Subscription Drive: Upgrades Continue until Midnight

[mottershead]

Mike Spinak's generous offer to new photo.net subscribers (as

described in <a href=q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00DPXh>this thread</a>)

is now over and Mike has announced the winners.

 

<p>I am pleased to announce that the 50% subscription upgrades that I

offered will continue until midnight tonight. Any 12 month

subscription will be upgraded to 18 months, and any 36 month

subscription will be upgraded to 54 months.

 

<p>If you have been considering subscribing (or renewing your

subscription), you still have eight hours to benefit from this promotion!

[byronlawrence]

what if my subscriptions starts at a different time of year?.. could I just pay the extra and get the 54 month deal?

[bobatkins]

Subscriptions add to your existing time left. If you have 6 months to go and you subscribe for 12 months (which Brian then makes up to 18 months) they get added together so you won't be due to subscribe again for another 24 months.

[tholte]

Now would be an excellent time to find the check I sent four weeks ago and process it with the upgrade. Make my day a double-sweet one!!

[todd frederick]

Who won?

[nasmformyzombie]

How does the upgrade happen? I just re-upped for another year, and that's all I got.

[mottershead]

I have to apply the upgrade manually, since the software is treating these as regular subscriptions. This will be done tomorrow.

[sl1]

The $2,500 you raised from this subscription drive is a far cry from the almost $ 50,000 raised by Sandy during the last drive. What had happened to him and why is he not chipping in this time?

[mottershead]

Sandy stopped visiting the site as frequently because of disenchantment with the Leica forum, which was his main interest on the site. That particular subscription drive lasted from December 26, 2003 until January 5, 2004 -- 11 days -- and raised around $23,000, which Sandy then matched with his own money. We also had the 50% upgrade feature during that drive.

 

The funds came at a crucial time when the site performance was really suffering, and permitted us to upgrade almost all of our hardware. We remain extremely grateful to Sandy, and I wish he would come back more often.

 

Th more recent drive lasted for 23 hours, and raised about $2,200. In terms of the number of people subscribing/renewing per hour, the two drives were quite comparable.

[james mitchell dc]

While I think that these sudden subscription drives are commendable, they do tend to benefit the freeloaders more than the loyal, yearly subscribers. Maybe some thought should be given to those of us who renew each year rather than those who finally give in when there is a benefit briefly offered.

[jerry_lehrer]

Brian,

 

To where do I send a check? I do not use credit cards on the Internet.

 

Jerry

[mottershead]

Jerry, we don't accept checks. We used to do so, but they come in such a trickle that we couldn't process them efficiently. We would let them accumulate and do them in batches, and people weren't very satisfied. There is still a small batch from the last few weeks that I have to do, but we aren't taking any more.

 

I probably am not going to change your mind about Internet credit card transactions, but let me try.

 

First, credit card transactions on the Internet are *MORE* secure than transactions involving your physical card. When you use your physical credit card, you are trusting the waiter, gas station attendant, shop clerk, etc (a) to be honest; and (b) to do the transaction properly. You are trusting the merchant to keep the credit card slip secure. The merchant authorizes your card via a phone call, or possibly an Internet communication to the bank, and those communications are as susceptible to eavesdropping as Internet communications. In almost all cases, these days your credit card transaction is going to go over a network. When you say you don't want to use the Internet, what you don't realize is that you already are, almost every time you use your card. Far more fraud happens, I am certain, with physical credit card transactions than with on-line.

 

When you do an Internet transaction, the credit card information goes over the internet encrypted, using a method as secure, or more, as that used by banks to transmit wire transfers and the information for physical credit card and ATM transactions. Same technology.

 

Of course, with an Internet transaction, you are trusting the merchant to handle the information properly, the same as with a transaction with the physical card. In this case, the merchant is photo.net, and you have to trust us. We don't store your credit card number anywhere. We have it in our computer only long enough to do the authorization.

 

I can see someone saying "I don't trust credit cards, and I don't use them at all. I only pay with cash." But it really doesn't make any sense whatsoever to feel safe in handing your plastic to someone, or to stick it into an ATM, and not to feel safe in doing online transactions with reputable merchants (etc) on the Internet who using a secure server.

[mottershead]

James, I guess that is the problem with ever doing "sales". All I can say is that the last time photo.net did a subscription drive, apart from the two that were done in the last couple of weeks was in Dec 2003/Jan 2004, and I don't reckon on doing another one again for a long time.