Hello everyone, and thanks for the helpful feedback in the recent post. I appreciate it very much.
This message is quite long and includes a lot of history, but it may help clarify some things. I admit I have not been very good about communicating, and I’m sorry for the confusion and frustration it’s caused. Here’s an overview to bring you up to date:
* Technical Issues
We are slogging through the technical issues that have created so many problems in the forum. I am awaiting word from someone who is awaiting word from someone else and I’m sorry to say at this point, it’s taking more time than we’d like. Believe it or not, we are doing our best to get our tech problems resolved so we can move forward with our new marketing efforts
* Subscriptions
Paid subscriptions have been very helpful in supporting the site, and I remain deeply grateful to those who have contributed. I am sorry to see many others cancelling, but I do understand. We had a large number of Subscribers sign up in the early days. However, a few years ago, after an attempt to upgrade and improve the site, we found ourselves with an inexplicable technical issue related to the subscription module. Many of the early Subscribers' payments stopped being processed, even though it appeared otherwise. Some of you old-timers will remember that horribly disruptive period back then; the upgrade was a nightmare and very protracted. And as dedicated as I was to the forum, I became less involved with the site and more involved in other matters (I got a divorce, started a new business, got remarried, added a gaggle of stepkids). So in addition to technical problems with the Subscriber service, I also felt badly about offering less attention when I had offered my involvement as a perk. Until recently, we accepted new Subscribers, but I eventually removed the link, hoping those who were still paying would continue to help us out while we developed other revenue sources. Today the subscriptions bring in around $250 per month. Clearly, we need much more than that to support the site, and that’s why we’re working on other revenue options.
* Donations
Some of you will remember that we added a “Donate” button to the forum years ago, but after several months, we had raised less than $300. As I recall, PayPal was less ubiquitous back then and not so user friendly. I removed the link after our efforts to raise funds fell through. Recently, there was renewed interest in providing a donation link, so in April of this year I again added a PayPal account and in a message I said we were in need of support and were not too proud to ask for donations. It wasn’t an aggressive drive, but I figured it provided an opportunity for those who had expressed an interest in contributing. I didn’t see any donations come in, so deposited $10 myself, just to make sure it was working. Fast forward three months later: our balance is $9.60, which reflects my ten bucks less PayPal’s 4% fee! So the donation idea, while it sounds good, has not been terribly effective.
* E-store
The E-store with which we are affiliated is no longer profitable and, sadly, we’ll need to close it down when the remaining inventory is sold. The wholesale prices of nutritional supplements from our private label vendor has increased dramatically over the years, while other—often similarly high quality—supplements have become extraordinarily competitive. We’ve always encouraged our customers to find the best quality and price, but unfortunately because we are a very small operation it’s become more difficult for us to compete. Meanwhile, our software platform, hosting service, facility fees and other related e-store expenses have risen, as sales have declined. Again, I know much of this is due to my limited marketing efforts of late, and the lack of few new products we’ve introduced. Our goal now is to pay off the debt we have incurred in keeping the e-store online.
* Marketing
In the early days, I did a tremendous amount of marketing: I issued press releases, did radio interviews, and launched affiliate programs. We opened up shop soon after Google introduced Adwords, which served as a very effective online marketing tool. By that time, we’d attracted thousands of visitors to our website, who learned about our program and found fellowship in our forum. Before long, however, Adwords became extremely competitive (for advertisers) and impossibly expensive. At one point we could no longer afford to include some of the very ‘key words’ we had created, such as “My Way Out” or “Topamax for alcohol craving.” They had become very popular—and expensive. With Adwords you pay more for desirable search terms, so in a way, we created our own monster!
Effective Adword campaigns that once cost a few hundred dollars per month now run ten times as much. It is an expense we can no longer afford. Unfortunately, it also has meant a reduced customer base, and ultimately, inadequate revenue. One thing that has remained strong however, is the volume of traffic to and interest in our site, which is corroborated by our recent surveys. Some of you are new, many are long-time friends, and most of the feedback we get is very encouraging about the positive impact of your experience here.
Also: unlike many other online entities, we do not avail ourselves to the wonderfully inexpensive option of social media. Facebook, for example, would be a fabulous and powerful marketing tool for us but unfortunately, it’s, um, Facebook. I can’t imagine too many of you wanting to posting selfies for the world to see on a MWO Facebook page, nor would I. So we’ll stick with more conventional, albeit expensive, options for our online presence, and one that allows everyone to remain anonymous.
