Mumsnet Premium membership - please support us if you can

[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

@JustTurtlesAllTheWayDown

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.

Thanks so much JustTurtles, we did look into Paypal but it doesn't work with Stripe which seemed like the best option for our payments provider. I'll go back to our tech bods and see if there's a workaround.

How is the monthly salary bill £350k? Is this numbers of staff or high salary?

Not sure how a two tier system can continue to be a parenting site for all.

'By using an ad blocker people aren't paying their way"? Well, let's hope you have enough people who take up premium to pay their way of advertising is dropping, as your audience for future advertisers are those who can't afford the premium fee so much less likely to respond to adverts or are too tight.

If you had just said "We're struggling, we would appreciate a donation" it would be more open.and honest than the two tier system you are implementing.

You will still get trolls and threads on online papers etc, which I feel.is exceptionally intrusive.

Honestly Justine, the £350k salary bill has left by the looks of it a lot of uses flabbergasted and if anything has made people decide not to bother.

@JustineMumsnet
Can I ask about the yearly sub... is it on auto-renew?

I don't like auto-renew one little bit

Exactly when will new features be added?

At the moment you're taking the £5/£50 and only providing no banner ads.

Will these new features take months?

If it was just a donation, that would be fairly safe as it would just say "j bloggs is a mumsnetter" and not connect j bloggs to vampire79 or whoever.

I find it irritating that answers are being given to only the questions you want to answer. If you opt to pick and choose the information you provide, it simply gives the impression of hiding things. To ask people for money, in the midst of a global crisis, whilst hiding, or ignoring key facts, is a very poor marketing tactic.

The below questions/points have been raised many times and have still not been responded to.

*What security guarantees are you able to provide re. bank details/personal information?

*How do you respond to the many comments that the price is too high, give that it is in line with Netflix and Disney+, which both undoubtedly provide more bang for the buck? Did you do any market research on appropriate pricing for this, or just throw a number out and hope it took off?

*How do you respond to the repeated queries about how MN can justify charging people when it is these same people who provide your content

*What is the response to the repeated points about FWR being a major deciding factor on whether people would opt to subscribe

*There is a lot of ambiguity in you mentioning things like "to tide us over", whilst also saying that Premium will not be a temporary measure and was always planned. Please clarify this.

*Given that you have admitted yourself that this is a half-cooked Premium service as you have rushed it, why have you not just requested donations, rather than providing a service which lacks value for money? This feels dishonest to loyal customers who have already signed up, and aren't really getting much.

Well worth it for less than a price of a coffee

Less than the price of a coffee each day, unless your individual coffee is more than £4.99

I'm confused. How can it not be a two tier site as one would instantly know who had paid after it's been edited.

Although the stealth boast of Ohhhh sorry, just let me EDIT that. would work too.

Totally understand re your wages and fixed costs.

I desperately need mumsnet to keep going as it's been a lifeline these last few weeks but having seen our business cut in half would there be an option to make a donation? I dare not commit to any long term expenditures.

Not that bothered by anything in return but happy to support.

The product isn’t ready for launch. That reminds me of when they relaunched the MN Local sites and look how that turned out - loads of issues with functionality that lasted months on end and basically dragged Local to its knees and ultimate termination!

Nearly choked on my coffee at your sense of self importance. Claim what you're entitled to like every other business.

@category12

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.

Well we've just tried to be as honest and transparent as possible about our situation. Some people really don't like the ads and feel bad about using blockers (thank you those people!). But we don't expect it to be that appealing to that many as an offer but we are working on improving it. We wanted to launch Premium asap though as time is of the essence.

Agree antisupermum

nickynacky I know we aren't discussing Virgin, but there are comparisons here.

I think MN should have just asked for donations. I would have donated but I don't think I'll sign up to this.

@Cosyblanky

Nearly choked on my coffee at your sense of self importance. Claim what you're entitled to like every other business.

We have furloughed some members of the team, delayed VAT and bank loan payments. We aren't eligible for a rent rebate but again have delayed payment. Our people have taken pay cuts and pay holidays. We've also cut a lot of non essential costs but we still have to pay for servers, hosting bills, software licences etc to keep the site running. If we run out of cash we can't do that.

know what you're saying I really do but I don't think we've started "charging"

That's semantics. You are asking people to pay for a product which they are creating themselves - what is of value is what we say.

It's a slippery slope to a full charging policy which presumably will come next if you find yourself in a difficult financial situation a few months down the line.

I think MN should have just asked for donations. I would have donated but I don't think I'll sign up to this

This is exactly how I feel. I posted this on another thread: -

"I think they’ve massively missed the mark with this. Asking for donations would have been one thing - I would happily have donated. But this essentially creating a two-tier service of basic functions that have been requested for years"

Would premium people get an explanation as to why posts were deleted?

One of my biggest gripes with MN is posts on public figures - some are allowed to have very vile threads and others have a mild thread and it's deleted.

Have to be honest I would consider it at the 99p a month level, rather than 4.99. I've been on here for at least 10 years and keep coming back

I thought asking for money went against MN talk guidelines.

@NewModelArmyMayhem18

The product isn’t ready for launch. That reminds me of when they relaunched the MN Local sites and look how that turned out - loads of issues with functionality that lasted months on end and basically dragged Local to its knees and ultimate termination!

The product is ready for launch as it stands. It's just not the finished product! Not seen any issues with functionality on Premium as yet (god willing) although I do concede that MN local was a bit of a mess.

I think you need to go back to the drawing board with this one. There is far too much still to be thrashed out before premium is ready to be offered. Refund those who have already subscribed and remove the feature. Run a donation drive. I would be happy to donate to that. As it stands I’m not happy to subscribe with so many (important) unanswered questions and next to no benefit to subscribing.

Your current urgent need for money and the new premium service are two separate things. You’ve panicked and mashed them together and it’s just another poorly thought out balls up to add to the list.

@willowhazel

know what you're saying I really do but I don't think we've started "charging"

That's semantics. You are asking people to pay for a product which they are creating themselves - what is of value is what we say.

It's a slippery slope to a full charging policy which presumably will come next if you find yourself in a difficult financial situation a few months down the line.

Of which there is a completely free version though!

What would happen when boarding schools, parenting gurus, self identified lawyers or questionable religious charities ask for a posters information to sue them?

At the minute posters are given the option for posts to be withdrawn and details deleted aren't they? If you have billing information too, how would it work? It's harder to erase a financial trail.

Done !

£50 per year is well worth it to me
even if I don't get any special features

But pleaaaaaase fix the damn search function
I almost never search anyone else, just myself when I need an old link I posted

Agree with several PPs who've mentioned ambiguity, notably around what "fewer" adverts would look like in practice and the countless unanswered questions about security
I totally get it isn't easy to fine tune something that's been done in haste, but all the same I'd have thought there'd be something more concrete than "hoping to", "planning to" and so on, to encourage confidence?