I Wonder 🤔 Who Would Pay For Café Membership?

MEMBERS' INTEREST MESSAGE

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🌿 HERE'S MY 2¢ ON THIS (I think) ALL IMPORTANT QUESTION 🌿

(A couple'a days ago I sent the following message to the Café owners, sharing it with a fellow member for his input.)

Hey, Guys!

I hope this little note finds you well and prospering,

You may notice or have already received a message that the "Online Writers" page < https://www.writerscafe.org/writers/online/ > has been stuck for about a week … will you, please, fix it for us? 🙏


And, I'd like to thank you for the years of free enjoyment on WritersCafe and all the work and $$ you must have put into it to keep our home-away-from-home alive.


Something I wish you'd consider: we really enjoy the Café's system enough that I think if you made the onsite features fully functional again, the members would be willing to pay a reasonable fee for membership (perhaps, even offering levels of membership [monthly, yearly, lifetime, etc] with basic or increasingly advanced features, and so forth), allowing you to do without so many frustratingly agitating junk ads for income to support the site. Perhaps, with a free or very low cost “Basic” membership with “fundamental” features for those who want a good place to write, share, and learn, who cannot afford a fee but are passionate about writing (like teens, for instance, or the needy).

It might prove useful to send out a note to the members for some feedback on this idea, eh?

Just a hopeful thought shared, but it would be great for now if you can just make the "Online Writers" page functional for us again.

Contact me anytime.

Thanks for the ear! ~ Richard🖌

(fellow member’s response)

I came here originally because it was free. There are many who only come here occasionally, are they willing to pay? What about the people who hardly get any comments, would they want to pay? Is Charlie (someone who never responds) dependable enough to improve the site after all these years? Hmm?

(my reply)

Well, M'Good Pal,

   This is the only free site I've ever served on that had virtually no issues … that is, until they accidentally deleted everyone's writing, and when we came back is when the faux pas glitches began … a little bit here, a little bit there, and so forth … afterwards, the ads began creeping-in.

    Since, a lot of stuff has gone awry, until we're where we are now.

   Who knows what members will go for and what the owners will actually do with a nice enticement to inspire their efforts?

   I think the site's worth saving, because it's basic function is the most user friendly on the internet, but without a try like this (or, something better ... if you, or someone else has anything to offer), or I'd give the Café a year at most before it craters, and quite possibly before that.

   A sensible person realizes no internet site can survive for free; it takes a lot of $$ and effort to keep a site like this up and running, must less what's required to maintain and improve it when required. Every free site I've ever served on has folded … some lasted for many years, but they've all folded, nonetheless.

Ya got a better, more positive idea, M'Friend? : )

(fellow member’s response)

If you bring forth your idea Charlie might ask you to be a monitor. 

(my reply)

That’s no big deal,

   I've been monitor/moderator on a couple of of sites; it can be time-consuming, and become quite complex at times. But, overall, it can be interesting … even entertaining.

INTERESTING INFORMATION

   There is a new ad-free site a few here have recently joined called "Stars Rite" <https://starsrite.com/> you might consider giving a shot. I find it a bit complex to navigate, and some of the features are a bit cumbersome to use, but it has a lot of positive points, too. Still, it's free, the members are friendly, and it's geared toward accommodating the members' needs and enjoyment … they seem to be making functional improvements almost weekly.

   Also, there are a good number of folk who've migrated there from a free site that's just shut-down after many years in service, "Deep Underground" … I joined there in 2004, and was still a member when it cratered.

   Here's an excerpt from their farewell letter to the membership: "Deep Underground Poetry was a poetry and creative writing community founded in 1999. The website ran at this web address from August 2009 until 12th May 2025. DU Poetry was home to over 40,000 members during those 15 years and hosted around half a million creative works (poetry, prose, short stories and spoken word)."

   You can read the entire farewell letter here <https://deepundergroundpoetry.com/> … very interesting, and oh-so relevant to our own current WritersCafé situation.

"PS: please, feel free to pass this along...."

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Author's Note

"MY DEAR LADY & FELLOW MEMBERS"
It would be great to receive your input on this all-important, concerning issue.
✍

PS: Relic also asked < https://www.writerscafe.org/writing/HouseofRelics/2955826/ >
😃

Reviews

[Davidgeo]

According to my unprofessional internet based data... this site makes the owner about 45-65K per year. (based on publicly available analytics and estimated ad sales revenue).

Charlie is not going to paywall this site for less than 45K per year. Divide 45K by 12 (months)... that's 3,750 per month. What would be a fair and non exclusionary monthly fee? 3 dollars per month? We would need somehting like like 1,250 users willing to cough up 3 dollars every month. Cut that in half... even then, no way we are going to find 625 users willing to submit their cc info and 1.50 a month. Unless Charlie decides to take a paycut... this site will never be paywalled.

[Richard&#128396;]

Thank you again, Davidgeo, for your input 🙏

Note that I've added some "INTERESTING INFORMATION" to this post you might find useful.

