Freemium Ning Ditches Freebie Model

I had to look up the “word” freemium to verify its meaning, quickly confirming what I had thought it meant: the term is used to describe web services offering both free and paid access options for its members. Supposedly, if you join a site and enjoy its free services, you might be enticed to upgrade to a paid plan offering more features and a robust platform.

EZBoard Yuku

As soon as I understood the term, I realized I participated in such an arrangement when I used EZBoard (now Yuku) to power my message board communities. That eventually proved a disaster–and the community’s undoing–when a 2005 security breach resulted in many member boards being erased with most of their information permanently deleted.

That’s another story, one I would much rather forget, but that incident lead me to explore my own hosting options. Today, I use WordPress exclusively on sites I manage and control. Lesson learned.

Ning employs a freemium model or least they do at the moment. According to The Wall Street Journal, Ning is getting rid of its free option and laying off 40 percent of its workforce. Ning expects that as it moves from free to paid services many of its members will leave, thus the cutback.

Revenue Generation

Ning’s decision is based largely on web advertising income or the lack of it. Some companies, such as Facebook, seem to have found their revenue generating cash cow, but then few sites have the scale of Facebook to attract a variety of lucrative advertisers. Like some newspapers, including the Journal, Ning believes promoting a paid model is in its best interest.

At the moment, Ning claims 46 million subscribers across 300,000 active networks. Many of these networks are managed by educators and non-profits, people who are attracted to this sort of arrangement. I haven’t confirmed what the paying model will be, but a base fee of $4.95 is being considered which is also what GoDaddy charges monthly to host your website on your domain.

PR Writer

Just this morning I registered for Ning and discovered I was already participating through another network. I established my own community, PR Writer, with tentative plans to develop it into something to attract people to my press release writing services. Ning didn’t ask me if I wanted a free account so I don’t know if I’ll get an upgrade request or have my account erased when the new business model is released next month.

In any case, I’ll hold back from adding anything to PR Writer until I see if my Ning account will be around and whether this option proves worthwhile for me.

Social Connection

Yes, there is a reason why Ning and arrangements like it can be beneficial: social networks of this kind make it easier for people to find you. For no other reason if Ning brings in some customers, then it might be worth paying the token fee to them each month.

Job Boards And Why Most Of Them Should Be Free

I know a thing or two about managing an online job board.

Back in 2002, I launched the Corporate Flight Attendant Community, a career resource site where business flight attendants could stop by, read articles, post to the forum and find work. At its peak it was the leading site of its kind, basically owning its niche year in and year out. In 2007 I sold the site to concentrate on other work including launching several new job sites.

Auto Trends Job Board Has Been Activated

Just this past week I revamped the jobs section on one of my automotive sites, by launching the Auto Trends Job Board. I’m only listing a few jobs from the start, but each position is available and companies are hiring, some for other jobs too.

But, just like every other job board I’ve managed I don’t charge visitors a fee. Not so much that I want to give everything away for free, but for the simple reason that most any job you come across online is posted somewhere else and usually at no charge.

The Origin Of My Job Boards

In 2004, I launched the Aviation Employment Board, a site that I initially had running on EZBoard, hence its name. EZBoard, if you recall the system, was faulty, quirky and prone to crash. In fact, one weekend several years ago the system was hacked, taking months for it to be brought back up online. You got it – the owners of what was once one of the most popular online communities didn’t regularly back everything up, exposing their business model and everyone’s communities to hackers.

The interesting thing about what I affectionately called the AEB is that it went up against several larger paid employment sites. Business aviation is notorious for charging fees for every service – heck, the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) which represents people who own or manage private jets, hits members each year with a whopping $415 dues charge. This cost has to be borne by the lowliest worker including the struggling per diem flight attendant.

So, to do my part to level the playing field I decided to run the site and open it up to everyone – man ‘o man, were some people in business aviation angry with me!

May I Share A Secret With You?

Here is my little secret: every job site manager sourced most of the same information. When the occasional job didn’t find its way to my inbox, I was able to glean jobs by simply cutting and pasting a line or two from the free access preview page of the paid job sites into Google and finding where the full job summary was posted elsewhere for free. To get new members (I’ll call them victims) the paid sites would post just enough information about the opportunity to nonmembers, a move that they hoped would entice people to join.

That hook often worked, but it was a morsel that didn’t need to be taken. At least from the paid sites. Oh, by the way, I never joined those sites to copy and paste their information. That would have been illegal as well as unethical – entirely unnecessary too!

Of course, I managed my sites without the benefit of membership fees. Instead, I relied on Google advertising in the form of AdWords ad placement. As an AdSense publisher I was able to strategically place ads around my site, which encouraged people to click on them, resulting in a fee deposited into my AdSense account.

Google Paid Me Regularly, Sometimes Well

Each month I would receive a check from Google for all of those collective clicks which paid for my expenses and gave me something to live on. Not enough money to completely sustain me, but usually enough to cover several bills. While managing my job boards, I always kept my freelance work going (resume writing, website building, articles, etc.) and, when things got tight, I sold off the site.

Don’t think for a moment that I think everything in life should be free nor am I knocking anyone’s right to charge people for a service. However, in the case of aviation job sites – most jobs sites at that – the same information you are seeking can be found elsewhere and usually at no cost to you.

Of course, I want you to visit my automotive job board to see what I’m featuring there. Whether you visit an ad or not is up to you, but job information is posted for free. It isn’t a perfect business model, but it is something that works well for me.