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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

@ChandlerIsTheBestFriend

So, what would I prefer? Pay £5 a month or lose MN?

Is that really the choice though?

@JustineMumsnet is this this case? Do you need a certain number of posters to pay (you mentioned 10% earlier?) or you’ll have to shut down?

I can't give you a figure because there are some variables that are hard to predict - how long marketing budgets are slashed for, whether the government extends the Furlough scheme, ability to raise funds/finance. We do need to try to stay cash positive for as long as we possibly can though, so we can ride this out.

Yes lots - we've got tonnes of improvements we want to make but we need to re-platform first so it will take a few months (things like bookmarking). Also advanced search needs to be fixed pronto.

Are you bringing Premium in now so you can afford to do all this?

Is there any way you could also let us pay by PAYPAL please?

Furthermore reading the litany of complaints posters have why on earth don’t they just go elsewhere anyway?

Because it's free?

Sorry if this has been asked but can those of us who want to stay free make a one off donation? If you could set up a button where I could make a one off donation I’d happily do that.

Well judging by the way the poll is going in aibu it’s goodnight Vienna for mumsnet.

You’ve really shot yourselves in the foot here.

I can't give you a figure because there are some variables that are hard to predict - how long marketing budgets are slashed for, whether the government extends the Furlough scheme, ability to raise funds/finance. We do need to try to stay cash positive for as long as we possibly can though, so we can ride this out.

So you really are reliant on enough people subscribing for long enough?

That’s quite a risky solution tbh. You need to be investigating other funding options. Many people on this thread alone have said they won’t subscribe but will donate. Worth revisiting that idea.

I’ve been here for a while under different names.

I’m sorry but I can’t pay.

I have real concerns with your numerous data breaches. I was posting when the whole bleeding hearts thing happened and it was fairly scary TBH.

I’ve posted once on the Feminism board and was given a warning email.

I love MN, it’s helped me, made me laugh, made me cry. But no I can’t subscribe. Happy to chip in with a bottle of gin, but we are all suffering now and this isn’t the right time to ask for subs.

@JustineMumsnet would I be able to get 1000 posts on one page again? Or will I still be limited?

^to 100 per page

You need to be investigating other funding options. Many people on this thread alone have said they won’t subscribe but will donate. Worth revisiting that idea.

The old adage about hammers and nails ?

How much work has gone into trying to reduce running costs, and maybe leveraging a better hosting deal ? It's hard not to see a site like MN with it's traffic having some appeal for AWS/Azure/Google, for a start.

@SlipSlidin

You’ve seriously mis managed your current income stream, why would anyone give you more to piss away?

I hardly think the current situation, driven by Coronavirus, constitutes Mumsnet pissing away their income stream! What a ridiculous thing to say.

I might have donated, thinking about it. Short term funding deficit due to ad loss etc. No risk of my data being breached as I would have logged out of here, gone to funding page, donated, no link between rl and username. That would have helped keep it free for people who can’t afford to pay.
But this cynical move in week 3 of a national lockdown? No way.
Hope all the keenbeans like their 15 second edit function and stalking opportunities. 🎉

@vanillandhoney

Yes lots - we've got tonnes of improvements we want to make but we need to re-platform first so it will take a few months (things like bookmarking). Also advanced search needs to be fixed pronto.

Are you bringing Premium in now so you can afford to do all this?

No - we've been working on re-platforming for some time but it's a big task because MN is a very old, very big site with shedloads of code and a monolithic service. We're bringing in Premium now because we need a new source of revenue now ads have dried up. If CV hadn't happened we had planned to bring it in post tech transformation towards the end of the year.

@BIWI no it’s not. We’ve been in lockdown for 16 days and the traffic on here has gone through the roof yet they’re pleading poverty already. That’s piss poor fiscal management by any standards.

Should be alright for everyone on the 50k a year thread.it will be a drop in the ocean for them.

You need to be investigating other funding options

Now I come to think about it, given the huge demographic MN covers, a much better first step might have been to throw the problem over to the userbase for solutions to the problems, rather than trying to (literally) sell a pre-packed notion that is fraught with controversy and getting peoples backs up.

Or am I being a bit dim ?

For goodness sake, people.

The site will still be accessible to those who don’t pay.
It is what it is. You do not have to pay, you can choose to shrug and carry on as before.
I’m amazed that people think their content is so great as to be sustaining MN 🤣 You, we are just ‘women who will blather on endlessly and allow themselves to be advertised to or roped into product testing’. The help that’s given in terms of support when leaving abusers or working out what’s right and wrong is a byproduct of our presence here and nothing more.
All you gender-critical folk who are getting off on needing your safe space at no cost could easily go and set up your own business providing the back end and the moderation and negotiating with advertisers - I think it’s the height of rudeness and entitlement to even vaguely suggest you’d need more for your money.
Anyone who’s got any experience of running anything with millions of members will know it’s a bloody minefield even without that particular brand of crap. What ridiculous and thoroughly unjustified entitlement. I only use MN because I remember what it used to be before the trans issue became a thing and I never had to know how nuts some people I previously respected could sound.

Pay or don’t pay but how about winding your necks in, some of yous?

No, I think it’s a viable option DG

Done and happy to do it. Mumsnet has seen/is seeing me and many of us through difficult periods of life, and provided unfathomable amounts of amusement in every period (cakebitch, penis beaker, cutted up pears, naice ham, Pom bears and my all time favorite Center parts b*m sex?) and for the same cost as one stupid-expensive monthly coffee, I raise you the epic parking threads (with diagrams)...

MNHQ, obviously not everyone can afford it. Have you considered inviting those who can afford it to also pay for an extra subscription for one person who can't afford it (randomly selected at your end) to get into the premium bit?

@DGRossetti

You need to be investigating other funding options. Many people on this thread alone have said they won’t subscribe but will donate. Worth revisiting that idea.

The old adage about hammers and nails ?

How much work has gone into trying to reduce running costs, and maybe leveraging a better hosting deal ? It's hard not to see a site like MN with it's traffic having some appeal for AWS/Azure/Google, for a start.

Yes we're moving to AWS as part of our tech transformation - still a few months away though - it won't actually save us that much (a little) but it's a much more robust service. Meantime we've negotiated a reduction of fees from our current server hosts. We've put an awful lot of effort into cutting costs in the last few weeks as I said in my OP - and have pared back a lot of non-essential software.

I’m amazed that people think their content is so great as to be sustaining MN

No one thinks that.

We don't have access to any payment information - it's all handled by Stripe.

@JustineMumsnet - I deal with payments made by Stripe for a small organisation - I can see names, addresses, email addresses, and the IP address of the device used to pay. Someone at MN will have access to that info from payments. Bearing in mind your track record of data breaches (not all your fault tbf), how can we be sure that info won't end up outside MN?

[quote SlipSlidin]@BIWI no it’s not. We’ve been in lockdown for 16 days and the traffic on here has gone through the roof yet they’re pleading poverty already. That’s piss poor fiscal management by any standards.[/quote]

Actually our traffic is up modestly not gone through the roof. The actual story is quite nuanced. We have fewer visitors than normal but they are staying longer.

Justine, have you considered donations, perhaps in the form of sponsoring other people's membership.

This happens regularly at feminist meetings - pay for someone else's ticket. While both my very wonderful local website (because of the steep slide in advertising) and the Guardian ask for donations.