forgot to say that most people will put something in their profile if they cant reply.
What I dont agree with, is when someone puts "Im not subscribing, so send me your phone number" etc.
The messaging system is provided to protect people from abuse they can become vulnerable to by swapping numbers and email addresses. A recent issue has highlighted this, and the dangers involved with swapping mobile numbers with someone you dont know (Threats from partners you didnt know about etc).
But can we add our emails addresses in our profile? Sorry dont wanna start any major debates or hassles on this subject, but I am skint, not long since returned to work after nursing my son back to health after a bad bike smash, and after 15 months of living off Income Support its gonna take me a long time to catch back up financially.
I can understand the subscription bit cos at the end of the day it takes a lot of time to build and monitor a website like this, and I know its hard work, cos I got a small website for our rally club and I find it hard to keep up with it all at times.
OK yeah the phone number bit can be a bit dodgy, but emails are ok cos if u getting any hassle u just dont read em or delete em straight away. But I can understand from a business point of view that you wont want email addresses in the profiles, so would that be naughty of me to include mine?
Sorry damn I can waffle cant I
matt if you take the time to read my post right you will see that
I NEVER PUT BIKER MATCH HAS GONE DOWN HILL
PLEASE READ THE POSTS CORRECTLY BEFORE REPLYING TO THEM
also is that a dig at me not coughing up the subs for the site ??
if you want only members to be part of this community then give a free trial and after that subscribers only, because while you offer choice everyone should be made welcome.
it is my choice not to join at the moment and by having digs at those (and i am sure im not the only one) who do not pay subs you will only ailenate us from joining.
i dont want to annoy or offend anyone and yep i may be classed as a "tight git" through a pm or other !! by some, but am i bothered ? NO while there is a choice then i will take my own choice and not do anything untill my subs for the other site have run out. i know it must be frustrating because we all pay for the use of the internet so why not join on here but for some £52 pounds a year to pm and wink seems alot, and yep i know its alot cheaper than some of the other bike sites, as i have been informed when i questioned why it wasnt something like 50p a week
alot of us off this site are in touch through msn, this has not interfered with the site nor has anyone left because there in touch by a different method, theres always new people to meet here.
rant over just didnt like you thinking i was slating your site matt cos i wasnt
Matt
Like Storm, I too am on the fence. I had signed up with another online dating website that took me for a ride so am very cautious before I just sign up to anything.
If you have a look at Match website, it gives people who aren't subscribers the chance to return a standard message by selecting from a list of options (I'm not interested, I'm interested but not yet a subscriber etc), this would create interest and more subscribers in the long run.
That sounds a good idea Paul. At least you would know that someone wasn't geing ignorant by not replying.
Don't sit on the fence too long tho hun cos ya might fall off and bang ya head or get splinters!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and splinters in ya bum wouldn't be funny cos then we'd have to take em out with the tweezers
i think pauls and reds idea are great and it is something that would help the site be more user friendly, an i dont think it would stop people subbing up either, if people think its value for money and they can afford the fees then they will join.
Paul - thats an excellent idea and one that I will look at implementing asap.
Storm - so sorry I miss-read your message, thought you were saying that my site went downhill.
With regards to being taken for a ride... thats one reason why I use Paypal for payments. You can stop them at any point (Even 5 minutes after your first payment) and not be bothered ever again. A lot of people have confidence in Paypal and the security if offers, plus you have buyer protection guarentees etc.
Julia, I've upgraded your account also for a short time so go get some PMs sent. :-)
PS: That's the last account I'm upgrading for free 'coz I'm opening myself up to a bombardment of emails etc now. lol
Forgot to say that putting your email address on the site is worse! You will open yourself up to a flood of spam.
There are spam-engines that work in a similar way to google... but they scan for email addresses. Once text is found that is in an email format it adds it to a big database, which gets sold illegally for lots of money to companies for spamming purposes.
Then I'd soon get the blame for letting people put email addresses in their profiles.
=====================================
With regards to 99p per week being too much to pay (Note that Paypal take 25% of that!) just to send PMs/Remove Ads etc.... shall I lock more of the site down? Like I could lock the forums down, remove matchmaker facility, remove photo-uploads, remove advanced-searching, limit searches to 10 miles.... the list is endless. When considering how much the 99p per week gets you, please also consider what I give away for free as well. I can take bits away to make the 99p worth it if that's what everyone wants???
PPPPS: Also everyone please remember when considering to sign up, that I spent 3.5 years of my life slaving away trying to design and build this site. It took hundreds, even thousands, of my hours that I could have been out riding the bike! That's thousands of hours of UNPAID work!
The funds raised at the moment? Minimal... less than £70 per week, and it all goes back into advertising (Which starts again in the next issue of Bike etc).
So also for your 99p, the site gets advertised and hopefully more people join up and there's more chance of you meeting someone.
Following the £1000's I spent to get the site running in advertising, I'm still a lot of money down and I'm still nowhere near a stage where I can even consider myself to be earning any of it back. I'm just a 1-man-band, running the whole thing for free and putting lots of effort into replying to many emails, checking profiles, photos, forums etc everyday. I can't even go on holiday to get away from the emails, because theres nobody else to take it on - so laptop had to be bought to go everywhere with me. Given this info, I'm sure you understand why I had people putting in their profiles "Im not subscribing to sites, so email me at..."
Thanks again
Matt I am so sorry if I have opened a can of worms here didnt mean to. I was just tryign to suss out what u could and couldnt do.
Thanks for the short term account, its good of u and I know u didnt have too.
The site is great by the way and I am sure we all apprecaite the amount of hard work thats gone into it, and I promise not to ask any more questions
hey julia dont worry cos if ya dont ask questions yer will never know anything.
and im not annoyed at matt never was, for thinking id put something about bm but i didnt want anyone to read his reply without looking at mine and thinking i had put something.
lifes too short for throwin the dummy out of the pram everytime someone throws out challenges, or has a difference of opinion, i dont get offened about much at all, most things go over the head
but i do draw the line at kissin matts ass !!!!!!!!!! so ya on ya own there mate
matts thinkin "phew lucky escape there"
while runnin for the ferry to get away !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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