Subscription Links/info

[MrAl]

Hello there,

I see these notices that ask about subscriptions.
Can you discribe what that entails and how it works?

Thanks

[matthew1]

Hi MrAl,

Good question. The subscription is a way to give me money every month, to be blunt. I'd rather be blunt than write flowery marketing BS about it.

It's a recurring donation that is billed monthly to your credit card or PayPal account.

There is no association between it and your MVS Forums account here... not technically and not informally.

The only change/association between the two would be if you were not an MVS Contributor, but chose to donate (once) or subscribe (monthly). In that case, I would change your MVS Forums account to "MVS Contributor" status.

I look up every donor or subscriber in the forum administration panel to see if they're not an MVS Contributor. If they're not, I add them to the group. If they are already, I do nothing, except to say thanks.

Subscribers can unsubscribe from it in their PayPal account.


[edit]
https://www.matthewsvolvosite.com/subscribe/ <- MVS Subscription
https://www.patreon.com/volvos <- MVS Patreon link

[FireFox31]

Thanks for providing this option. I wrote some additional questions in a different thread before I saw this one.

[foggydogg]

I'm in. Thanks for being our friend, Matt.

[abscate]

It’s a good time to help Matt out with a subscription , as he shared with us he faces brain surgery in a few months. Facing that with a young man in tow is serious stuff.

Balance the value you get from keeping your Volvo running , sourcing hard to find parts , and give what you can accordingly, please.

[MrAl]

Hi MrAl,

Good question. The subscription is a way to give me money every month, to be blunt. I'd rather be blunt than write flowery marketing BS about it.

It's a recurring donation that is billed monthly to your credit card or PayPal account.

There is no association between it and your MVS Forums account here... not technically and not informally.

The only change/association between the two would be if you were not an MVS Contributor, but chose to donate (once) or subscribe (monthly). In that case, I would change your MVS Forums account to "MVS Contributor" status.

I look up every donor or subscriber in the forum administration panel to see if they're not an MVS Contributor. If they're not, I add them to the group. If they are already, I do nothing, except to say thanks.

Subscribers can unsubscribe from it in their PayPal account.

Hi,

Ok thanks for the info Matt.

Now what are the options for making a payment other than once a month?
I shouild be able to donate the equivalent once every 6 months or every 12 months or something like that and possibly a bit more before the period is up, but would like to have a convenient way to do this.
For example, if i donate say $12 now and in 6 months another $12, but want to make it after 5 months instead or have to wait until 7 months, how can i do that?
Also, a friendly reminder after that 6 months would be nice so i dont forget what i offered, if that is possible.

I have a bit of a problem with Paypal for some reason i dont really like using them but i could look into it if absolutely necessary.
Alternately i know there are a lot of ways to pay these days.
For example and i dont know if this works but, could an Amazon gift card be converted to cash or does it have to be used for purchases on Amazon, or alternately, do you have to buy stuff from Amazon on a regular basis (food, supplies, etc.) because tehn i could send a gift card and that gets there within about 2 days so it's very quick and very convenient.

So if any of that sounds good let me know and all the ways to pay would be nice too, thanks.

Take care and hope everything works out for you Matt you have a nice site here.
I had a site myself for a while basically about electronics and it was free on AOL, but they decided to kill that functionallity once it got taken over by another company.

[Sveedy]

Maybe someone who knows how could start a " Go Fund Me " page to help out for a while.
Might reach a larger audience, Volvo or otherwise, than just this site.

[matthew1]

I've got a 10am call and I'll write back on each of your all's thoughts, but right now I'll use these few minutes for a bit of a rant.

Way back when once upon a time at the dawn of the Internet there was an idea called "micro payments". That would look like this: Bob visits a page, and voluntarily has his browser set to pay the site one-tenth of a cent. Or a hundreth, or one cent. Whatever Bob decided to set his browser for when he visited MVS.

Great idea? You bet! Why? Because (here anyway) there would be no ads. No futzing with Google Ads on my part, no stupid ads displayed on everyone's part. No need for AdBlock. Pages would load faster because there would be no ad code to insert into the page. Win-win.

But that never happened. I've never looked into it, but I think it was a combination of users not wanting it, as absurdly small as these micropayments could be, combined with the big ad companies that were just starting out, and saw the big money future.

[matthew1]

As far as brain surgery goes, I don't have an imminent date with the scalpel, but it's probably on the agenda one of these months or years. My neurosurgeon said there is no sign of hydrocephalus, which is the primary indicator of a required surgery. I have a six-month regular MRI schedule to give him the data he needs to check. Next one is scheduled for June (the month, not to be confused with our beloved MVS member June ).

My reason for asking for subscriptions is more to supplement the soft ad revenue brought on by the slow encroachment from Reddit, Facebook, Verticalscope (they own Swedespeed) and all the other big-money user vacuums.

Over these 20 years MVS has been around, the market has seen and responded to the ad revenue potential of displaying all kinds of content, and that includes Volvo DIY. So here they are, the barbarians are at the gates.

MVS and, as far as I know, Brickboard are the only two independent, original Volvo DIY forums still around. Verticalscope approaches me every ten years or so to buy MVS, but I tell them to get lost.

[matthew1]

I have a bit of a problem with Paypal for some reason i dont really like using them but i could look into it if absolutely necessary.
Alternately i know there are a lot of ways to pay these days.

I understand. I'm looking into Amazon Pay as an alternate method. I'll make a post here if I adopt that (while keeping PayPal).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Pay

Thanks a bunch, MrAl.