Unity update. Some details. (UPDATED)
As many of your know Unity update is imminent. There's a whole bunch of changes, but for now, I'd like to tell you about memberships.
We'll have 3 levels - Starter, Advanced and Premium. New levels are designed to fight posts spam, voting fraud and profanity. Take a look at the picture, it says it all.
As you can see, one would have to either pay a one time fee of $5 or order any commercial license to have the right to POST something publicly at Unity. Basically, we're doing profile verification through the only effective method - payment. So long to multiple fake profiles.
UPDATE:
Following some of your comments/arguments we decided to come up with the following price schedule:
1 month Premium - $20
3 months Premium - $50
12 months Premium - $120
Thus, there's still an option to have it for $10/month.
Extended membership is to stay at $5/lifetime level.
Prime will now include 5 years of Premium, instead of 3 as well as some new goodies, which are to be announced later.
The new Dolphin solution is powered by UNA Community Management System.
And I get to be the first to post.
Just want to make sure that I understand this concept, but definitely think its a good idea to control a bunch of issues as stated by Mydatery.
Chris
Starter
Advanced
Premium
Moderator
Premium
Only Premium members would have the right to post in "Market", with even one post they would also be marked as "Traders" (former Experts).
"We'll have just:
Starter
Advanced
Premium
Moderator
Premium"
Starter - understood
Advanced - understood
Premium - understood from the description above
Moderator - future listing on that i presume
Premium - you listed premium a 2nd time
just wonder about the second posting of premium, and you also mention "Traders" (former Experts)and some clarity would be great on this statement;
'Only Premium members would see more
With Traders - it's easy - there's no such account status as Trader, but if you have at least one listing in Market, you'd be displayed as Trader in member browsing as well as under your current account status. One would have to be a Premium member to be able to post in Market.
certainly excited to see exactly how this model will work?
where does one get their agent from?
so the price range, would this be only offered on a month to month basis, or is there a difference in an annual price vs a monthly price on the premium offer.
will the affiliate system award members for referals to purchase the premium package?
will see more
Agents will be chosen by member through their Member Account. Agents are BoonEx employees that work personally with their customers.
We don't plan to sell yearly subscriptions at this stage.
Affiliate system will eventually be tied to Premium membership purchases as well.
Members that participate in support and earn points will be rewarded through ranking listings and may capitalize on see more
thanks for the response. and most definitely acceptable.
Can you or do you have an outline of what an agents responsibility would be?
Ok one other fleeting question, and this one has been tossed about. What will be done about moderation, or is it the precept that if you have a paying membership tone, then the necessity for moderation would cease?
good news on the affiliate system being tied in.
Great news on the ranking listings. what exactly is a trader, as i dont recall see more
Anyway, up to you and let us hope it helps as it should do.
By setting it so low Boonex is able to not offend those individuals but still deter the spammers/fake profiles and thus alleviate many of the issues that Unity currently faces.
The $5 payment is not a revenue stream, it's a spamgate. Enough money to cover our expenses if we should go and delete the account and enough hassle for spammers to prevent them from setting up 20 accounts and unleash their crappy gunfire.
say, lots of traders are selling themes. but very few of them are in Good quality. so why the Junk?
if there would be any rating system which can de-list any product which is not upto the customers expectations/quality set by boonex by voting, that would create a bar in terms of quality
what would be the cost of hiring an Agent?
i would say that moderation of the 'market' as Andrew has coined the phrase of what we would be dealing with for purchase of modules and add-ons, the fact that the author would have to spend $20.00/month to list the product, i would think this would be quite the deterrent to avoid somebody passing off stolen mods and or non-functional add-ons. also, i think where it hasn't been specified as of yet, is that we will still be maintaining the product verification, whereas an author would submit see more
1. Expertzzz is almost sleeping right now, there are not many people that make extensions/templates there.. so a $20 membership will at least halve the developers - which means about 20 people.. is that good?
2. What if you want to publish something for free? Will you pay $20 just to post something for free?
Ok so no more free stuff..
3. That 10% will be payed by Boonex? Or we just see more
The $20 monthly fee is to high.
The average member who agrees to pay that is going to be a developer (like you) or a host (like DD) and not so much looking to purchase a ton of mods. It's more of a professional courtesy, Boonex is just making it easier for you to identify who is a professional like yourself.
I understand the whole SPAM/MULTIPLE user thing and I understand the whole community bias against apparently ignorant users. But making people Pay for the right to post????
