Impending Reduction of Free Service

Post by **NeutronIC** » Fri May 21, 2004 8:01 am

This is a heads up warning that this weekend the free service will be shrinking in capacity.

It currently stands at 10 simultaneous connections sharing 20k/s, this will be dropping to 5 simultaneous connections sharing 10k/s.

The reason for this move is that advertising revenue from the banners has dwindled significantly over the last couple of months - where it has been hovering around $200 USD per month, which covers the free bandwidth and contributes a small amount to the servers own maintenance fee, it's now down to under $70 per month which doesn't even come remotely close.

Free access is funded by those banners at the top of the forums and the main site - and like them or not, pop-ups and pop-unders, annoying as they are, are the only banners that have any kind of real return on them - I need to show about 10,000 simple normal non-annoying banners to get a whole $1 USD back where that number is more like 350 for the annoying ones.

If banner revenue increases back to around $150-$200 USD per month I will be able to put the free access back where it was.

This change will take place probably this evening - the only reason it isn't happening now is that following a crash and reboot on my shiney new PC it burned the registry - it auto-restored but sadly now my Visual Studio.NET is claiming not to be installed anymore so I have to sit through a 2 hour re-install of that bloomin' thing before I can get any work done!

Please accept my apologies for this, I'd love for everything to be free but unfortunately that's just not possible.

Premium access costs Â£3, Â£11.75 and Â£20 for 1 month, 6 month and 12 months respectively and you can pay by cheque, postal order, credit or debit card - just click on 'unlimited access' on the top left hand side of the main site to get all the information you need. With premium access there are no queues, no limits and download managers work much better - plus you are supporting the site and making sure we are able to stick around with the decent servers and bandwidth ready for the next generation of simulators hopefully coming out in 2005.

I'll make an announement on the front page as soon as the change has been implemented.

Matt.

ianm42 · Post by **ianm42** » Fri May 21, 2004 8:20 am

A suggestion for non-premium users:

before you start complaining, please switch off your ad-blocker software and see if you can help to increase the free download limit again.

Lad491 · Post by **Lad491** » Fri May 21, 2004 9:51 am

well I, for one, have long maintained that everyone should pay a nominal amount to use this service. Â£20pa is less than the average add on now and quite frankly, is peanuts in the scheme of things.

The only exception i might make would be to the very heavy contributors of material here (and i dont include myself in that category), and im sure a special concession could be arranged for them, as a reward for their hard work and labours. People who contribute nothing shouldn't expect anything for free.

I for one am happy to pay Â£20pa, in fact if im honest i would pay more as i currently pay Â£50pa to access a technical support site on which i have posted a question only twice in the last year, but i read it everyday and so gain knowledge from others. Cheap even at Â£50. Here I rarely download anything, but again I have benefited from the help and advice given, either directly to me, or to others from which i have learned tips / tweaks etc. At Â£20 thats nothing and is easily worth twice or three times that.

If non premium users aren't happy with this change then instead of dashing down to the shop to buy the next addon - send it to Matt instead for a years premium membership.

Lad491 · Post by **Lad491** » Fri May 21, 2004 10:14 am

Actually, thinking about this some more, if everyone was a premium member I'm sure the annual cost could be reduced and still allow Matt to cover his costs and maybe even take a small salary for all the hard work he and his parents do here.

qzdcg8 · Post by **qzdcg8** » Fri May 21, 2004 11:46 am

Lad491 wrote:Actually, thinking about this some more, if everyone was a premium member I'm sure the annual cost could be reduced and still allow Matt to cover his costs and maybe even take a small salary for all the hard work he and his parents do here.

There is a basic problem - a goodly percentage of those who frequent this site cannot pay as they are minors, in full time education or just don't have a credit card - so there does need to be a 'limited' amount of free access IMHO. Plus you need to give people a free taster to encourage them to join up.

boeing126 · Post by **boeing126** » Fri May 21, 2004 11:56 am

Well i agree with a fully paid up membership but when this question of free access was raised some time last year somebody i cant remember who said the site needed to keep the number of hits up in order to keep advertisers happy.So that was the reason given for a certain amount of free access.

bigvern · Post by **bigvern** » Fri May 21, 2004 12:11 pm

You could of course argue that Matt is providing a service for the uploaders too, as where else is the average home internet user going to find servers with the space and bandwidth to host the sort of file sizes MSTS gobbles up, particularly routes?

Many of us around from the early days recall a couple of sites (one of them was German) which went under after trying to provide a free service for downloads. I think the German one got slapped with something like a 200 Euro additional monthly charge for bandwidth, which although the guy appealed for donations I bet ended up coming out of his pocket.

