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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

@MarshaBradyo
I guess what I’d compare MN to is a magazine.
I used to buy magazines for between £3-5 a month, crammed full of advertising too (more than on here), but i wouldn’t expect to walk into a shop and pick up a magazine for free.

Yes, MN uses us as content, but where else do many people have such a place to interact, share ideas, get opinions on a massive range of topics, learn new stuff, etc?
I get way more from MN than I do a magazine each month, so I do see value here.

@tigerbear
BabyCentre
Reddit
Quora

And a lot of other places.
MN is not nearly as niche as some people seem to believe.

@WorraLiberty
(If anyone's worried about being banned then I'd go for the monthly option!)
I don't know why that made me laugh so much

Me too lol,
If you gotta ask, that says it all lol
Go for monthly if you still want to be here and don't think you can last a year

Tigerbear I do recognise that other posters will value the content more than I do (or less). But I value it pretty much equally to what mn already get out of my posts. So it’s never been a right to free content for me but an equal exchange,

I’ve been on here for a while and am ready to read more books and go cold turkey. Probably a good idea!

I will not be subscribing because:

1. I don’t trust MNHQ with my data because:

a. Emma Healey - the intern who said she still had ‘friends’ on the inside on MNHQ and happily published personal details of Mumsnet posters online

b. The data breach in Feb 2019 when users could view other people’s details

c. Parenting experts, TRAs and others have threatened (and may actually have carried out those threats) to sue/subpoena MumsNet for details of posters who they wish to sue.

d. I’m pretty sure there have been a few other breaches I have not listed.

I don’t trust Mumsnet with either my personal data or my financial data

1. I often disagree with moderation on these boards. I don’t want to pay one day and be restricted from posting the next.

1. And no refund if I am banned? You have got to be fucking kidding me? That is charging for a service whilst refusing service. Possibly illegal.

Some posters have been reinstated after banning which shows that bans are not always justified. But MNHQ can issue a ban with no refund, charge for a service and then refuse service.

1. I am generating content for this site. I should not have to pay for that privilege.

Interesting to note - if MNHQ had held a fundraiser or asked for crowdfunding, I would not have thought twice about donating and could have easily parted with £50-100.

I volunteer for a charity. Under the current circumstances we’ve ceased all fundraising activity and have stopped asking for donations. It just seemed distasteful to ask for money when people are struggling, being laid off or furloughed on reduced wages, businesses are going under, etc. Obviously MN has no such qualms. Quite frankly I’m shocked.

Reddit has a premium option, Drunky.

No one shits themselves over it being an option.

I had Reddit premium for a few months and decided I wasn't worth the money. I unsubscribed and am still able to use the site normally.

Why shouldn't MN have that?

3. And no refund if I am banned? You have got to be fucking kidding me? That is charging for a service whilst refusing service. Possibly illegal

What? Just been reading and going through the thread. Where did she say that?!
She didn't.
From what I can see said had specifically said use pay monthly option of 5 pounds that way won't lose money.
Cancel after the month is up is how I read it, like a lot of companies out there. Nothing unusual.

She has said that.

She then specifically recommended to monthly option to minimise any loss.

But if you pay on the first of the month and get banned on the second, I would still consider that a loss.

And incidentally, if you pay monthly and don’t get banned you end up paying £10 more per annum,

Why would you come in with an I'm going to get banned attitude though?
If you feel you're going to be from your posting then the monthly option is best.

Usually I have my shovel at ready, but I just can't this time considering the murky posting rules and banning of posters I respect.

Yes - we have lots of fixed costs - mostly staff and server/hosting/Saas products. Our monthly staff bill is 350k so any dip in revenues hits the bottom line pretty quicky. Put simply if we don't cut costs/ generate sufficient revenue we will soon run out of cash.

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.

