What do you think of membership charges? Have your say here.

[NickNackGus]

I currently do not have the ability to pay you, even if I had money. Some suggestions:

BitTorrent allows everyone how downloads a file through it to use their computer as a server. Lots of ROMs to convert, but lots of savings on data transmissions, at least by spreading the workload out. It also means your server can go down for maintenance while people are downloading from other people's computers, and that lost Internet connections will not force downloads to restart.

Set up a donation system that allows users to set how much money they want to donate how often. Something like a monthly/weekly/daily/whateverly donation of x dollars. This would allow people who want to donate to your site on a regular basis to keep donating without having to think about it. Just remember to allow people to change donation settings and disable them entirely if they can't afford it.

Look into site mirroring and translations. Maybe someone who doesn't speak English would like your site. Or maybe someone else has some server space available and wants to give your site free access. On a related note, Linux runs anywhere, so you could install Ubuntu Server Edition (or another free server OS) on any computer you want, even consoles and handhelds, and not pay large sums of money to whoever you might be paying for server access.

A potential reaction to having to pay for access to your site for those who can't afford it: .

[Hot Trout]

Guys, I am opening this post again to discuss a pontential change to the donation and unlimited account amount. I value your opinion on such things.

Since we decided to charge $10 for a lifetime unlimited over a year ago, it is safe to say that it has been a success. The majority of users that decided to pay were very happy with the charge being $10 for life, some even saying so in their comments. In fact, on the donation page I had added a 'suggested amount' of $15 and many of the people that donated simply left the amount at $15 even though they could easily reduce it to $10 and still get unlimited. This tells me that the charge was more than acceptable to those that choose to donate.

It is also true however that the vast majority of users that visit this site never upgrade or donate.

Now add to this the fact that over the past year we have more than doubled the number and size of the roms to a staggering 1.8TB. We have also seen a huge increase in the number of users everyday, this in turn means that the total bandwidth used each day has been steadly increasing. It is currently on average 45-50GB a day

Currently the monthly donations on average don't quite cover the running costs and I want to be able to increase the bandwidth use as and when we need to, to continue to be the largest and fastest rom site on the web and to secure some cash for a future server upgrade.

With all this in mind, I was considering raising the Unlimited account minimum amount to $15 and the suggest 'feel good' amount to $20.

What do you all think?

[crustyasp46]

In earlier posts you mentioned the ability to control download sizes. So there could be other options to the one off fee.

For example :
Unregistered user no access to downloads, forum access only
Registered user stays at same speed download, limited download per day - week - -month
$10 Donation - same download speed - full access to download but no mega downloads
$20 Donation - same download speed - full access to download area - mega download available- mega downloads consist of 25 to 50 roms if this is achievable? Limited download per day - week - month
$30 Donation Unlimited to all areas plus Super mega downloads if achievable?

Otherwise, I could live with the first four suggestions. Or leave it as is with the exception of registered users, who should be limited to mb download per day - week - month, and a one off fee, and that amount, I will post by the vote.

I noticed that on April 05, this year that we had 574 people online, and if 2/3 of those were downloading, ( i think 2/3 is conservative) and 1/2 of those were downloading the mega I imagine that speeds were really affected. That is why I am suggesting a structured download scheme. Reward those who are willing to donate more.

Also, HT, consider other payment methods as well besides Paypal. I for one am of the caveman era. I do not have a bank account. Money in hand is the way I deal, or it is the barter system. ( that is another story )

Just my thoughts. crusty

[crustyasp46]

Most games are available for download, for registered users. It seems that the two games you want happen to be restricted. You choose not to donate, that leave the two games you want, not accessible to you, at the moment. Live with it.

You have entered to try for " Unlimited " and good luck on that. You will just have to wait and see and if you don't get chosen this time you will have to try again.

There are costs associated to running this site and again we try our best to accommodate. If you are not satisfied there are other options for you. Go elsewhere.

[crustyasp46]

" "go elsewhere"?
Unfortunately, as I've explained before, those 2 games are NOT available elsewhere. Trust me when I say this, that if those games COULD be found elsewhere, I'd have downloaded them by now, and NOT be on your website.

