How much would you pay for Mumsnet?

[DasEnglischesWetter]

Imagine it Mumsnet was subscription-based either on a monthly/annual basis or a one-time fee to gain access

How much would you be willing to pay?

No, that's the infrastructure. Mumsnet's customers, ie the people who are providing the money to rent those servers and pay the staff, are the advertisers. We, the users, are the product that Mumsnet is showing to the advertisers to persuade them to give Mumsnet money.

Nothing. I wouldn’t have signed up in the first place if it was paid only.

As others have said we are the product. I have stopped reading blogs I love when they have moved to substack and start charging. I'm certainly not going to pay for a discussion website, I'll just move to the next free site.

We are. Those things are the infrastructure behind the product. Without us, there is no MN. We are essentially what they sell to advertisers.

You having a laugh - pay for vitriol!

Infrastructure is still the product. Users are valuable to the advertisers but being valuable isn’t the same as them being the product. Content is an essential part of the business model – the same as for TikTok, Instragram etc – but the foundation is in the word ‘users’. WE use the produce. WE also indirectly pay for it by purchasing what’s being advertised by the advertisers. We are very much the users of a service.

See above.

Nothing I'd just go elsewhere

Zero

I would love to know how many premium subscribers they actually have

Exactly

We are
but advertisers don’t give a flying fig about that
they want to know how many are signed up
and demographic

They don’t have to give a flying fig about it.

So I can’t really see your point

without advertisers Mumsnet gets down the tubes
Mumsnet needs us to secure advertisers
so… Mumsnet needs us

And the advertisers advertise because we spend money with them, therefore advertisers are more likely to advertise on Mumsnet – therefore it becomes rather circular.

The users of any platform are not the product. They are a byproduct of the product.

We will have to disagree on that

and pretty sure Justine would too!

No, it's really not. The ad buyers don't give a shiny shit about the infrastructure. The majority of the ad buyers have no real idea about Mumsnet as a platform at all - they're just placing ads on ad networks, tagging them with the demographic they want those ads to appear in front of, and the ad networks then insert the ads on the platform whose audience most closely matches that demographic.

The ad buyers care about the audience for their ads, and that's us. Don't get hung up on the word "users" as that's really just a shorthand for "the people who read and write the posts on the Talk boards." The talk boards are the lure that gets people like you and me to spend time on this site. And we're the lure that gets advertisers to spend their money on Mumsnet.

I wouldn't consider paying unless MNHQ improved the quality of its moderation. Doesn't seem likely that that's going to happen, so not much chance of me ever paying.

I'm sure she would, in public at least. That doesn't change what the fundamental economic model of social media sites is. Follow the money - whoever is paying a company is that company's customer. What they're paying for is the product. Ad companies pay Mumsnet to get their ads in front of us.

Nothing. I'd just stop using it.

If we weren’t here nobody would pay to advertise on here

I wouldn’t pay for it, I’d be off to netmums.

I've been on here for 25 years (I think). I'd never pay anything for it.

Would you pay?

nah Mumsnet make enough money. Is anyone drops a link eg on style and beauty it changes to an affiliate link, so when someone clicks through a cookie is placed on someone’s device and if they buy anything within 24 hours (Amazon), or all the way up to 90 or more days, Mumsnet makes a commission.

I wouldn't pay. We already pay our way through providing the content people come for and allowing MN to profit from us.

But even without that, so few people would actually bother to pay that the site would be completely dead within a few weeks with nothing to read/comment on. Sites like these need a massive volume of traffic to generate conversation and a pay only site just wouldn't get enough.

Look at gransnet, even in active there are threads on page one that haven't been posted in for days - we'd be that by the end of month one.