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[JustineMumsnet]

Hi folks,

First and most importantly, I hope you and yours are safe and well, and that you all stay that way.

After 20 years of unreasonableness, rofls, wtfs, advice and support, and the odd lawsuit, it's fair to say that we are as close as we’ve ever been to existential difficulty.

Like many ad-funded businesses, the COVID-19 crisis has seen us take a big hit to our revenues. The businesses who would normally pay to advertise with us are slashing their marketing budgets, but lots of our outgoings are fixed and we so need to find new ways to keep paying the bills.

We’re doing our darndest to find every single saving we can - lots of our staff have volunteered to reduce their hours, we’ve cancelled all non-essential services, I've taken a pay holiday and we will use every scheme and loan available to us from the government and the bank to help tide us over. But we still need to find alternative revenue streams to ensure we don’t run out of funds in a few months...

To put it frankly, it’s squeaky bum time.

I know this is a very tough time for many of you and some of you are only just keeping the lights on yourselves. We’re sending you our solidarity and we most certainly don’t want anyone to stump up anything they can’t afford, but if you can help, please do subscribe now to our Premium service.

We’ve banged this out as fast as possible in response to the current crisis and it’s definitely not the finished article, but it’s free of banner advertising, so if you’ve ever been vexed by those (or use an ad-blocker) this might be right up your alley. Banner ads also tend to make pages render more slowly and take up bandwidth, so if you’re surrounded by bored kids streaming with their mates, step this way.

We’ve opted for a price point that we hope is doable for most and which covers the potential lost ad revenue for the majority of users. We hope £4.99 per month or £49.99 for a year (less than a pound a week!) feels a reasonable exchange for the value Mumsnet brings you, but in any case you can unsubscribe any time.

Over the next little while we’ll look to add some extra features: things that people have requested regularly like editing, sorting posts by the OP, and reading offline.

Rest assured we remain committed to always providing a free version of the site, as we fundamentally believe that access to the advice and support Mumsnet offers should not depend on your ability to pay.

And if you can’t spare any cash right now… then of course we get it. It would still be very helpful if you removed any ad blockers or clicked on affiliate links around the site when you shop, joined our insight panel or even shared the best Mumsnet threads on your social channels whenever you can - it all helps.

If you have any questions at all feel free to post them here and I'll get back to you. We also have a page of FAQs that might answer your question.

Hold tight everyone.

Love

Justine and the team at MNHQ

[quote category12]@JustineMumsnet, sorry if it's been asked already, but did you consider a Pledge drive as an alternative to this, (like Wikipedia do)?[/quote]

Yes we did and we came close to including that feature too at launch. I know from previous experience (we did this kind of thing way back in the early days of 2002/2003) that some individuals would probably have donated quite a lot. And that didn't feel quite right. For one, we're not a charity - we're a business so we wanted people to feel they were getting something for their subscription (and as said we'll be improving the offer) and secondly and we didn't want to feel compromised in the way we moderate the site i.e if a generous donor was behaving badly it could plausibly cause a conflict of interest (something that's been raised on this thread by a few people).

Nicky on LinkedIn it says 'between 51 and 200 employees"

Essentially you’ve just brought forward the launch of your subscription product under the guise of “we need your help dear friends”.

I use an adblocker and have for years, and will continue to do so. I don't consider it to be morally wrong because I am on such a low income that all of the adverts I've seen in the past have been for things that are unaffordable and that I can only dream of.

nicknacky Arguably, it's better than bloody Branson having his mitts out for Virgin Atlantic when he could just flog Necker.

And as it stands it’s certainly not a product worth £49.99. “Fewer ads” is all you’re offering. The product isn’t ready for launch.

Well I would pay but I've forgotten my password so cannot name change which is one of the things I like doing. Is there any way of resetting my password (my phone remembers it for me)

£350K:month wages needs to be looked at again.
My husband’s former job at an extremely successful cutting edge tech company, employed around 50 people and had a monthly bill 2/3 of MN.

Someone needs a pay cut.
Streamline your staff as this is sadly not sustainable.

You have a valuable brand, don’t lose it, but the idea is very easy to copy. Don’t lose your costumers.

Change the FWR posting rules to respect the requirement for legality, decency, honesty and truthfulness, and I will support you financially.

Our monthly staff bill is 350k

How many people are you employing that cost 350k a month?, thats a shed load of money - if you're spending that much then you are bloated for what you provide.

