been inactive for a long time. Is there a way of separating them into another tab/page? Giving those profiles the ability to be reactivated as and when necessary. Leaving only current, active membership (of perhaps the last couple of years) on the search facility.
* Can the main wish on the Wish List 'offer a lift button' be dealt with? It's been a bone of contention for around 2 years now. It would definitely help attendance at events/meets/ rideouts as many pillies I have spoken to don't feel comfortable asking for a lift but would accept an offer if it was in their area.
Apologies for the huge list of stuff but as it's been discussed by paying Members I thought it prudent to put it out there. To those of you who were part of discussions if I've forgotten anything I'm sorry I'm an old woman and I take no responsibility. 😉😁👍
Before I start to answer them... please understand that I'm in the process of trying to find the right balance at the moment. I can easily change anything to make it a free/paid part of the site.
You have to understand my problem though. I could make nothing available to free members and the site would be dead within a month. We need to give people a taste of the site so they know whether it's a club they want to join or not. The more you take away from free members, the more people delete their accounts and never come back. Why? "Because Facebook is free". They don't care that I/BM don't sell your personal details or cover the website in spammy ads like Facebook does.
Now...
Photos access - Guests to the site (not logged in) cannot access any photos. Standard members used to have access to all photos (before last weekend) but now it's limited to half - and people are already unhappy about that! I'm monitoring the effect this has. We already had someone complain in the other forum topic about having photos restricted - he didn't want to pay 99p and now he's deleted his account. That's one person who could have been adding content to the site - forum posts, events, etc and maybe in the future would have subscribed. Now he's gone and likely won't ever come back. He'll probably tell all his mates also that BM is a scam. He's just one person. So just limiting photos to half has already had some negative consequence. 78 people have deleted their account since I made these changes at the weekend compared with around 10-15 people normally.
Profile access - Standard members can't access the events tab on your profile either if I remember rightly. I'll double check though. I could also hide the extra info tab if you all think it's necessary?
Payment system - It's even smoother now. It's literally 2 clicks if you have your card data saved in your browser. And you can upgrade from any page - you don't need to be forwarded to a different part of the site. You'll see next time. I also fixed the bug with the expiry date having a delay. It's not actually a bug, more a processing delay by the banks, but I've added a "grace period" while the payment is processing.
Duplicate profiles - it's not allowed and it's in the rules. If you find one send me a link to both and I'll merge them into 1. I have a script looking for this stuff but if someone signs up with a new email address years after using their old account because they can't access their old email account - then it's hard for me to see that. The site blocks you from registering with the same email address twice. If someone cannot login with their old email they can contact any mod to help them out. I had a massive cleanup about 2 years ago but since then rely on you guys & mods pointing this stuff out.
Celeb profiles - If nobody hits the "report" button, don't be surprised if they go under the radar. Every profile you see that is fake please, please just press the Report button. You don't even have to fill a form in - it just puts it into a list for moderators to check out.
Mods/Staff - Press "Account" (top right) then "View Staff". It's all there. No mod is ever "on duty" because we're all volunteers and we do what we can when we can. Mods are also just members and have the right to just browse the site like anyone else if they don't have time to do mod duties. The "report" button is the best way for members of the site to police each other. Reporting a profile immediately removes it from all search results for example and it jumps to the top of the moderator pile. Mods also get a big alert at the top of their screen if they're logged in.
Phone number - is that seriously happening? Jeeees. I could write some scripts that try to identify phone numbers but there's so many ways in which people could write a number that the script would become messy, complex and inconsistent. So unless it's genuinely becoming a problem then sorry but I'll have to invest my time more elsewhere (still have my day job, family and a large "wish-list" backlog to get through).
Offer lifts - I will prioritise it, sorry. Be nice if more people helped me add events though first as without people organising ride outs what's the point in have a lifts section at all? You see people complaining in the other forum topic that there's nothing being organised near them. The whole point of the site is that members organise stuff and get together - not wait for me to do it for you. I make the platform and you guys add the content. If I saw more ride-outs being added to the calendar and more people using the lifts tab I might have gotten around to this already. But at the moment it's one of the most underused parts of the site. But.... I'll make the change and if I hope to see some improvement.
I always welcome all feedback. This is good stuff and I hope I've answered enough. As I said I'm monitoring the site (a lot!) right now to get the balance right between guest/standard/premium members. It's a juggling act to try and keep the site active / new members joining up / existing members not deleting their account / at least enough money to pay the bills. It's a balance I've not had right for a number of years now which is why the site's been costing me too much money to keep online and activity was going down. Hopefully things change now.
Hi matt, I understand your reasons for the restrictions on pics for standard members, the only thing I would like is that people's profile pic isn't one that's blocked out as this is probably one of the reasons you look at someone's profile, I don't know if this easily doable?