I certainly couldn't even begin to think about hosting my route files anywhere independently certainly not without a download fee in which case might as well stick with the CD service. As I quickly found out with Freeola, domain hosts who promise "unlimited server space" are just as quick to kick you off again when the bandwidth starts to mount.

All that remains is to say thanks again to Matt for providing this site without which the UK MSTS add on scene would not be as it is today. I'm sure 99% of the site users will back whatever decisions you must take to keep the site viable.

ianmacmillan · Post by **ianmacmillan** » Fri May 21, 2004 12:22 pm

qzdcg8 wrote:
Lad491 wrote:Actually, thinking about this some more, if everyone was a premium member I'm sure the annual cost could be reduced and still allow Matt to cover his costs and maybe even take a small salary for all the hard work he and his parents do here.
There is a basic problem - a goodly percentage of those who frequent this site cannot pay as they are minors, in full time education or just don't have a credit card - so there does need to be a 'limited' amount of free access IMHO. Plus you need to give people a free taster to encourage them to join up.

I think the premium fee is a bargain but I agree that some free downloads are needed. I would be happy to pay a little bit more to keep the free bandwidth the way it was.

We are also beginning to get a lot of non UK simmers who will not yet find enough content to make premium membership worth while. I welcome their contributions to the forum and would hate to lose a potential uploader.

Breedlings · Post by **Breedlings** » Fri May 21, 2004 1:04 pm

ianmacmillan wrote:.....We are also beginning to get a lot of non UK simmers who will not yet find enough content to make premium membership worth while. I welcome their contributions to the forum and would hate to lose a potential uploader.

Chicken and egg kind of thought here. Seeing as we're sort of drifting into what will be a type of wilderness period until the new Simulators come on line perhaps there is an opportunity to grasp.

If more Continental (and further) users can be encouraged to upload to the site (ok I know it's called UKTrainsim but the facility for international use is already there) then it would encourage more worldwide useage and possibly a higher percentage using the 'free' system. This could have a two fold benefit in terms of increased advertising revenue and a solid jump off point for the new Simulators with an international foundation right from the start - naturally assuming they are backward compatible.

There must be a number of sites round the world that are already thinking 'What's the point of continuing now there's no MSTS2?' so now could be a good time to be encouraging people to upload.

Just a passing thought

Alex

jimmyladd · Post by **jimmyladd** » Fri May 21, 2004 1:15 pm

I carn't see anything wrong with reducing the free bandwidth, at leased any new visitor to the site will be able to view the forums and see what is going on. Just a point to make, how about having some sort of scheme where as you get a little bonus to your premium access for uploading files, as an encoragement to get people uploading models, activites etc I think that will help more people to stay active here instead of staying for a month or two and then drifting away.
Jim

Post by **NeutronIC** » Fri May 21, 2004 2:44 pm

Hi Folks,
Thanks for the kind words, much appreciated.

I'll answer a few of the points that have been raised as best I can...

Encouraging European and other non-uk uploaders

I'm definitely trying to do that - while some people may not like non-uk stuff, for me a train's a train and I like all trains

I originally designed the site to support uploads for any country and indeed we do have a number here for around the world - just go to the download library and use the country selector, you'll find piles in Ireland, US and many around Europe like Germany for example. Nothing like as many as there are for UK of course but I am hoping that will be resolved. My reasoning for it isn't so much to capitalise on sites perhaps deciding to close down as it is to provide extra value for those who are premium members - the more there is here to download the better it is. One thing that I've seen regularly is that when there's a new non-uk route somewhere a large number of people take a look because it's something new and as I say, a train's a train, they're all good

One guy is going to be uploading his german coaches soon - they are looking spectacular, definitely a set of uploads to look forward to. With the help of members on here spreading the word to people to get more folks uploading - or even just giving their permission for the files to be on here and I'll happily to the downloading and uploading of them to put them on the site, we should be able to boost things.

I already have http://www.eutrainsim.com registered though it's not set up to do anything yet, along with http://www.ustrainsim.com and http://www.autrainsim.com, the intention has been to create sister sites that show a targetted view of the same system - so you'll get relevant news, newest files and so forth on each site but still be able to access the whole library from each one too if you wanted to, just like this site tends to default to UK files. These sites are aimed to all come online at the same sort of time as UKTS 2 - since the capability for this is not in the current code base.

We take part in European model railway exhibitions (in the UK, but european themed) and I definitely want to encourage more people to share their european and other non-uk work on the site so if you can help or offer ideas then please do, it might just take a quick email to the author of a loco / activity / route that you like to get it on here and the more that do, the more will find out and follow on their own - i've noticed an increase in the number of european and US members on the site lately too.

