$0 for the site

I think some of you need to warm up to the fact that the Internet isn't free. Someone has to pay for everything. All of that hardware, software and bandwidth has to be paid for by someone.

Remember NetZero? Now the "free" Internet is ten hours of access per month and ads on top of sites that already have ads. What a deal, eh?

It's easy for you to say that you can go to some other site free (although you'd be wrong, as no one else generates the amount of content and community created here), but eventually that other site will get too popular to be supported by advertising as well. Haven't you been paying attention? ThrillRide, Joel's Coaster Gallery... who will be next?

There is more crap on the Internet than there ever was three years ago. It's hard to find anything quality, and that's one of the reasons we never cared about having the most site links in our site database. I'm not interested in leading our visitors to crap.

The anti-crap is why CoasterBuzz is successful. We don't allow flame wars, we don't link you to crap sites, we don't spread senseless and ridiculous rumors. The reality is that success is expensive. Since the start, advertisements have paid for it. Now I'm losing that advertising. I'm not all about spending a grand every month just so I can say that two million people visited the site this year.

No other site brought you a thousand news items in the last year or so, or had the extensive IAAPA coverage, or brought you interviews with some of the top industry movers, or led thousands of people to sites with great construction photos that might otherwise have had a hard time getting traffic. If that's not worth giving up a couple of happy meals for the year, I don't know what is.

Coming up next month: Three interviews you don't want to miss. A park owner, the president of a major manufacturer and the chief operating officer of a major theme park company.

Will CoasterBuzz continue to be free? Yes. I never said it wouldn't be.

Will there be a way you can help? Yes. We're going to setup a premium site that will cost $10 per year. This site will have no ads at all. It will offer a different, more customizable home page, a lower-volume forum and whatever else I can think of between now and then.

Do you have to use it? Nope. But if the 20% of you that said you'd pay $10 or more own up that answer, CoasterBuzz will continue to thrive.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com
"As far as I can tell it doesn't matter who you are. If you can believe, there's something worth fighting for..." - Garbage, "Parade"

Count me in Jeff. And my wife. We each have an account here and I'll gladly pay the $10 or $20 for each of us to eliminate the ads. As I'm typing this, I have 2 pop-up ads that opened when I came to CoasterBuzz. I hate them but love this site. So, I figure $10 is a small price to pay to keep this extraordinary site up and running. Keep up the great work Jeff.
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Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein

I would be happy to pay $10 for my self. Becasue I would not know what to do without this website.

You know Jeff puts A LOT of time into the site and I give him his PROPS! If you were in Jeff's shoes, wouldn't you want your members to pay for the site after spending thousands on a site that brings in no profit?

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"Duff Man Says... Ohhh Yeah!"
Current Favorite Coasters:
1)Raging Bull 2)Millennium Force 3)Medusa (SFMW) 4)Vertical Velocity (SFGAm) 5)Dueling Dragons (Ice)

$10 per year is not much. I am one of the 20%, and I would pay.
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I'd have to agree that I'd be willing to pay $10 or $20 bucks a year to help support Coasterbuzz.  There are a handful of sites that I truly value the content of (whether its entertainment or something that helps me organize/improve my life) and I've always said that I would pay to help keep them alive.  As a suggestion, perhaps as a stop gap solution Costerbuzz could look into Amazon's donation system...I'm sure it isn't free, but I know some have used it to successfully raise money, even if its only a buck or two at a time...

"...too popular to be supported by advertising"

I didn't vote, because i'm really unsure on the subject, but I just thought this statement sounded really ironic. You would think that the only way companies would want to advertise on a site was if it was popular. lol. Now, though, I understand that you have to pay more when your site becomes more popular.

Amazon's system benefits Amazon more than anyone else. Seeing as how I can accept credit cards (and checks, I suppose), it makes more sense to do it myself and give something back in the form of an ad-less site.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com
"As far as I can tell it doesn't matter who you are. If you can believe, there's something worth fighting for..." - Garbage, "Parade"

I will be paying $10 because this is easily my favorite site on the net.  It is better than any coaster magazine and the community is the most well run (by far) of any coaster site.  Plus, I gotta pay back for some of the hits generated to my own site (i definitly notice the double in daily hits when a gallery or video on my site is a news item)  :)
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Top Gun: The Jet Coaster Flights in 2001: 85
Coaster Tracks Ridden: 57
http://www.starcoasters.com

*** This post was edited by StarCoasters on 10/23/2001. ***

Look at it this way, people.  $10/year works out to under $0.20/week.  That won't even get you a cup of coffee anymore...