I see a website and a forum.
What else is there? why is it so expensive? How many people are you paying?

personally? i only read the forums, i dont see value in anything else here

Last year we had revenue of £7m and pre-tax profit of £570k. We have a a couple of loans too which were due to be paid back this autumn - we've deferred payment on those for a year. We really wouldn't be asking for help if we didn't need it

Hmmm

So, many, many companies are offering freebies at this time. Banks are offering mortgage and loan breaks, which, perhaps you've benefitted from. Mumsnet response is to start CHARGING?
Poor show, I'm really disappointed.

Justine, your not shutting down gender critical content is (like several other FWR women) why I’m still here & open to subscribing. What about the TRA monitors though?

EnPassant
Have I got this right?
I could subscribe and pay for a year.
As a feminist I say something that misogynists on twitter don’t like.
Theyre not members or subscribers but their reports are listened to.
I’m banned a week later and not given my money back for the rest of the year?
That’s doesn’t sound fair really so this isn’t for me. And I already don’t see ads with an ad blocker.

Well, yes, but put another way... by using an ad blocker you're basically not really paying your way for a website that quite unusually has not shut down gender critical comment, despite considerable cost in terms of lost advertisers over the last 18 months. (And at most you'd lose £4.99 of value if you subscribed monthly).

Not sure where the gender critical bit came from. I referenced feminism not gender criticism (I’m not fully sure what that is to be honest.)
Anyway, I don’t see ads on twitter and insta and I don’t get the founders telling me off for it! I‘M also alarmed by the mentions of a moderator leaking details about members which I hadn’t heard of before, being relatively new. So I don’t think this place is for me and I’m going to deregister now. Peace out.

£350k on staff per month

WTAF

@FortunesFave

This is very sad in a way. The timing is spectacularly off too. Very insensitive. People are without work, relationships are breaking up, it's all over the boards....and yet MNHQ think now's a good time to introduce this.

Because they've 'made a small loss' Righto.

Sorry you feel that way Fortunes - as I've said a number of times - it's not compulsory and we really wouldn't want anyone to pay more than they could afford. We've rushed this through because we can see that we are going to struggle to generate enough cash over the next few months to meet our commitments. But clearly there are people and businesses worse off than we are and I wouldn't want to pretend otherwise at all.

Well, yes, but put another way... by using an ad blocker you're basically not really paying your way for a website that quite unusually has not shut down gender critical comment, despite considerable cost in terms of lost advertisers over the last 18 months. (And at most you'd lose £4.99 of value if you subscribed monthly).

So the content a poster provides you is worthless to you? Earns you no money at all?

Done.

I've been here over 12 years and despite finding Mumsnet both infuriating, hysterical and downright wrong at times I've also found invaluable advice, knowledge, laugh out loud moments and amazing stories.

Well worth it for less than a price of a coffee.

I think it's worth the money but I definitely can't risk my rl name and address being connected to my mumsnet posts for many reasons. It wouldn't have occurred to me there was a risk before the Big Breach, and then the ex staffer.

fortunes it’s a rather vague number lol.

thegcatsmother We aren’t discussing virgin though? This is a post about Mumsnet.

Sorry, but with security breaches and litigious golfers I'm not comfortable with MN having any link to my real identity.

I wish you well though.

Done. And thank you for everything you've done over the years. This is one of the few truly female-centric online spaces and I'm more than happy to support.
I'd like to second the suggestion to be able to pay via PayPal though. That makes it much easier to set up than faffing about finding a card.

@Yallreadyforthis

Last year we had revenue of £7m and pre-tax profit of £570k. We have a a couple of loans too which were due to be paid back this autumn - we've deferred payment on those for a year. We really wouldn't be asking for help if we didn't need it

Hmmm

So, many, many companies are offering freebies at this time. Banks are offering mortgage and loan breaks, which, perhaps you've benefitted from. Mumsnet response is to start CHARGING?
Poor show, I'm really disappointed.

I know what you're saying I really do but I don't think we've started "charging" - we've offered an alternative paid version of Mumsnet while not in anyway removing or diminishing the current, free to use version.

But the problem is, as pps have said, your subscription service isn't really ready to launch - it's not a great offer at the moment, so a pledge drive would have been at least - "we're a bit stuck for cash-flow, can you help us out" which to me is better than offering something a bit half-arsed.

Wondering how I could pay anonymously - postal order? Send cash?

I would subscribe if there was a PayPal option. Is this possible please?