Oh good point. It now takes 1 in every 2 pics. But depending on where the profile pic comes in the list decides if it's hidden or not. I'll need to do some wizardry to figure this out. Leave it with me
Quote: Oh good point. It now takes 1 in every 2 pics. But depending on where the profile pic comes in the list decides if it's hidden or not. I'll need to do some wizardry to figure this out. Leave it with me
Hi Matt. I'm a new, "standard" member and have only been on a week. However since I joined you've made these changes which happened the day after I joined. I feel, now that you've made more changes that I need to say my bit. Sorry if this seems harsh as my first post!
When I reviewed the information about your site, it was this paragraph that made me sign up.
"BM is completely free biker dating site and motorcycle social network. You can create a personal profile, upload photos, send Private Messages, check our forums, join our events etc with completely FREE MEMBERSHIP."
I've just checked and nothing has changed since I joined regarding the information about your site. This is misleading people!!! "Completely Free" in my eyes means just that. However it turns out it's not "Completely Free" is it?
So now after reading the paragraph above which made me sign up, I'm now restricted to viewing one page of members. Then if there happens to be someone who sparks my interest in that page of a dozen or so people and I view their profile I only get to see half the pictures.....
Can you tell me what the ratio of full members verses standard members is please? I'm willing to bet that there are more standard members than full?
I joined so that I may meet someone who shares the same interests as me who is also looking to go out on a date with the prospect of maybe something more happening. I would suggest that there are a lot of long standing members who use the site as more of a social hub. Why not split the two. Have a dating side to the site that you pay to use, and can also access the social side, and a social side that's free, but with no access to the dating part?
You need to address the information regarding your site more accurately! You need to make clear there is "Standard" membership and "Full" membership and what you get with both. Saying BM is a "Completely Free" dating site and social network is wrong and misleading.
If I get any interest from other members then I'd be willing to shell out for full membership, but I'm not going to waste money flogging a dead horse.
As a 'standard' member, having read Super 10's take on the current round of changes, I'd like to take this opportunity to leave a comment from a similar point of view. This will of course mean leaving only 199 of my lifetime forum posts in the bag... I'm not complaining, merely making an observation, since what I've got here is free.. It seems to me that both restricting search pages to One, and griping about it are equally pointless, since the searches are ASL based and you can therefore have an infinite number of search pages. I joined to look at the social side, and discovered Scotland is pretty unsociable, and due to the free memberships lifetime posting restrictions, I'm highly unlikely to chime in at anytime to offer any advice/help unless its to my personal benefit, because I'd soon run out of forum benefits. There's nothing wrong with this site, free or paid up, except lack of members in backside of beyond where I've got miles of empty(ish) roads to enjoy my bike by myself. Actually, I think I may just stick to that.. ;D
So lets see, standard members are happy only when they can bludge off the full members? Without the subscriptions the site would not survive. Other dating sites dont give full access without paying or offer access to an events calendar. If we all decide we don't want to pay I wonder how long it would be before adverts invade your browsing time, ultimately leading to the demise of the site. As far as I'm concerned, nothing should be free.
Indeed I'm doing my best to not plaster the site in adverts. I'd rather ask 99p from folks than cover the site in horrible slow adverts.
I don't know how to separate the social from dating side of the site. My feeling is that it all kinda merges into one club/community and I like that.
I've looked at similar websites, mostly in America, and you can't even get past the homepage without logging in and paying a monthly fee.
The first page of search is locked to 50 results. You can change the age, postcode etc to get more results, it just becomes a little tedious which I hope gets people to upgrade.
I mean seriously... I've been building and maintaining it for 16 years. I've put thousands of hours of work into it, many thousands. The site doesn't make a penny profit and I often put my own day job salary into it to keep it going. I make no apologies and have no shame asking folks to contribute a quid. It goes almost entirely to Google and Facebook adverts to get new members coming in.
If enough people would contribute I would love to make this my job and could do so much more with the site. But as it is now i just do what I can in my evenings and that's it.
I've just paid for membership, now I know I get extras but at this minute the only extras I see are all photos. I know it's cheap to join but I feel a little disappointed.
Could we have a members only area? Maybe a separate private place on the forum?
It does state that we can go on members only meets but how are you supposed to find them?
JR, chatroom inhabitants used to have the capability to whisper to another member, in other words they could chat/flirt in private if they wanted to, chat was only available if you were a paid up member. Matt removed that facility when he reworked the site last and opened chat up to everyone. Personally I would have thought the natural progression would have been to expand it to having a 'conference' style section where multiple members could arrange ride outs or meets.
Hope you don't mind my penny worth.You can join other sites easily but have to pay to become an actual member.This site is the only one i know that lets you look at some of it for free.I prefer to to subscribe that way i get to view the whole site.If i don't have the money to subscribe at the time of renewal i don't expect to have full access.D6 is right nothing should be free and if you want to enjoy the site we need to subscribe,if not there would be no site at all.Subscribing helps keep the site going. For those who are not happy with little access, subscribe and get to view all. Can't expect Matt to keep putting his hand in his pocket to keep the site going.Little rant over.
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