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--Greg
"Beat the rush, sign up for your post-Mean Streak MRI now..."
My page  My other page  And my coaster page

Jeff said:  "no one else generates the amount of content and community created here"

That was my point entirely. If this were a "pay site", it would diminish the community, making it not as worthy. I said I would be happy to contribute MY $$$ to coasterbuzz in order to keep it open to EVERYONE, but if it is a members-only site...I'll pass. The community here at CB is the heart and soul of the site. I see so many of the same people here that it becomes like a family. Although I may disagree with some, i will always respect. I certainly dont want to lose a member of the CoasterBuzz FAMILY.

I WOULD be willing to pay for coasterbuzz, but it MUST remain open to the GP.
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*** This post was edited by LoadedG on 10/23/2001. ***

Let me give you some examples that would persuade buzzers to to realize that $10 a year is nothing for the quality of this site.

$10 a year gets you only 2 and a half copies of Amusement Today. Thats miniscule compared to what a year's worth of CB offers in coaster news and info.

 $10 gets you a super-sized Mcdonald's meal at SFMM and no i am not joking it is rediculously over-priced. One burger and some fries isn't as satisifying as the the scrumptious new info about the 2002. coasters.

No amount of money can be placed upon the enjoyment people get from CB, it  is a coaster enthusaists heaven and deserves to be compensated for its quality. I am all for the exclusive CB membership and i hope it is successful.

LoadedG, has very good point! I hope that many members will not be excluded due to the premium version and the notion of paying for it. But Jeff is giving all the members the option to pay which is a great plan that does not force anyone away from the site. the premium version could take CB to a whole new level.

I voted for $20, I have stated before that I would be willing to pay that much and I'm 16...that's the only problem, I would have no way to pay for it over the net since I don't have a credit card.

Many of you guys are like me...you're young, you recognize a great site when you see it, and you're willing to pay money to support it.

When I voted, I didn't really care that it said without banners because I would pay that much with or without the banners.

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Mayday - Memorial Day Weekend - Nonpoint, Nickelback, Oleander, Staind
Ozzfest - June 8 - Drowning Pool, Papa Roach, Linkin Park, Disturbed, Black Sabbath
Awake Tour- June 15 - Darwin's Waiting Room, Puddle of Mudd, Deftones, Godsmack

Jeff...

Although this probably has been brought up before, you should at least set up a "honor" system similar to the way that the arcade emulation site mame.dk does. They have to pay for their bandwidth as well... so in order to pay for it, they have asked for donations just at random from anyone who uses it to donate whatever they feel is right. No dollar amount is too small.

Something similar to that should be set up here where you just have a link on the front page to donate something... anything... to Coasterbuzz. The good of it? It'll help YOU pay for the monthly bandwidth fees. It'll benefit us because it'll keep this site open. And also, for whomever does donate, you can just give a little thanks and mention whom it was and how much they donated (again, similar to how mame.dk has it set up).

I am pretty sure that hundreds would be more than willing to donate SOMETHING. Setting it up as either paying via credit card, check, or whatever method works best (as long as it isn't anynomous, since I heard there's a lot of fraud when anynomous donors use CC's).

--- Just a thought

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Proud to be an American!!

I would pay as much as need be to keep this site up and running in the spectacular fashion Jeff has been bringing us for a long time.  I spend 100's of dollars a year to ride a roller coaster, what is another 20 - 50 dollars to make his life a little easier.  I think that if young buzzers do not have a credit card, have your parents sign you up.  You pay them and use the card to pay for access.   Come on this is a family,  we need to band together and shell out some cash to help our leader.   

I applaud Jeff in trying to make ends meet by whatever means possible. I to have run (insanely) large/high traffic websites on the fan based level for video games and currently the Xbox console. Hosting a site nowadays is a touch and go situation. Webmasters want people to visit their site, look around, participate. But bandwidth usage can get rediculously high! Just an example, one of my websites was serving up almost a Terrabyte of bandwidth A MONTH! with over 7 million page views as well.... and the sad thing was we we're doing it without banner ads and/or funding. Just three guys with a passion for a video game, starting a website that just happened to grow like Jack's beans. Needless to say that only lasted about four months and we had to shuffle from server to server trying to find someone to help us. More to this story but it's irrelevant right now...