[Davidgeo]

This site is going to be around for a while, it's passive income. I don't think Charlie is totally absentee from this site either. The reason why the "online writer" tab is frozen probably has to do with bots. DUP was an entirely different scenario, the online enviroment is much different now. Even sites like these will make positive cash flow with basically no effort and a pretty small hosting fee. This site isn't going anywhere, but, it's not going to improve unless there is a cultural shift in entertainment consumption. It's not financially rational to do anything with this site other than maintain the absolute basics. Did you know that in the first issue of The Scientific American there were three random poems they stuck in there as if they were "articles" because poetry was very, very popular at that time... 1845, august 28th. Man no one cares about poetry or non pop creative writing anymore. I think we are lucky that a site like this seems to be relatively self sustainable. There is only very basic moderation here, this place is like a time capsule in a way. You can pretty much post whatever you want. That's rare for sites like these. We are actually a very civil community considering there is no actual moderator on this site.

[Davidgeo]

Most of us are civil anyway. I'm only civil sometimes.

[Randall]

Richard, I came here riding the free bus. But I would be willing to pay my fair share to see that this site remains up and running. I've found many friendly voices here since posting my writings.

I keep hearing the name Charlie. I'm guessing he is the Moderator and sponsor of this site. Perhaps we could help him out with the monitoring of this site, with a set of rules of do's and don'ts. His pick of a person/s to serve as a monitor. Thus giving him back his time spent on this site. Money is nothing when compared with the worth of time. Monitoring could be rotated off a list of writers on a monthly schedule, overseen by Charlie. Just a place to start solving a pleasant and worthy problem. You never know, somewhere within WritersCafe.org is a Tenneyson, Hemingway, Heller, Sir Thomas More, you name them, they are here.

Randall...

[Carola]

hi everyone,
i hadn't been to WC for a while, since my husband died about 2 years ago.

then I logged back in about a couple of weeks ago & was shocked to see all those f.... ads & those ads posing as fake stories.

i logged back in again today & AMAZINGLY.... NO ADS AT ALL❗️
my browser today is firefox, I did use another browser last time, I think it was google chrome. i'm thinking it could be the browser that's causing many of these problems.

anyway, here's my 2 cents worth re a WC paid subscription.
being on an aged pension, i'm sorry, but i would NOT be prepared to pay to belong to WC. IMO there are too many other life's commodities that constantly need to be paid for.
cheerio carola

[JayG]

This is one of the oldest writing sites on the Internet, but years ago, the same people who recently invaded the site, spammed the discussion forums to the point where the owner deleted them.

That worked for a time, till the phony SEO companies that spam anywhere they can, invaded.

At some point, it appears that the site owner abandoned it, and GoDaddy, the host, kept it going for the ad revenue.

According to WHOIS, the current site status is:
client delete prohibited
client renew prohibited
client transfer prohibited
client update prohibited

You might try Reddit. There are lots of active writing Subreddits, and it's free.

[Richard&#128396;]

Thank you, JayG, for your input 🙏

Note that I've added some "INTERESTING INFORMATION" to this post you might find useful.

[Tumi]

Honestly if i had the money i would love to pay but her in Nigeria being alive with a roof over your head takes a lot of power and money let alone as a student. i enjoyed my time here even though i've been inactive fir a while i still make sure to peep a few time. Its like another home for me.

[Richard&#128396;]

Thank you, Tumi, for your input 🙏

Note that I've added some "INTERESTING INFORMATION" to this post you might find useful.

[Zombified Spider]

Hi, Broke highschool student here who can't even get a f*****g job in this economy. hehehe. please god no. like I understand the money needed to keep this site up and running. but like I'm not paying. I can't even get a job because the job market f*****g sucks a*s. I can come up with numbers a graph. but I have a headache rn so I'm not going to bother.

[Richard&#128396;]

Thank you, ZS, for your input 🙏

Note that I've added some "INTERESTING INFORMATION" to this post you might find useful.

[Vol]

I'm with you... I used to pay $15.00 per month to AllPoetry, and they did a great job of keeping things up and running... I left for two reasons, EmmaJoy Green invited me over, and the quality of the writing. Oh and the depth of reviews are really much more thoughtful. I have no idea how many folks subscribe to WC, but would be willing to bet that there are enough to keep someone well supplied with Post Toasties. If I knew how, I'd build a similar site myself and run it, too. Maybe there is a Tech Guru on here already who would be willing... I think All Poetry has about 15,000 members, if just one third of them pays the $15.00 monthoy, that's $75,000 PER MONTH. That'd be worth someone's time and talent...
Vol

[Richard&#128396;]

Thank you, Vol, for your input 🙏

Note that I've added some "INTERESTING INFORMATION" to this post you might find useful.

[butterfly]

Sorry I can not pay to subscribe. Free writing platforms are needed. I hope there will be options for people who can not pay. There are so many expenses with groceries, etc. It is not necessary for me to pay to write. I hope there will be more options and just not another subscription to pay for. I like it here at Writers Cafe and I enjoy reading all the art from other writers. However because it is free it has helped me a lot with having one less bill to pay.

[Richard&#128396;]

Thank you, Butterfly, for your input 🙏

Note that I've added some "INTERESTING INFORMATION" to this post you might find useful.