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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

Can I just ask you to expand on this a little, @JustineMumsnet?

"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)."

In particular, the "despite considerable cost in terms of lost advertisers over the last 18 months". If I'm reading this correctly, advertisers ceased to advertise on Mumsnet because of GC discussions? Because you didn't close the FWR board? (I'm sure TRAs would have demanded requested its closure.)

So - again, my reading; you kept other advertisers on board by introducing the 'Mumsnet moderation principles for discussions around gender identity and sex'. Principles which basically has posters tying themselves is knots trying to be both truthful/accurate/unambiguous AND not be banned?

And now those advertisers have abandoned Mumsnet anyway?

And you're asking MNers to fill in the funding gap left by the loss of those advertisers you tied those same MNers in knots for?

So what I'd like to know is - do you really feel you need to retain those 'Principles', given you brought them in to keep advertisers sweet - when those advertisers have now dumped you anyway?

I have already taken out a year's sub, so my question is not leveraged with a 'do this and I'll consider giving you some cash'. It's done. I want MN to continue. But I would really really appreciate if you'd consider your MNers a bit more, particularly those MNers whose wisdom was as appreciated as LangCleg.

BTW - I'm a long-time user of Mumsnet, but I am in no way affiliated with them and I don't earn any money from them!

@JustineMumsnet I really feel that you would have done better initiating an option for people to donate if they wanted to, than introduce subscription-only features. It's not sufficient added value imho. Your initial post was very frank about the financial difficulties that have necessitated this - but unfortunately this made the attempted sales pitch that followed seem rather disingenuous. Not much logic in attempting to sell members on the benefits of a few extra features having already admitted the motive is money, imho. Also agree with the posters who are saying that things like an edit facility don't constitute premium features.

Totally accept that the financial need is real, but personally I feel a straightforward request for donations to be made, where people wanted to/could afford to, would have been a lot more honest than plugging a paid membership.

Somebody on the other thread pointed out that no other SM forum is asking folk to pay

I wouldn't know as I'm not on any others, but if this is so, doesn't it beg the question of why MN are alone in doing what they've done?

I pay for several niche interest sites. It doesn't give me any more than free members get but I still pay because I can afford it, and someone has to pay or the site won't exist.

Similarly, I want mumsnet to exist for myself and others and I can afford to pay so I think I have an obligation to do so.

(I'm not sure women (52% of the population) really counts as niche but that's a different conversation!)

BIWI, MN made 2m profit after tax in 2018. They should be able to weather a dip in advertising revenue. They always planned to introduce this they are just pulling it forward. They really aren’t going to go bust. And if they do, it’s not the pandemic that will have caused it imo. Companies will always need to advertise. Especially ones with an online presence looking for bored, relatively affluent online savvy shoppers.

@JustineMumsnet

Just a thought.

Before you go down this road - and I understand why you are doing it. Would you consider asking whether people would be happy to make a one off donation first? In the way of The Guardian and Wikipedia?

I am freelance so currently have zero income - no furlough for me - so although, I'd like to support MN for the years of laughs and wise words I've enjoyed over the years, I coulnd't commit to prime and then I wouldn't enjoy the site so much because I would always feel I was 'missing out'.

I think even if I could afford it, you'd have to make a lot of changes to justify the fee which is nearly a Netflix subscription.... And actually I don't want changes. I like that MN is quite lo-fi - it's part of the appeal.

Can you not try the one off contribution - which I'd gladly make - to see if that works first?

Excuse appalling grammar. On iphone and not wearing glasses. All sorts of punctuation horrors in that - but I'm sure you get my drift.

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?

So you're asking the 'can't affords' to identify themselves as such? Bit insensitive.

I’ve charged subscriptions on my much smaller niche site since about 2003. I make sure they don’t see ads but I can confirm my ad income has fallen by about 70 per cent too. There’s also a private forum for subscribers too.

I do have a lot of traffic still but worrying times!

@HereDefenders @BIWI so £2million profit in 2018 and probably a similar amount for 2019. Surely @JustineMumsnet could weather the storm for a few months like most other businesses.

I will subscribe but can you also have a private VIP area where everyone is funny and cool and bright and clever and just not F**K wits. Also NO AIBU threads either.

BTW - I'm a long-time user of Mumsnet, but I am in no way affiliated with them and I don't earn any money from them!

They should probably send you a nice bottle of gin after this thread, though. :o

Well said.