Has Boonex ever considered a company point of view? Let me spell it out for you:
XYZ Services is doing very well with a local matchmaking service and wants to expand it to be online After researching the likes of Tufat's OSDate, and Dolphin, they decide to install Dolphin. see more
And if you read through the postings you would have seen a response from unoboonex stating that: "All current members are planned to become "Advanced" straight away. We'll weed out the bad ones step by step."
So it looks like most of us would not have to even pay that $5 to post anyway.
And if you are creating a site that you are see more
I have seen many people come here and go from complete n00b to a scripting/coding person in a matter of months. see more
I mean a possibility for existing customers to buy Prime without license and install?
thank you
Rawaf
I also think this is an excellent plan.
Personally, I don't think anybody would enjoy going out for dinner, paying for a meal, being shown where the kitchen and food is, having to prepare it themselves if they know how to cook or if they don’t quite now how to cook that particular meal, having to go out into the restaurant and beg the other patrons for help in the kitchen.. All the while the restaurant staff are out back learning how to write their see more
Personally, I don't think anybody would enjoy going out for dinner, paying for a meal, being shown where the kitchen and food is, having to prepare it themselves if they know how to cook or if they don’t quite now how to cook that particular meal, having to go out into the restaurant and beg the other patrons for help in the kitchen. Oh, wait, before we can ask the other patrons we have to pay the restaurant for see more
I have no objections to you guys making a few bucks, however:
10% discount on products... I'd have to buy $200 worth of products per month before I realized any benefit from the $20/mo membership. $2,400 worth of products in a year? Not likely.
Post/Sell products in Market... I have no intentions of selling anything. For me, and 99% of the membership of this site, post/sell privileges is a moot benefit.
Submit tickets to Boonex trac: Do you really think that those see more
I now understand that I, as a license holder, am entitled to the "Advanced" privileges. So, that will be nice once it comes into fruition. HOWEVER, I have to go back to the business principle.
About 8 months ago, I was running OSDate on my main dating site and it was doing good, except see more
this approach has been mentioned before. yes they know exactly the number of free and or paid license that are being used. if a free license is not generated and activated within a matter of call it 24 hours, account could deactivate, requiring a request for approval and reactivation of the account.
you are right, if a person is using a free license, there should be a forum, with limited topics, heavily moderated to stay just to those topics, and then once they move into the paid environment see more
There are many unanswered. Many are because the poster was ignorant but if you pay to post, you deserve an answer.
The search does not always return a post on a subject because you did not use a categorized system. You have to be creative in your wording and read a lot to find answers with the forum search.
So see more
you are correct, if you pay to post, you should have an answer IF, you have actually posted a question that is logical and a complete sentence.
Thread Titles such as:
database error
body: i have a database error
really dont get much help, because there is nothing there to help.
the other thing you see in here is that there are many trying to do customizations without the knowledge to do so, and end up breaking their site.
first and foremost, backup your work before see more
I totally agree with houston, Medfordite and many others that have express their opinion here...
The real true behind this is that they (Boonex) want to monetize from the thousands of licences they give away for free months a go, and now they want to charge see more
Instead of wrapping up support with each licensed (ie ad-free) copy of Dolphin (for around $700 a pop), unboonex split the two: $299 for the licensed copy and $20/month for premium membership
The see more
iPhone App and Android App Rebranding
BoonEx is developing mobile apps that work with Dolphin. iPhone App and Android App are the first ones to be released. Prime is the only way to get their source-code, modify it, and publish the apps as your own, without see more
In my case, with the conversion of my contributor 'licenses' to permanent ad-free licenses, I'll be going for the $20/month Premium membership so I can have access to highest level of support for Dolphin.
Can you offer a Prime choice for Members like me who already have the license, but like too let's say "upgrade" to the full Prime benefits, without having then a useless license bought?
I mean a possibility for existing customers to buy Prime without license and install?
The premium I will choose anyway, but apart from that I would like to have parts of the prime included in Premium or as another level see more
Thank's for all your Help
mydatery , houstonlively see more
1 month Premium - $20
3 months Premium - $50
12 months Premium - $120
Thus, there's still an option to have it for $10/month.
Extended membership is to stay at $5/lifetime level.
Prime will now include 5 years of Premium, instead of 3 as well as some new goodies, which are to be announced later.
"Thus, there's still an option to have it for $10/month."
So what level is the $10 a month? Premium, Moderator, etc. ??
Chris