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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

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 wouldn't waste time talking to me here. Get back out into the general forums and see if the hive mind can come up with a blinder. Or 100 lots of 1/100th of a blinder. Do you not have faith in your own posters ?

Perhaps MN ought to look at their ridiculously high staff costs.

I used to be here a long time ago when there were hardly any ads. They became more and more intrusive until I finally got an ad blocker.

I'm not getting rid of my ad blocker now. I can see where they would appear on my page and the amount of them is ridiculous - given that premium members will still see some ads, there is no benefit to subscribing.

@JustineMumsnet

Well it’ll be interesting to look at your 2019 accounts and your recent restructuring won’t it?

You must think our heads button up the back if you expect us to believe this is entirely Covid related.

Would also be very happy to make a donation, Justine , please think about making that available. MN has given me a lot over the years and I would always want to support the immediate advice, support, connection and ability for women that is here 24/7.

I feel the same GCacademic. Its not really the cost, notwithstanding that forums always go shit when paying is introduced. But I've got a fiver a month and while there are arguments about value for money, I've paid more for shitter things in my time. So it's not really the cost. It's the fact that this model creates an online link between my username here and my bank details. That's inevitably going to be a target, even using a 3rd party to take payment, because the TRAs are going to be on it as soon as one of us says something they don't like. And you've got a pretty crap record.

I would potentially be willing in principle to throw a few quid in a general funding appeal not linked to my account here, if you made a few minor adjustments like stopping non members from reporting and changed your imbecile rules on misgendering. But what you're asking for is the creation of a link, however convoluted, between accounts here and bank details. That is asking for trouble.

@agonyauntie2020

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?

Thanks so much Agony I'm so happy MN's been enjoyable and yes, I love all those threads too! We have considered gifting and it's a feature we want to add soon. Thanks for the suggestion.

But you have no idea how those staff costs are made up @Lefkosia!

@JustineMumsnet I know you considered but discounted asking for donations, in favour of this new premium offer - but it seems like lots of posters would like to make a donation, so why not open that option up as well?

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

If you think people paying will not have a litany of complaints, if anything the minute you bring in a subscription model there will be more demands and complaints because people are actually paying for a service, think about how many paid subscribers will complain because some other website/newspaper has picked up the story!

To me, the whole situation seems to be have been on the cards anyway as they admit they need to redevelop the site, Corona has brought it all forward and given it a feel good factor in asking for subscriptions as that would have been a hard sell at any time. Looks to have backfired in some circles though, it's a dangerous model to go down wanting monthly subscriptions, it didn't work in the dot com boom and I will be very surprised if it can work now for such a relatively medium sized site. The moderation is going to have to become more on point, it could go a way where being a paid subscriber gives you more nuance posting privileges.

I tried to take out a subscription:
You only offer payment by credit card - which I do not have or generally need.
I have a debit card, which I use when no other method of payment is offered. This card was - though loaded with enough money for several years of subscription - refused on the ground that there were not enough funds.

Unless you start to offer more ways of payment, I do not see how I can subscribe.

Crowdfund. We're pretty good at that around here!

(This may be the one time we don't have to hide the link too )

I wouldn’t subscribe because of data breaches, and from the responses you’ve given on this thread @JustineMumsnet

I’ve also got to add that considering the size of your wage bill, fixes to the site are extremely slow. It was cute when it was the one tech guy who was known by name, but you can’t Cling to the ‘oh it’s a small little kitchen table business’ when you’re staff are commanding £350,000 monthly.

@Prokupatuscrakedatus

I paid by debit card without any problem

You can pay with debit card. I did.

Anyone else waiting for a mod to pop up and remind us not to give more to another poster, either financially or emotionally than we'd be prepared to lose if things went wrong....?

*From the responses you’ve given on this thread Justine you aren’t quite clear on what information will be held and how it will present on your end or the users, or who will have access to it.

• your staff are commanding £350,000.

Definitely need a bloody edit button!

@Lefkosia

Perhaps MN ought to look at their ridiculously high staff costs.

I used to be here a long time ago when there were hardly any ads. They became more and more intrusive until I finally got an ad blocker.

I'm not getting rid of my ad blocker now. I can see where they would appear on my page and the amount of them is ridiculous - given that premium members will still see some ads, there is no benefit to subscribing.

Why do you say our staff costs are high? We have around 100 employees earning approx 35k a year. Many of them are highly skilled in sought after roles.

It depends on the treatment of FWR posters who regularly get deletions and bans, while trolls goad.

If you reinstate LangCleg then I'm in.

As for subscriptions. I wouldn't want to subscribe to reduce ads, if I was paying then I would want no ads at all. I would also want access to decent features not available to non-subscribers otherwise where is the incentive to pay money for something that's barely better than the free version?

@JustineMumsnet By a sought after role do you mean that the role itself is sought after or the people are sought after?

Forgive me not using the right jargon but.

Will the same tech people be running the paid site and the free site?

Can we get that funky quote facility you have, Justine?! Many an hour wasted copying and pasting and trying to bold the right parts and then getting the poster's name wrong.

Justine, will you answer the questions about FWR & whether you’ll put an end to reports the TRA monitors?

Is the wage bill really that much? I am confused, night timr is staffed by volunteers. So how many staff do mn have?

@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.

I would be happy to contribute financially to use the site. Its a very important space & point of support for many women.
It would be impossible to justify the risk of sharing personal information as a regular FWR poster.

(Im not interested in having 'VIP member' privileges.)