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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

Justine, some of the information you're giving away in your replies is absolutely no ones business except your own and there's absolutely no need for you to expand on replies to the extent you have in the name of transparency.

"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"

Yes and morally I don't want to support that, but a donation would have been given no questions.

Of which there is a completely free version though!

The operative word being version

@JustineMumsnet did anything happen with an employee doxxing people? It seems to be a running concern for people!

Still no reply to how MN will ensure complete privacy over names/bank details?

My major concern is confidentiality.

And also if you're going to subscribe, which I'm sure lots of people will, could there be a change in policy to say people who are not members or subscribers, don't get to have an opinion or make complaints about opinions they disagree with on a site they're not members of.

Just read you spend 350k a MONTH on wages and you're on here pleading poverty?

Jesus wept.

Do people not just freely use the Internet to buy, book and pay for things routinely now? I don't get all the mithering about lack of trust. What do people actually think will happen if they pay a subscription?

I also agree with PP's who say this is fantastically insensitive.

People are out of work and struggling to feed their families, yet you want them to pay money?

Done!

Do people not just freely use the Internet to buy, book and pay for things routinely now? I don't get all the mithering about lack of trust. What do people actually think will happen if they pay a subscription?

Tend not to give my details to companies who have had a number of data security breaches

@JustineMumsnet Would you consider offering this on a free trial basis, so posters can see whether it's worth it (once you have the extra features added) before they start paying?

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"

This really, I'd've been happy to bung some cash your way to see you through, but to be honest It's already sounding a bit awkward isn't it? With all of the "We'll give you money if we can dictate what we're allowed to post" posts.

I don't want to be part of a two tier service where you feel that you are in thrall to the people who can afford to pay you. You can dispute this now, but is inevitably how a paid-for service works.

OK, so there is a completely free version - a version which is probably not going to appeal to advertisers much as it's user base is going to be either a) people who cannot afford to pay and therefore diminish the value of the site as a mechanism for advertising their products or b) people who don't value MN enough to pay for it so are less likely to visit the site often and therefore also diminish the value of the site to advertisers.

It then becomes unsustainable and so you decide that reducing the adverts for premium members is no longer and option and have to allow more adverts on there so you appeal to advertisers more or have to raise the prices. Either that or make everybody pay.

I have subscribed.

I have been here since Ds2 was born in 2006 and £50 is worth it for the classics section alone.

MN has comforted me, informed me, entertained me and I could not be without it.

Why do you say that FWR users need to ‘pay their way’ ? You could easily police language on the breastfeeding and blw threads on the grounds that it’s better for your advertisers if people use their products rather than BF or use home made food. But you’d never say that because that would be unethical. Whereas it’s fine to use your advertisers’ craven position on women telling the truth as a stick to beat FWR users? Not cool.

And remind me what the traffic through FWR is again ? Aren’t we driving readers to your site and ultimately to the advertisers you do still have ?

What do people actually think will happen if they pay a subscription?

The concern is where their RL details will be stored and who will have access given that MNHQ has previously employed people who leaked a whole load of members information.

£350k a month just on wages.

I honestly can’t get over that for a Internet forum and website. Am I missing something?

“Just read you spend 350k a MONTH on wages and you're on here pleading poverty?“

How do you think the wages get paid?

willowhazel that's why I hoped for some clarification on what "fewer adverts" would look like in practice. One less? Half of them less? All removed if we pay?

If the product is "ready for launch", surely there should be some information available on this?

@Rhianna1980 and @Yallreadyforthis have hit the nail on the head.

To ask for money now when people are worried about how to put food on the table is, to my mind, quite extraordinary. Furlough staff as needed, use the government’s proffered 80% funding and most importantly, refine and finish the offer properly rather than offering some half assed ‘we will offer you further features later and actually, all we’re currently offering is fewer not no adverts”. Quite an extraordinary way to run a business.

Your reasons for wanting subscriptions are valid, but your timing is atrocious and the bait to get us subscribing is not tempting. You have also failed to answer the repeated comments about how you propose keeping user data safe subsequent to a previous breach.

Signed up. And very happy to do so.

It's something I've wanted for a long time - which is why I have an ad blocker currently running. I'll turn it off for now but will turn it back on if the ads you do allow become as intrusive as they were.

IMHO it's well worth the money, as something I use every day, several times a day - and have been doing for the last 14 years (OMG is it really that long?!)

A couple of caveats though:

• I really think you need to deal with reporting of posts by people who aren't members (premium or non-premium)
• It must never, ever be the case that those who don't pay don't get access to the same content.

Hope all at MNHQ are well, and staying safe.

I think Justine is getting a hard time. I do admire her honesty in explaining the situation.

I don't begrudge the wage bill or any of the costs.

BUT if I'm going to help with your expenses then you need to be much more answerable to members and listen to their concerns.

I'm your commodity. You sell what I do and say to generate revenue for you. You want me to speak my mind. You want me to engage in meaningful and intelligent conversation, as well as in laughter and nonsense. On the whole, MN is fantastic, and I do not have any issue with being your commodity.

This. And now you ask me to pay for it? I provide content free of charge - over years, under different usernames I’ve contributed loads to discussions and disseminated lots of information, or attempted to. I have attempted to minimise the amount advertisers gain from your selling profile info I admit, but I give the content, which you retain rights to, for free. I share the other concerns about censoring the people providing the product and security too, but my first interests are socioeconomic.

I’ve been watching the web since it’s inception, watched the dotcom bubble, watched the unacknowledged advertising bubble grow and with it - a growing expectation that people with nothing from families with nothing not only will but should “contribute” forever for less and less, and have never been happy with it. Mumsnet is part of the general pattern in our economy, the general pattern that Covid has demonstrated the weaknesses in. 570k profit, pre tax or not, is not small money in a country where the median wage is 29k, mode wage is perhaps 22 (my own guess) and minimum is less still.

I will have to think about it. Quite carefully. I will be considering it as part of how do I fit into this economic system, not simply whether I want to pay for access to content I produce.

350k a month on wages that still doesn't even include paid night mods. Bloody hell.