Jeff my suggestion is this... doubleclick sucks (end of story).. finding another advertising company to sponsor this site due to it's nature may prove to be beyond difficult. There are companies out there however that offer advertising for just about any site..( http://www.burstmedia.com/  comes to mind as well as countless others [contact me if you want to]).. but you're best offering would be to contact the parks that are being supported and promoted on this website. I'm more than positive that Coasterbuzz is known among the Amusement park industry (if it's not, you should really push it!!!).. use your size and membership as selling points for these parks to advertise on your site. Get them to sponsor a 3 month advertising campaign for $10,000. To major amusement parks, that's chumpchange. This site is by far the biggest out there, and while it could use some sprucing up (just my humble opinion) it's purpose and mission are well executed. That being said..you've got my $10. :)

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Riding the rails from the East Coast to the West Coast

I've been a Burst member for years, starting with Guide to The Point back in '98, I think it was. Burst actually sold Cedar Point the Lighthouse Point and summer job campaigns. They helped out a ton, but now they're back to serving mostly default campaigns that amount to about a hundred dollars a month (which is strikingly inadequate). They have a lot proposed, but I don't need to tell you that the travel sector, of which this is a part of, isn't exactly spending a ton of money on ads these days.

We're working on a plan. Simply taking your money and thanking you for supporting the site you visit on an honor system isn't enough. We're going to try and find something more tangible for you. Stay tuned...

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com
"As far as I can tell it doesn't matter who you are. If you can believe, there's something worth fighting for..." - Garbage, "Parade"

For me, even $30 a year isn't that big a deal.  I have car payments, insurance payments, credit card bills, and tons of other expenses, but I could find much less than a dollar each week to keep this website running.  Like GregLeg said, even $10 per year equates to two dimes per week.  Surely you could find $.20 a week by checking pay phones and vending machines for loose change!

For the amount of time I spend on this website (and I KNOW there are people out there who are on this site much more than I am), I don't think that a fee is inappropriate.  For those who think the internet is free, let me ask you- when was the last time you received something really "free", and if it was "free", was it really worth your time?

Personally, I would much rather pay for access to this site and enjoy something of an extremely high quality as opposed to pay nothing and have to deal with something not worth the time it takes me to dial up.  Not to sound rude, but to all of you who spend hours a day on this site and think it should cost you nothing at all, then you need to seriously think about some things.

If you support paying for what you look at on the web, you're supporting the same kind of thing as FastLane(just kidding).

I think the thing you people who support giving money should understand that us "stingy" people understand that somebody else(advertisers and such) pays for everything. We've even said it and you don't recognize. We're not asking for free things. I do use a free ISP, Juno, and in over a year and a half, it's only failed me once. When I was across town and they had ATT or BellSouth it was kurplunk everyday, a pay service that was fairly expensive, and all out sucked. My neighbor pays for service, too and it's no good. Why pay when what works is also economical(wow that's technology!). I watch PBS and never send them money. When I watch ABC do I buy any of the products that they advertise? No way!

As for ten dollars being alot of money, ten dollars is almost half an admission for me. Ten dollars will pack three days worth of Carl Budding sandwhiches into my cooler, almost a full tank of gas, one-fourth my cable bill, half my phone bill, a few weeks worth of food for the dog, a visit to the chiropractor for my wife, many different things that $10 could accomplish. Ten dollars will not buy me one of those MM style meals because that would break me, it's on a budget or not affording to go. How many of you travel that way? I know it's 20 cents a week, but that's alot for me knowing what it adds up to, LOL. Especially to look at the web. If paying starts somewhere, it's bound to spread into other areas that I dabble in and that's just no fun. I could put ten dollars away every few weeks and by next season have those season passes. Maybe if I were young and had no bills, no responsibilities I could say it's nothing, but it is.

Special pay forum?!! You people who want something like that can just have it. Wouldn't that be a nice little concept. These people pay, it's the "low volume" "people who care because they pay" forum, wwwhhoooooo. I've seen chat areas and pay access to media, but forums are forums are forums. If they're on pay sites, pay forums, but seperate pay forum in addition to the regular forum, that tells me to think something else. It's just wierd.

The too poular for advertising thing, I don't understand that, either.
The Super Bowl is good for advertisers because there are so many people watching, I just don't get it.

Something I can't help notice, but I see alot of credit card and casino ads, aren't most on this site too young for that anyway?
Anyways, no matter how good the site, paying is not an option this person believes in. This isn't TV, this isn't HBO or Cinemax, it's supposed to be a tool providing information and connecting you to the world, it's not supposed to be a money thing.