Oh, and MOST other sites of the ROMS and emulators type do NOT charge a single penny for ANY of the games they offer (SnesOrams, Emuparadise, the list of such sites goes on and on and on). In other words, there's no good reason why anyone at YOUR site should have to pay, but those at OTHER's sites DON'T have to pay. Why you guys chose to make people pay, sounds less like trying to fund your site, and more like trying to make a profit off of SELLING ROMS! "

You keep quoting other sites and what they do, and how great they are, and not to knock other sites offering similar service, They do not have 240,000 roms to offer. We offer what we offer and the way we offer it .Live with it.

You have made your point, other sites are greater, you want just two roms, three if someone else buys and pays for it so you can download it. We are profiteers because we try to make the site available the best way we can, and have made certain areas only to those who do donate.

You have entered the draw to try to become an unlimited member, you will have to wait to see if your name comes up or not. Live with it.

Your whining or trashing the site is not changing the way the site is run. Live with it.

Any more similar posts will find you banned for spamming the site. You have made your point, I have made my point mostly politely to this point. If you can not live with the way the site is run, GO ELSEWHERE!

[PrincessMilissa]

What about the members that have donated already? Do they get access for life like it says? BTW DaHentaiGuy Get out of Here Freeloader!!!! and Because Stone Cold Austin said so!

[luke83]

Well it looks like the only people with the extra cash are the ones who have already signed up for unlimited downloads. Maybe we should keep our life time membership but pay a top-up amount each year for some extra perks. Could be special content , Wallpapers from games, manuals etc Also i would be willing to pay more to keep my account Advertisement free , as i hate them so much!!!
Either way i will be making a Top up amount each year as it saves me downloading everything just to sit on my hard drives until the day i may finally want to play the ROM.

[Hot Trout]

Thank you luke. I agree that it should be acceptable that people pay a small top up amount each year but it is hard to organise at present. I appreciate your input and donations a great deal, it takes every penny and I mean EVERY penny to keep this monster going.

[max1zzz]

Personally i like it the way it is and wouldn't be very happy if you had to pay for a account, however it think it would be good to be able to pay £1 or £2 to get unlimited downloads for a few days as there is a few things i would like to download but you need a unlimited account (and will buy one in about a month when i have money), anyway this is one of the most awesome sites i have come across

[pauljm]

Now that the contribution-based system appears to be fairly well established it may be time to revisit the token idea discussed last year. My intention though would not be to directly generate funds but rather to generate content.

As a new visitor here, I was astounded by the number and diverse range of ROMs available. I was also surprised by the apparent lack of user input to the site. I look down page after page of ROM listings with few games even having been rated, much less attracting any reviews, screenshots or even comments. This leads to a very minimalistic user-experience - if you don't come here looking for a particular game, there is little to guide your browsing. It is more a case of seeing an interesting name then hitting Google to find out whether it is actually something you might be interested in downloading.

If a token system could encourage members to contribute content (reviews, screenshots etc) then this would make for a richer experience for your visitors perhaps encouraging more to contribute cash. There might also be a minor side-benefit in reducing the number of downloads (as users would be better able to judge the appropriateness of a ROM before downloading).

There are some issues to be addressed, not least whether this is a route on which you wish to take the site. If you prefer to focus primarily on being a repository then enhancing the user-experience need not be of primary concern. Another problem is that of quality control. Currently the system holds reviews for approval before releasing them. Should a reward system generate a high volume of content then there would need to be a large number of editors/moderators to oversee contributions. Once contributions are linked to rewards there will always be those who seek to abuse the system with high volumes of valueless input.

If the idea has merit then some though t would need to be given to appropriate levels of reward. My first thought would be along the lines of tokens being exchangeable for fixed periods of unlimited access.

Comment = 1 token
Review = 10 tokens
Screenshot = 5 tokens

With say:

1 hour unlimited access = 25 tokens
1 day unlimited access = 100 tokens
etc

There is, of course, a snag with this. Many of the people who might be expected to be content contributors are already unlimited members so the tokens for access scheme holds no attraction. You might therefore need to think of some alternative rewards.

Finally, people tend to like to have their efforts recognised, so you might add a flag to the user profiles to show 'reviewer', 'contributor', 'editor' or whatever.

I hope this isn't too long-winded for a first post and that the ideas are of interest. I should say that I don't have a particular personal interest here - none of the content I'm interested in accessing is restricted to Unlimited members and the old games that do interest me tend to be so small that download speed is hardly a significant limiting factor. I would, of course, be happy to contribute reviews etc (and have done a short one as a trial run of the current system) but, with the best will in the world, I'm not likely to get through a couple of hundred thousand ROMs in this lifetime!