Paid Subscriber benefits - brainstorm

[Coder1]

The default Paid Subscriptions system is very little used, I think. Part of the problem is that the only default "benefit" for paid subscribers is access to a private forum - ho-hum.

I think a plugin that enhanced subscriber benefits would be nice. Before I get started, I'd like to brainstorm some benefits. For example, since my site is a "professional business" site, I've disabled avatars and images in the signature line. Those could be perks available to subscribers.


private forum acceess
avatars
img in sig
additional/custom title
vbAdvanced CMPS module to "feature" subscribers?


Other ideas?

[Peggy]

do you permit image attachments? if so, perhaps a larger size attachments? more pm storage? At my site we give personal email accounts... theirname@mydomain.net

just some thoughts

[John]

Isn't all this available by default anyway? Just make a usergroup with those permissions and upon subscription assign membership to the subscriber?

[Coder1]

@John - are they? I thought some of those were site-wide settings. Hmm, heading to my ACP to check.

Well, not exactly. For example, "Allow [IMG] code in signatures" is a site-wide option, and I don't see that it can be overriden by a Usergroup setting. So, the "Subscriber Benefits" product/plugin would turn it on for the "subscriber" usergroup.

Likewise, the vbcode and smilies in signature could be on. Now, this wouldn't matter if you allow all of that to Registered Users anyway, but the idea is you would not: those features only available to subscribers.

For a site like this, one idea would be to have "premium content", for example, access to plugins you've developed and/or use for the site, that can't be found anywhere else. I'm not sure what premium content I could offer on my site.

[Joeychgo]

For my car forums, I seek out suppliers of parts, etc. And offer them a free banner ad on a 'gold members' page in exchange for a discount for my gold members. I have a script that a supplier can enter the users' name in and it tellls them the status. Nice and easy.

I also offer email address for 'gold members'.
You could offer a small web hosting account on a subdomain;

[Peggy]

ah yes I forgot about that.. since i have a premium resellers hosting acct and we're permitted unlimited domains on our acct, we've thought of offering small hosting packages on our site. That would be good to bring in some revenue, however, up until now I've been selfish with it, wanting to keep all the storage and b/w for us, lol

[popowich]

For my car forums, I seek out suppliers of parts, etc. And offer them a free banner ad on a 'gold members' page in exchange for a discount for my gold members. I have a script that a supplier can enter the users' name in and it tellls them the status. Nice and easy.
I also offer email address for 'gold members'.
You could offer a small web hosting account on a subdomain;

For the small web hosting account do you mean
one of the products that integrates web hosting into vbulletin for members, or an actual web hosting account with their own domain name?

I offer a private message bump and custom titles too.

I have two members levels usergroups (supporting members and poker peeps) with with 2 subscription rates within them.

I like the images in signature only for subscribers idea? (currnetly on anyways for everyone, uh oh..)

I have a dedicated server and would have no problem supporting some additional reasonably sized web sites. You may remember me brainstorming being a low cost vbuletin host for some beer $$$ a few months ago. Free web hosting for the poker peeps is a nice idea.

-Raymond