photo.net as a virtual travel machine

[gib]

One of the reasons I love photo.net is a simple one (like my simple

mind). People from around the world post photos of where they live.

Although some people don't necessarily like to see others post

their "travel" photos on PN, I do. Without climbing on a jet plane or

driving endless miles, I get to "see" the world. And if you think

about it, it is impossible to know where all the good, "secret", off

the beaten track, photo opportunity perfect places are hidden.

Photonetters know where these are in the land near their homes. They

go back to those places again and again and capture good to excellent

photos.

 

Makes it worth the subscription cost to support PN, dont you think?

 

So three cheers for photo.net.

[jon_fernquest]

> Makes it worth the subscription cost to support PN, dont you think?

 

It's worth way more than the subscription price and I'm starting to feel guilty about not subscribing. If I can ever figure out how to use Paypal or some other payment system from foreign lands like Thailand, Korea, or Burma I will subscribe immediately. (Any suggestions?) If there were different grades of subscriptions like $100 for increased services or high bandwidth use, I'd choose that.

 

I think the next step beyond photo.net is the sort of meta-narrative provided by *weblogs* where you could get finer groupings, comparisons, analyses, and categorizations than photo.net provides.

Focal points for *groups of people with shared aesthetic values*. The linear ranking at photo.net kind of ignores this fact, that holding technical competence equal, there are distinct sets of equally valid aesthetic values in the world, (e.g. the European Kertesz's use of soft focus is said not to have been in sync with the aesthetic values of his adopted homeland the U.S.)

 

I read that after learning the Zone System Ansel Adams suggested looking at large numbers of photos analytically, something that photo.net as a resource seems best situated to do!

[jon_fernquest]

P.S. If the search engine used statistical clustering techniques, it could probably do a pretty good job at identifying communities of shared aesthetic values. A lot more people might decide to give ratings just so they could determine who they share common aesthetic values with. I hardly give any now, simply because I don't find they provide me with very much information. I already know I don't agree with a lot of people on a lot of subjects. Even a histogram/distribution would provide some idea of the spread of opinion on a photo.

[pmj]

<i>Members outside the United States should send an International Money Order.</i>

<p>

From the <a href="http://www.photo.net/photonet-subscriptions">Support photo.net</a> page. Note: I haven't actually used this method myself, but used PayPal (from Holland).

[bobatkins]

I hear that sending a Money Order from some countries can be quite expensive. Don't know if it's true but someone told me that they would subscribe, but it would cost them approximately three times the normal subscription rate just to send a money order. Now this could just be a convenient excuse for not subscribing, I don't know.

 

The other reason I hear given for not subscribing is "I'd subscribe if I could pay directly with a credit card instead of going through PayPal". Again, I'm not sure if that's true or an excuse. You can use a credit card through PayPal, but some people simply don't like PayPal. Also PayPal doesn't take credit cards from a number of overseas locations because of fraud problems.

 

Not sure what the solution is for people living in some far flung corner of the globe which is not served by PayPal and from which it's difficult (or very expensive) to send a Money Order.

[pmj]

<i>The other reason I hear given for not subscribing is "I'd subscribe if I could pay directly with a credit card instead of going through PayPal".</i>

 

<p>

 

That would require photo.net staff to handle credit card transactions, securely storing credit card numbers and dealing with (I'm not sure how this works exactly) credit card companies etc. And since photo.net has a very limited staff, I think this isn't going to happen anytime soon.

 

<p>

Does anybody know of alternatives, that would offer the same service to photo.net and its members (without the drawbacks that PayPal apparently has for certain people)?

 

<p>

 

Apologies for helping this thread get more off-topic...

[gib]

I don't think support of photo.net through subscription is ever off topic.

[ajax]

I'm in process of faxing Paypal some documents (Brazil -> USA) so I can reset my long lost password and subscribe Photo.net. I REALLY don't like go through this, but it's well worth. Maybe having more alternative ways of subscribing could help increasing subscribers percentage. I was told amazon also has a payment system, but receivers pay a fee. Since it's a very popular site and allows many accounts per user (Paypal allows 2, only 1 "standard"), Photo.net could think about charging a bit more for the ease of using amazon's system.

[ajax]

For US users, <a href="http://paydirect.yahoo.com/">Yahoo! PayDirect</a> might be a good option. Amazon's service is called <a href="http://www.amazon.com/honorsystem/">Amazon Honor System</a>. It says "The Amazon Honor System charges minimal transaction fees. The fee schedule is very simple. The person making a payment is not charged any fees at all. The person receiving a payment is assessed 15% of the total payment per transaction plus $.15.".