We do look forward to attempting a more aggressive advertising campaign, though. As I mentioned earlier, we have an enviable demographic and collected a great deal of useful information in our survey. Using that data, and working with a consultant, we had developed a preliminary plan to test a new program for advertisers. In fact, we were only days away from launching a pilot with River Pharmacy, with whom we have developed a wonderful relationship over the years. But we were shocked and saddened to learn that a key contact and project lead with whom we worked unexpectedly passed away within days of our launch. We have not yet regrouped but hope to get the program back on track in the next few weeks.
* Staffing
As I pulled away and delegated my duties to others—either volunteers or (terribly underpaid) employees—our expenses continued to rise. While forum hosting companies have become more competitive, I have certainly never seen a fully operational, robust vBulletin site that costs only dollars a month as quoted earlier. Our system requires forum software, licensing, hosting, customization and technical support. In fact, the forum is one of three sites (the e-store, and main MWO pages being the others) that adds to our IT costs. We’ve also had chat sites, blogs, and other online services. For us to retrofit everything we have built—fragile as it may be at times—to a more simple and inexpensive format would mean losing several years of rich, indexed, highly valuable content that thousands of members have provided in hundreds of thousands of posts. The alternative is to update our legacy software and data with a major upgrade, which we are attempting to do, although it is slow going. So we’ve been doing what we can in bits and pieces and we have a wonderful technician who patiently helps us when we are able to make those requests.
One of our fundamental problems is that the three individuals most directly involved in the site (myself included) work full time jobs and live in three different locations. The tasks are essentially divided into general tech, administrative, forum moderation, and (for the time being) e-store support. If one of us is traveling, or otherwise unavailable because of work or family duties, everything takes longer to accomplish. We also bring in higher level support technicians when the problems are those we cannot fix ourselves, and that creates further delays.
* Conclusion
I’m not trying to make excuses about why things are not in better shape. I’m just being honest when I tell you that these are challenging time for our community. In many ways, the forum is self-regulating but clearly there are times when someone on this end must intervene. I wish I could do more, and as you can probably tell from my earlier message, I have contributed a significant amount of my own personal resources into the operation. I can no longer do that. My time is equally limited—I have a very busy, somewhat complex but thankfully healthier life than ever before. I’m doing my best to find balance while I get this thing back on track because I know it's a critical resource to many, many people.
So bear with me a little longer, folks. I think we’ll come out of this okay and I appreciate all your individual efforts to help support this community, whether it’s a financial contribution to PayPal, a purchase at the e-store, or feedback regarding a technical problem. Your patience, involvement, and commitment all help enormously in making this forum a much better place.
Warmest regards,
RJ
ps: :thanks:
This message is quite long and includes a lot of history, but it may help clarify some things. I admit I have not been very good about communicating, and I’m sorry for the confusion and frustration it’s caused. Here’s an overview to bring you up to date:
* Technical Issues
We are slogging through the technical issues that have created so many problems in the forum. I am awaiting word from someone who is awaiting word from someone else and I’m sorry to say at this point, it’s taking more time than we’d like. Believe it or not, we are doing our best to get our tech problems resolved so we can move forward with our new marketing efforts
* Subscriptions
Paid subscriptions have been very helpful in supporting the site, and I remain deeply grateful to those who have contributed. I am sorry to see many others cancelling, but I do understand. We had a large number of Subscribers sign up in the early days. However, a few years ago, after an attempt to upgrade and improve the site, we found ourselves with an inexplicable technical issue related to the subscription module. Many of the early Subscribers' payments stopped being processed, even though it appeared otherwise. Some of you old-timers will remember that horribly disruptive period back then; the upgrade was a nightmare and very protracted. And as dedicated as I was to the forum, I became less involved with the site and more involved in other matters (I got a divorce, started a new business, got remarried, added a gaggle of stepkids). So in addition to technical problems with the Subscriber service, I also felt badly about offering less attention when I had offered my involvement as a perk. Until recently, we accepted new Subscribers, but I eventually removed the link, hoping those who were still paying would continue to help us out while we developed other revenue sources. Today the subscriptions bring in around $250 per month. Clearly, we need much more than that to support the site, and that’s why we’re working on other revenue options.
* Donations
Some of you will remember that we added a “Donate” button to the forum years ago, but after several months, we had raised less than $300. As I recall, PayPal was less ubiquitous back then and not so user friendly. I removed the link after our efforts to raise funds fell through. Recently, there was renewed interest in providing a donation link, so in April of this year I again added a PayPal account and in a message I said we were in need of support and were not too proud to ask for donations. It wasn’t an aggressive drive, but I figured it provided an opportunity for those who had expressed an interest in contributing. I didn’t see any donations come in, so deposited $10 myself, just to make sure it was working. Fast forward three months later: our balance is $9.60, which reflects my ten bucks less PayPal’s 4% fee! So the donation idea, while it sounds good, has not been terribly effective.
