NumeroUno wrote:Schmick wrote:I would allow people to read the announcements page for free but require a paid membership to post in the announcements section.
Most people I know, including me, didn t even register here and came to find out about tryouts for years.
Between sponsors and the teams paying to post their announcements the board should make enough stay in the black. Forcing people, many new to travel ball, to pay to even see where tryouts are and who is holding them may cost the board the majority of its traffic.
Once my girls finished college i took some time off away from softball sort of dropped the ball you could say. The majority of those sponsor logos don’t pay. Some are friends and some just don’t pay. Some companies I just swap logos with, mine goes on there site there logo goes on my site. I have deleted about 10 who haven’t paid in years this past week, some were paying a little bit of money. At one point I was working all day and then working every night on heybucket? I didn’t mind working for free for years I was just doing it because I love the sport. The bigger HB got the more expensive it was to run. Biggest site in the country by far. So to help pay the bills a dollar a month seemed very reasonable. Maybe not
I understand and appreciate the amount of work that goes to running message boards, I ran a couple myself. I also don't mind paying the buck a month to have access to the announcement forums. But I first started looking at the announcement forums for tryouts 5 years ago and didnt register or post here til years later.
All over Southern California everything from ASA rookie parents to seasoned travel ball parents will browse the tryout forums looking to see who needs what or what local tryouts they can take their kids to to see how they stack up.
I know that it's not fair that your message board has become the bulletin board for Southern California travel softball tryouts but perhaps that can be used to your advantage. Your message board software should be ablen to track how many guests and registered viewers look at those forums every day. You can use those numbers to show how valuable your board is at getting eyeballs on announcements and sponsor logos. You could even make it so guests or non paying registered users have to see more ads when they view the announcement forums and charge more than a dollar a month for users who want to be able to post announcements in the announcement forums.
Just spit balling
Of course, if you don't want to be the bulletin board for So Cal Travel softball any longer, none of this really matters. Maybe it's time for So Cal softball to have a CCYB type forum the way So Cal baseball has where all the prospective families can find out about tryouts