 

If Photo.net is interested in adding ways of subscribing, I can go through registration process on some systems and gather information on fees, elegibility and user's opinion. I just don't want to make this homework before I hear there is some use for it.

[bobatkins]

PayPal charges a fee too for anyone who accepts credit cards via a bunsiness account, so that's a given. Even if you take credit cards directly you pay a fee to the card company. I fully agree that for photo.net to directly accept credit cards would require a lot of work and require more secure servers - and photo.net just doesn't have the resources to spare to do that.

 

There are other payment systems (e.g. C2it, which I think it Citybank), but some charge fairly large fees (like $10 on a $25 international transfer). PayPal's advantage is that it's relative inexpensive (around 3%) and relatively easy to use (for those in the US at least).

 

The Amazon "honor system" looks like it would be possible to use. However they charge a 15% fee, which is a bit steep and they currently can only take payment from people with US checking accounts, so it doesn't help with overseas users. It really has no advantage over PayPal except for those who simply hate PayPal for other reasons.

 

Yahoo Paydirect looks like it has very similar fees to PayPal, but again it's only for US residents.

[mottershead]

William, thanks for your comment.

 

As for the side-discussion on PayPal: it has a lot of advantages. And they charge us only 4%. If we accepted credit cards and handled the transactions ourselves, the credit card companies would take around 3%, or 5% if someone used an Amex card. Our administrative costs would easily take the extra 1%. We already have a merchant account and could do credit card transactions, if we chose. We could also hire a third party to handle the credit card transactions for us. It would almost certainly not end up being less expensive than PayPal.

 

The main problems with PayPal are (a) it does not handle all international transactions, and we have many people who would like to subscribe in places PayPal does not serve; (b) many people seem allergic to PayPal.

 

I understand point (a). I can't understand point (b), and have always suspected that it is in many cases a rationalization. There are valid concerns about PayPal. But all of them that I have read about don't seem relevant to the situation. Most of the risks are borne by sellers (namely photo.net), the biggest one being that our funds can be tied up indefinitely if there is even a small dispute. We aren't shipping stuff, so it is hard for anyone to steal anything from us. If somebody gets a patron icon next to their name for a couple of weeks until we realize that their payment was bogus, it is not a big problem. It is also true that PayPal does not provide much recourse to buyers who are defrauded, or have other problems with sellers, but I don't see how that it is relevant when one uses it to make a subscription payment/donation to photo.net.

[bobatkins]

I think it's a matter of principle. Some people see PayPal as using unethical business practices and so refuse to use them. It's not that they think there's any real risk of funds going astray when subscribing to photo.net, it's just that they object to the way PayPal does business and so they boycott them and anyone who uses their services. There's really no way around that one. People boycott Disney, Nike, McDonalds and all sorts of other companies for all sorts of personal reasons.

 

The only alternative I see is to set up an account with Yahoo Paydirect. The commission on sales is about the same as PayPal and it gives US subscribers an alternative. Whether it's worth the effort or not depends on just how many people don't subscribe because of their feelings about PayPal. I presume it's a pretty small number, but on the other hand every one counts.

[carl_madson]

As a follow up to Bob's comments, I purchase items off of e-bay fairly regulary (3 or 4 items a month) and frequently use Paypal. I have never had any problem but I run into quite a few folks that flat out refuse to use Paypal. A popular service that a large number of people seem to use is <A HREF="http://www.c2it.com">http://www.c2it.com</A>. This service is run by citibank (an actual bank!). I have not signed up but their fees are listed on their website as: <P><PRE>

"c2it charges transaction fees for sending money in the U.S and internationally.

 

When sending cash to someone in the U.S, c2it will charge a fee equal

to 2% of your transaction amount, with a minimum fee of $0.30.

 

When sending money by c2it internationally, c2it will charge $10 per

International Check and $10 per International Direct Deposit. For a

Banamex money transfer c2it will charge $10 for either the Cash Pick

Up @ Banamex or the Direct Deposit to a Banamex account. In addition

to the transaction fee, any difference between the foreign exchange

rate given to you and the foreign exchange rate received by c2it will

be kept by c2it."

 

 

</PRE>

<P>

For some easy reading on anti-Paypal sites check out the following:<P>

http://www.paypalsucks.com/<BR>

http://www.paypalwarning.com/<BR>

http://www.aboutpaypal.org/paypal_accepts.htm<P>

-Carl