Just to clarify one question incase it comes up - it'll still be the same premium membership for all sites, so if you currently subscribe to uktrainsim.com then you'll still be premium on all the other sites so don't worry, no extra money being talked about here - just more value for what you already pay.

free bandwidth

I've always believed that there needs to be some free bandwidth and I aim to provide a fair amount based on what can be subsidised. I do not feel it is right for premium users to be funding the non-premium users and therefore it's based on advertising.

As Steve said, there are two reasons for free bandwidth - not everyone can pay it and very few people buy without trying first.

That said, while I have absolutely no objection to providing free access - and indeed I don't particularly like that I have to cut it back a little now - I do get a bit frustrated that people feel they shouldn't have to see adverts either - if the site were making millions then I could see the ads being a pee-take (well, they wouldn't be here if we were making millions hehe) but they're not, they're a fundamental part of the income on the site - if you block a banner and you're non premium then you're cutting your own access.

reward for uploaders

This is one thing I'd dearly love to do as we just wouldn't be here without the countless hours of work that these folk put in to what they do. The problem is that once you actually say "right, let's work out how" you suddenly run in to a quagmire of problems. To give you an example of a few, take these situations:

Someone spends 12 months working on a route and someone else spends 2 weeks working on a small scenic item. Should they get the same?
Someone spends 1 month working on a loco, someone else spends an evening reskinning it, should they get the same? Should the original uploader get a second reward because of the new upload using his model?
Four people are involved in making a loco, how does that work, or take it to an extreme, someone uploads a route that has work contributed from 250 different people...

And then how do you do that without sending the site broke and without getting in to silly things like giving people 1 day premium and so forth.

Finally, how do you then prevent people from uploading loads of stuff in order to get more premium access - e.g. perhaps they would have originally uploaded a single pack of wagons or as MorpethCurve did recently, a pack with a couple of loco's, coaches, wagons and some activities - fantastic stuff, but it's one item, how do you quantify that differently to someone who uploaded 15 different files all as separate items - and then how do you stop someone who's uploaded their latest 9F from feeling put out that someone who uploaded a Class 02 diesel got the same "reward", or someone else uploading 150 different files worth of tree's, one file per tree.

Also, since we do not qualify moderated uploads based on our opinion of them, how do you compare 2 months of loving care and attention crafting a beautiful loco to a couple of evenings hacking a little wagon with square wheels and a quick spray paint job?

You can't do it based on downloads - people will download most things and give them a try, and if it doesn't work they might download it again just to make sure it wasn't a dead download. You can't realistically do it based on feedback because a) people will register multiple accounts and provide lots of false feedback for/against something, b) some of the smaller niche areas would get overlooked - the latest adelante upload might get hundreds or thousands of downloads and everyone comes back saying "wow fantastic model", the latest narrow gauge model or tram might see an order of magnitude less attention and yet be equally deserving.

It's a political and social minefield and any form of reward - whether it's virtual like "points" or actual subscription time, it's always going to cause friction and problems.

Ideas on a postcard

The uploaders contributions are definitely acknowledged and humbly appreciated by almost everyone here I think, most definitely including myself, and I would hate for someone who has contributed a lot to the site/community to suddenly find themselves in a difficult position for downloading because their financial position makes it awkward to subscribe (for whatever reason - I do accept that there are some perfectly valid reasons, though I do get a bit pained when someone emails me demanding that they be able to fully utilise their 2 meg broadband connection so that they can download stuff for their 3 ghz PC to run!).

And finally...

I don't want this to turn in to a non-premium bashing thread (which it hasn't so far) - I definitely don't want those who don't subscribe to feel awkward, you're definitely not unwelcome! Just think of the non-premium option as a Pay-As-You-Go system like mobiles, where each advert banner contributes to your access, if you block the adverts, the access will get reduced. Most blocking software does have the option to open it up for particular sites so you don't even have to switch it off completely.

Matt.

asalmon · Post by **asalmon** » Fri May 21, 2004 3:05 pm

qzdcg8 wrote:There is a basic problem - a goodly percentage of those who frequent this site cannot pay as they are minors, in full time education or just don't have a credit card

They surely have parents though, and Matt already said you can pay by cheque or postal-order.

phat2003uk · Post by **phat2003uk** » Fri May 21, 2004 3:07 pm

That's how I got my premium membership

Post by **martinhodgson** » Fri May 21, 2004 3:39 pm

And how I got my first

jimmyladd · Post by **jimmyladd** » Fri May 21, 2004 4:06 pm

Yes I suppose the idea was flawed, I was just thinking of a way to make the site grow without realy thinking it through. Its not an ideal world and any system of rewards is going to tread on somebodies toes somewhere down the line. I'll have to get my thinking cap on to come up with some other ideas.
Jim