* E-store
The E-store with which we are affiliated is no longer profitable and, sadly, we’ll need to close it down when the remaining inventory is sold. The wholesale prices of nutritional supplements from our private label vendor has increased dramatically over the years, while other—often similarly high quality—supplements have become extraordinarily competitive. We’ve always encouraged our customers to find the best quality and price, but unfortunately because we are a very small operation it’s become more difficult for us to compete. Meanwhile, our software platform, hosting service, facility fees and other related e-store expenses have risen, as sales have declined. Again, I know much of this is due to my limited marketing efforts of late, and the lack of few new products we’ve introduced. Our goal now is to pay off the debt we have incurred in keeping the e-store online.
* Marketing
In the early days, I did a tremendous amount of marketing: I issued press releases, did radio interviews, and launched affiliate programs. We opened up shop soon after Google introduced Adwords, which served as a very effective online marketing tool. By that time, we’d attracted thousands of visitors to our website, who learned about our program and found fellowship in our forum. Before long, however, Adwords became extremely competitive (for advertisers) and impossibly expensive. At one point we could no longer afford to include some of the very ‘key words’ we had created, such as “My Way Out” or “Topamax for alcohol craving.” They had become very popular—and expensive. With Adwords you pay more for desirable search terms, so in a way, we created our own monster!
Effective Adword campaigns that once cost a few hundred dollars per month now run ten times as much. It is an expense we can no longer afford. Unfortunately, it also has meant a reduced customer base, and ultimately, inadequate revenue. One thing that has remained strong however, is the volume of traffic to and interest in our site, which is corroborated by our recent surveys. Some of you are new, many are long-time friends, and most of the feedback we get is very encouraging about the positive impact of your experience here.
Also: unlike many other online entities, we do not avail ourselves to the wonderfully inexpensive option of social media. Facebook, for example, would be a fabulous and powerful marketing tool for us but unfortunately, it’s, um, Facebook. I can’t imagine too many of you wanting to posting selfies for the world to see on a MWO Facebook page, nor would I. So we’ll stick with more conventional, albeit expensive, options for our online presence, and one that allows everyone to remain anonymous.
We do look forward to attempting a more aggressive advertising campaign, though. As I mentioned earlier, we have an enviable demographic and collected a great deal of useful information in our survey. Using that data, and working with a consultant, we had developed a preliminary plan to test a new program for advertisers. In fact, we were only days away from launching a pilot with River Pharmacy, with whom we have developed a wonderful relationship over the years. But we were shocked and saddened to learn that a key contact and project lead with whom we worked unexpectedly passed away within days of our launch. We have not yet regrouped but hope to get the program back on track in the next few weeks.
* Staffing
As I pulled away and delegated my duties to others—either volunteers or (terribly underpaid) employees—our expenses continued to rise. While forum hosting companies have become more competitive, I have certainly never seen a fully operational, robust vBulletin site that costs only dollars a month as quoted earlier. Our system requires forum software, licensing, hosting, customization and technical support. In fact, the forum is one of three sites (the e-store, and main MWO pages being the others) that adds to our IT costs. We’ve also had chat sites, blogs, and other online services. For us to retrofit everything we have built—fragile as it may be at times—to a more simple and inexpensive format would mean losing several years of rich, indexed, highly valuable content that thousands of members have provided in hundreds of thousands of posts. The alternative is to update our legacy software and data with a major upgrade, which we are attempting to do, although it is slow going. So we’ve been doing what we can in bits and pieces and we have a wonderful technician who patiently helps us when we are able to make those requests.
One of our fundamental problems is that the three individuals most directly involved in the site (myself included) work full time jobs and live in three different locations. The tasks are essentially divided into general tech, administrative, forum moderation, and (for the time being) e-store support. If one of us is traveling, or otherwise unavailable because of work or family duties, everything takes longer to accomplish. We also bring in higher level support technicians when the problems are those we cannot fix ourselves, and that creates further delays.
* Conclusion
I’m not trying to make excuses about why things are not in better shape. I’m just being honest when I tell you that these are challenging time for our community. In many ways, the forum is self-regulating but clearly there are times when someone on this end must intervene. I wish I could do more, and as you can probably tell from my earlier message, I have contributed a significant amount of my own personal resources into the operation. I can no longer do that. My time is equally limited—I have a very busy, somewhat complex but thankfully healthier life than ever before. I’m doing my best to find balance while I get this thing back on track because I know it's a critical resource to many, many people.
So bear with me a little longer, folks. I think we’ll come out of this okay and I appreciate all your individual efforts to help support this community, whether it’s a financial contribution to PayPal, a purchase at the e-store, or feedback regarding a technical problem. Your patience, involvement, and commitment all help enormously in making this forum a much better place.
Warmest regards,
RJ
ps: :thanks:
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