I think purple port have made the decision for me

 No one has touched other free accounts. So no doom and gloom. Buy one less coffee in Costa instead and keep the VIP.

I think you spelt meyhem wrong, meh, but I expect they want people to pay a subscription rather than have free accounts. It does seem a bit daft to restrict the free account especially if it's being used to introduce new customers - when I joined it was vip with all the trimmings so I could experience what the full site was like and for the cost I was then quoted after my initial free membership I thought its very reasonable and don't mind supporting the platform as it seems ok and I like the handcrafted aspect of it.

ClickMore 📷 said

 No one has touched other free accounts. So no doom and gloom. Buy one less coffee in Costa instead and keep the VIP.

I'm still working at the moment and I've not brought a costa coffee for nearly twelve months now, And I travel in excess of 100,000 miles a year.

I think that's good going for me.

Kizer said

Now that purple port have put all the restrictions on free accounts

Re-read the blog post.

The restrictions you're talking about only apply to studios.

As far as I can tell, the only significant restrictions that photographers face when they have free accounts are

• Only showing 15 images
• Only showing VIP models when they search

What else have you come across that you think will hamper your enjoyment of the site?

If I didn't live abroad in the middle nowhere, I'd probably pay for an account, just on th off chance, even though I doubt I would use it. Anyway, paypal won't let me because I've moved too often it doesn't seem to believe I am who I say I am and their customer service is shite. But if you are going to carry on shooting, €40 per year is small beer, unless money is really tight for you, which I know it can be for many people.

Bye then .

vanBrighouse said

If I didn't live abroad in the middle nowhere, I'd probably pay for an account, just on th off chance, even though I doubt I would use it. Anyway, paypal won't let me because I've moved too often it doesn't seem to believe I am who I say I am and their customer service is shite. But if you are going to carry on shooting, €40 per year is small beer, unless money is really tight for you, which I know it can be for many people.

You need really good pensions to carry on the life style you have when you are working, Wait till you get there and you will see what i'm on about.

So to all you younger generations out there start saving now for a better retirement.

Kizer said

vanBrighouse said

If I didn't live abroad in the middle nowhere, I'd probably pay for an account, just on th off chance, even though I doubt I would use it. Anyway, paypal won't let me because I've moved too often it doesn't seem to believe I am who I say I am and their customer service is shite. But if you are going to carry on shooting, €40 per year is small beer, unless money is really tight for you, which I know it can be for many people.

You need really good pensions to carry on the life style you have when you are working, Wait till you get there and you will see what i'm on about.

So to all you younger generations out there start saving now for a better retirement.

I'm 64 and self employed and can't afford to retire until someone dies in a property I own and that could be a few years yet. That said, what I do, I wouldn't retire from anyway but I take your point, UK pensions are utter shite and very mean by international standards.

Sorry to see you go but as a full paying member I don't see why I should subsidise anyone else. Hope you have a long, happy and healthy retirement.

Paulinfocus said

Sorry to see you go but as a full paying member I don't see why I should subsidise anyone else. 

1) This is a bit ungracious.

2) You're not subsidising anyone else, you are paying for the features you use.

3) Without free members, all of the features you use (and the people you hire) would likely be more expensive, not less. It sounds counterintuitive but the economics of freemium sites in general support this.

Edited by Michael H.

Edited by Michael H.

And who pays for the features used by non paying members?

Paulinfocus said

And who pays for the features used by non paying members?

If there were no economies of scale, network effects and marketing effects, this argument would make sense.

Yes, obviously, the money comes from paying members. The total income is from paying members, and it has to pay for the whole thing. So on the surface it is a simple subsidy arrangement. But in practice it is not that simple, because of various factors to do with Metcalfe's law.

Think about it.

If you had to pay before you saw the functions of the site, would you join? Probably not. Even if it was a really good brochure. The free introductory offer is necessary for you to see the value of what you are paying for. You start off as a free member. 

But if you're not ready to pay when the offer runs out, what happens? 

Sites that delete their users when their free trials come to an end (let's use Squarespace as an example) do so only because the resources those users are taking up (e.g. a Squarespace website) are a) significant and b) the benefits they would otherwise get are essentially identical to the benefits paying customers pay for. You can't have a Squarespace site for nothing.

But the value proposition of a Squarespace site is the site. Communication between members is not part of what you're buying there. Same is true for, say, a newspaper subscription. You don't really care about other readers.

Here, free members do several things:

1) They provide customers for paying models and models for paying photographers; they populate forum discussions and provide references. This is why you're here. They actually are a big part of the value proposition, and you can contact as many of them as you like. If the model can't pay for Purpleport, do you turn down the reference? Of course you don't. 

2) They do word-of-mouth marketing without needing to be paid, so they lower the customer acquisition cost. Look at how many models sign up in pairs (something I've seen a few times recently), or sign up because a friend has got some work. They also produce work that gets shared, and seen by others, who inevitably ask "where do you find your models?"; some of those people sign up. There are models here who have in the past been 'VIP' for over a year on referrals alone. Freemium communities self-sustain with less marketing support.

3) here's the crucial bit: they use the site enough that they can be up-sold on full membership at any point in the future, rather than just once, X weeks from signup. The constituency of free members are, in absolutely every case, the entire marketplace for paid subscriptions. They are an existing marketing list and they interact with PP naturally. 

Well-written code can support ten thousand users or ten million. But if you set things up so you only have one chance to sell to someone, you're going to pay for it less easily than if you set up a situation where you have an existing list to market to. 

The economics of freemium systems are complicated, and if you make your free offering too good you have problems down the line; look at how Dropbox pissed off loads of legacy customers by deciding, after the fact, that they needed to severely restrict the number of devices on an account. 

But could Dropbox make money if everyone had to pay? No. Because getting to mass-market scale was important, and because, for customers, using Dropbox explained the value of Dropbox more than any marketing campaign could have done, and free accounts lowered the customer acquisition cost to next to nothing. Do you resent non-paying Dropbox customers? I've never paid; I know of one customer who pays them because I set them up. And I'm sure that more than pays for me.

Purpleport could not meaningfully function any other way. 

If everyone paid, sure, the revenue model would be more predictable, but the constituency of users would be much smaller, and they would likely get much less out of the site; they'd be less inclined to resubscribe. The total income of the site might be much, much lower than a site with the characteristics identified above. And when you have significant fixed costs -- staff and developers, basically -- it's the total income picture that matters.

Edited by Michael H.

Edited by Michael H.

Good luck with madcows then. There are only a small number of models active there compared to PP. Model mayhem is not great either if you have a free account.

Don't forget Net-model . I think they have at least 28 members on there now.. Have fun whatever you do x

Thank you Michael Michael H. . This is very well argued and you have opened my eyes on a number of points. Thank you for taking the trouble to post.

Edited by Paulinfocus