@JustineMumsnet
Based on the figures you have given, either

• the average salary is £42000 (in which case, where do I apply?) or
• your average monthly staff bill is £292000 (speak to your accountant, I think he is skimming) or
• HR has lost track of 20 employees (I’m job hunting, I can either replace the skivers or the HR department, I’m not fussy)

That is meant to be tongue in cheek but a 20% difference in figures is significant. There is absolutely no expectation or obligation on you to post any of this information but if you do post, inaccuracies do not help your case in building support for a paid-for service.

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).

If a subscriber pays yearly, and does not adhere to the rules, within the first month of subscription, what happens their already processed yearly fee?

there is nothing proprietary about this forum; no matter what way it is pinned, nothing. In fact in terms of technology; forum software. it is monumentally behind. What is the usp? You don't have a product without users. What would stop me running a much more streamlined/ technically user attuned platform with a different name and not charge for it? Marketing? easy shift.

you should count yourself lucky it got as big as it did and now realise your signing of your own death warrant in begging your users. Never the way to pull a business back up.l

seriously get proper advice

What would stop me running a much more streamlined/ technically user attuned platform with a different name and not charge for it?

People already have.

No one likes them as much as Mumsnet because they are crap.

Do you think most of us are here because MN is the most "streamlined and technically user attuned" forum?

Just no. :o

Do you think most of us are here because MN is the most "streamlined and technically user attuned" forum?

Most of us are here because of the content.

If the better content users left or if a group of content users moved together to an other platform, Mumsnet would suffer.

@JustineMumsnet
My tongue in cheek post above assumed you are making separate pension provision etc which may not be the case, in which case, I apologise.

That is meant to be tongue in cheek but a 20% difference in figures is significant.

It has been a while since I did HR/pay but 20% is roughly the amount of "on-cost" borne by an employer for each staff member: employer national insurance obligations, employer pension obligations, and the like.

An employee earning £35 pre-tax would therefore cost an employer £42k to employ because of the (roughly) 20% on-cost.

Has anyone suggested that the Daily Fail et al actually pay for the content they currently lift for free? I’m sure all our threads can come under a general copyright rule.

I also agree with a previous poster. Was it in 2015 when all the data was hacked, email addresses and passwords published and that guy stalked Justine? She had to leave her house for a bit IIRC, or he phoned the fire brigade to say her house was on fire, something like that. My email address was one of those targeted and I had to shut down that email address and start anew for everything.

Not sure I’m happy to hand over my credit card details, especially if MNHQ is running on a skeleton staff ATM.

@TedsFederationRep, I did note that in a later post. It has been a while since I have done those sorts of calculations but remember it varying depending on salary and topping out at 13-14%. It was a while ago so I have no doubt that has changed.

Also, our accounting provision had a separate breakdown of that.

It seems pretty clear that MN need cash, posters like MN, but they don't want any remote sense of their being a two tier system on the talk boards. People also feel they aren't getting anything for their money.

It seems to me, and I could well be talking bollocks, that people are also really concerned about their and others current financial situation.

@JustineMumsnet what about changing rack? People can sign up to premium but, for that, you donate 10% of the proceeds to Women's Aid and 10% to the Trussell Trust? So as well as helping MN we are helping those we are concerned about? Yes, you make 20% less BUT if more people sign up then you are even.

As for what do posters get in return, why not tweak your advertisers discount codes? So instead of every one getting 10% off Forest Holidays or whatever, premium members get 10% and basic members get 5%. It doesn't cost you or Forest Holidays any extra money. For a big expense it would be worth someone's while signing up to Premium just for the discount (so you get more money) and also charities women care about, especially in the current climate, benefit too. And it costs you very little.

All you would need to do is add an extra page into someones profile where the discount codes are, and have one for premium and one for basic members.

Probably a crappy idea but at least people are getting something for their money and you and charity get some too.

No worries.

Justine is clearly trying to get essential information across without straying into company confidential stuff and is, I think, being unjustly criticised for not having invested in a fail safe crystal ball.