Wow it turns out that there’s something MNetters hate more than teachers, and it weirdly turns out to be MN and the people who run it.

MNHQ is there a way of doing this that doesn’t associate accounts with personal data in any way?

@Slightlyjaded, I asked about them doing a pledge drive instead and Justine said:
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).

Which doesn't make a lot of sense to me, since donors could and should be anonymous (and the same argument could be applied to subscribers). And by their own admission the offer isn't that great presently. To me, doing a donation drive now to tide them over and rolling out the subscription service when it has more features and is properly ready would be more logical, rather than rushing out this at a time when a lot of people are in a mess.

If I was going to pay to use MN I would expect, as a minimum:

• no ads at all
• a guarantee that my posts would be protected and not published elsewhere (e.g., newspapers) without my prior permission
• access to exclusive offers, competitions, prize draws, and product tests
• freebies of some description (e.g., gift at the start of subscription or access to exclusive giveaways)

I don't agree that the quote function, edit function, or advanced search should be subscription-only features as site functions should be available to everyone regardless of whether they pay or not. It would also make people who do pay easily identifiable as they could be spotted via their use of these functions. Likewise I don't agree there should be exclusive boards for subscribing members as, again, it creates division. There will be people out there who will think that their £49.99 makes them a superior/more worthy member of MN than those who do not pay and I can see it leading to lots of bunfights especially on contentious threads.

Would it help at all of users click on the ads? Even if we don’t buy anything from the company?
Because of this thread I clicked on the ad at the side which I normally would never pay any attention to, it took me to a book shop website and I had a browse around (I don’t want to burden royal mail staff, and also my job currently does not exist, so I couldn’t buy anything), I’d never have gone to that site in a million years without that ad, but now will keep it in mind.

Reddit manages on donations. I occasionally donate to Reddit, but I don't trust the site security here enough to risk it. Reddit donations are not associated with any personal benefit, so you can do it from a dedicated account.
Also on Reddit, the boards are moderated by users and people who are at least familiar with the subject.

Is this why (Mumsnet) I can no longer search for a particular poster?? Ie sometimes I will search previous posts from a poster but I see that that has, in the last couple of days, been taken away? So I now have to pay for that??

@BIWI am I somehow a lesser being because I don't have the same payroll as MNHQ??? Really? Are MNHQ AND THEIR FAMILIES the only ones who are worried?Freelancers rely on the work I provide them. I'm not a million-pound business but many people rely on my business to bring them extra cash. Does that mean I'm irrelevant?

Jesus Christ, everyone bashing this idea, MN isn’t a fucking charity! No one has a right to free content.

Just because a company makes a decent profit, it doesn’t mean to say they’ll be A-ok in a crisis.
My own business made a good profit last year but it doesn’t mean I’m sitting back relaxing, in the current climate. I have overheads, need money to plough back into the business, it’s not going to be plain sailing!

I’ll be signing up @JustineMumsnet 👍

GDPR compliant? Do me a favour. If you’re so confident of that statement tell us what happened to the intern that leaked user information? @JustineMumsnet you’ve been asked several time’s to explain about litigation measure but still glossing over. Reposting @GCAcademic comment, but no doubt it I’ll be ignored as you don’t have a clue and that’s the worrying part.

But, if a litigious boarding school, parenting guru or TRA wanted to sue a user, could you (MNHQ) be made to request their detaills from Stripe? Or could their lawyers go to Stripe directly?

Many of us have a throwaway email address specifically for MN after the doxxing incidents or after Hayden's demands that you hand over a user's information. So we would need to be 100% certain that our details couldn't be retrieved, either directly or indirectly, from Stripe, whether by legal means or otherwise.

a guarantee that my posts would be protected and not published elsewhere (e.g., newspapers) without my prior permission

That is completely unrealistic. If you choose to post anything on the internet which can be copied and pasted or linked to you run the risk it can be copied and pasted or linked to. MN can't stop that.

Instead of asking for our individual bank details why not provide details of an account donations can be paid into?

I would do that but given the terrible track record on internet security I'm not giving MN my real name, address and bank details.

‘No one has a right to free content’

Well that is as incorrect as it can be isn’t it. Such a bizarre thing to keep saying

We are providing free content in exchange for their ad revenue.

Anyway some will value mn over and above that transaction and pay more and others won’t. No point in getting irate with people who don’t.