Re: ADMIN: More on upcoming list changes

[Diane Haugen <dhaugen -at- MEANS -dot- NET>]

I do not run a list, but I maintain my own Document Design web site, and I
have thought long and hard about how to help offset the costs.  However,
the costs are nowhere near $36,000 a month.  I'm wondering why that
projected figure is so high.

Once you start charging for your list, you change the subscriber
demographics significantly.  The question is, do you want to do this.  If
you don't -- then charging a subscription fee is not the way you want to go.

There is a part of me that says lists, even excellent ones like this one,
should be free.  That's what access to information is all about, and it has
changed the world we live in markedly.  Once you start charging for a list,
you revert back to the old model of hoarding information until someone
coughs up enough money to be allowed to see it.  Somehow this runs against
my grain.

Advertising is also something I abhor on a web site.  I avoid busy,
bouncing portal sites like the plague.

So what you are left with is patronage.  I would recommend first, you find
some place cheaper to keep your list (I'm sorry, but I can't figure out
what you are looking at that requires $36,000 a month), and second, that
you solicit supporters.  One-list is fine for the list, but you still have
the web site to pay for.  I belong to several one-list lists and I have had
no trouble with them, no spammers getting into them, no endlessly bounced
messages.  Actually, I've had more trouble with majordomo lists than
anything else.

The Old House Chronicle has just faced this same situation. Presevation
list members founded this online journal because we did not like the glitzy
"see how much we can look like This Old House" move from a venerable
magazine we all loved -- the way it was.  Now you can't tell the difference
between the two hard-copy magazines.

With the Old House Chronicle, we have decided to accept supporters, not
ads, and have the list on a secondary page -- not the main page -- where
people can go if they are looking for companies who supply old house stuff.
We provide links to the web pages if they have any.

Yes, it takes time to maintain web pages and lists, but simply looking at
how much  you could bill that time out were you doing something else again
reverts back to the corporate bean counting mentality I also have little
patience for.  At some point you do something because it has inherent value
and you do not try to put a price tag on it.

I get extremely irritated at the regularly appearing Newsweek type articles
that put a price on how much parents spend raising children.  These
articles always distort the costs by trying to figure out how much the
stay-at-home mom could make if she were out working instead of raising her
children.  Of course, they don't give you the details of how much working
mothers are losing by going to work because it costs so much for daycare,
clothes, eating out because you are too tired to cook, etc., etc.

In the final analysis, a list like TECHWR-L does not have a monetary value
that has a very accurate relationship to beans.

And in the end, Eric and Deborah, you simply need to decide if you're still
enjoying this enough to want to continue it because the inherent value of
what you do is beyond price.

Diane

===============================================================
Diane Haugen
Whiskey Creek Document Design
<http://www.wcdd.com/index.html>

Editor,
Document Design <http://www.wcdd.com/dd/index.html>

Associate Editor,
Old House Chronicle <http://www.oldhousechronicle.com>
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