Anne, Gordon, Steve, Mark & Jochen ~
Thank you very much for the offers of support!
I don't think I'll need to take you up on them in the immediate future, but I am very grateful that you are willing to lend a hand.
PF is still attracting new members at a reasonably high rate; the 2008 average is around 15 per month. The difficulty, of course, is finding those who are also willing to pay the joining fee.
The
general stats don't reflect this accurately. They do show the number of new accounts being created each month, but a large proportion of those accounts get deleted if the person hasn't bothered to answer the registration questions or if they don't respond to the polite email (plus a reminder one week later) requesting payment.
I have thought about raising the membership fee slightly, but the US dollar has weakened considerably since the forum launched and the US members have all experienced a gradual increase in the cost of joining as a result. The converted membership fee was around $6.00 in November 2005 while it is now closer to $7.30. (This is the gross figure only since PayPal takes between 75-80 US cents in fees for each payment received.)
Perhaps it would be helpful if I make up a graph or chart showing the forum's income and expenditure (once I have an exact figure, that is
). I could update it regularly (monthly perhaps?) and this would give all members the opportunity to see at a glance if the fund was starting to get too low to meet the hosting costs.
