- This topic has 6 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 6 months, 3 weeks ago by
administrator.
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administrator
- Topics: 124
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- Total Posts: 166
From March 2023 to July 2024, we were a free website. Now we charge a low, non-recurring annual fee to send messages to other members. Replying to messages sent to you by other members is free. At the time of writing, we are considerably cheaper than other websites in our genre.
We had a choice. We could either continue being a free website or we could advertise more. With more advertisements on news and large social media sites we can accumulate more members. This means you have more chance of finding someone in your city. We wrote to tens of alternative websites and asked for free or low-cost publicity. Only three sites mentioned our website for no payment.
There are many free messenger apps and social media sites. Many of them receive money from advertisements, the stock market (this means your pension funds), government, university grants and billionaires. Even if the company does not receive government money directly, they will be linked to companies receiving government money. We are independent and have no such sources of funds.
There are problems with free sites. Eventually they are overrun with spam and your inbox will be full of junk and unsolicited messages advertising products. Anyone can join at anytime and say anything they want with no cost. Blocking annoying users won’t work as new accounts can be freely created.
If someone wants to cover our costs, we can consider moving back to a free website.
It is still free to create an account on our site and search for other members by city. Replying to messages sent to you is still free.
One of the original aims of this website is so that people won’t have to spend hundreds of dollars on dating and meeting websites. We can’t accomplish this by being entirely free, but we can do this by being low-cost.
To date we have targeted the UK, Canada, the Netherlands and Sweden with adverts in news websites and printed newspapers. At the time of writing we are using Twitter/X to run adverts in UK, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, France and Italy. Twitter gives us the opportunity to advertise in a wide range of countries. Given we have limited funds, our adverts may be ending soon.
OurFreeSociety
- Topics: 0
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- Total Posts: 2
Only 9-5ers don’t understand the costs & time it takes to run a business or site. SMH
I just contacted you re: paying for a membership just to help out.
- Topics: 124
- Replies: 42
- Total Posts: 166
A few years ago, major social media websites deleted accounts and posts talking about COVID vaccines. This may have contributed to the high vaccination rates seen in the USA, UK and Western Europe.
Meeting and dating groups were created on major social media sites for people who declined to have COVID vaccines. Some of them grew to ten thousand members, before the company owners deleted them.
This website is independent and we are not funded by billionaires. We made a decision to increase the number of people on this site by using paid advertising. This put up our running costs by thousands of dollars. Internet hosting costs are $720 USD a year, not including the cost and time of maintaining the software on this site. If the number of visitors on our site increases, we will have to pay more.
At the time of writing, the cost of messaging on this site is substantially lower than comparable sites. Other sites charge the same for one month as we do for one year! We cannot be a free website anymore, but we can try to be a low cost one.
There is a cost to initiate contact with other members of this website. However it is free to reply to messages sent to you by other members.
By using paid advertising we managed to increase the number of people here from the Netherlands significantly in a matter of days. We obtained a similar increase for Canada, but spread over several months. If someone wishes to reimburse our costs, we can consider going back to a free website. Currently this website is run at a loss, so our prices for messaging are more than fair.
When we were a totally free website, we were told by some users there were not enough people on our website and we should pay for advertising to correct this. Now a certain fraction of users tell us they want our website to be free. This website does cost money to run and the current scheme is for the cost to be shared out between many people. As it is most people here do not take out a paid subscription, which means there is no money for further advertising.
Anonymous-User
- Topics: 12
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- Total Posts: 24
Hi,
Today 6th November 2024, the Buy (subcription) button returns the user to the page from which a text to “buy subscription” links to the page with the “Buy” subscription button.
Catch 22; meaning the opposite, the user is inhibited from buying a subscription.
Neet to (not) meet the unjabbed folks.
;-D
- Topics: 124
- Replies: 42
- Total Posts: 166
In reply to Marivar, your issue with purchasing a subscription is because you have not completed the registration process. Go back to the home page. Scroll down the web page and answer the questions and click the relevant options. Then click the save button.
AntiVaxxerConspiracyObserver
- Topics: 4
- Replies: 17
- Total Posts: 21
Administrator, I really appreciate this site and all who make it possible. I am more than happy to pay $14 for an entire year. This is actually extremely affordable and I can’t believe people would complain about basically $1 per month. Other sites charge up to like $30 for a single month, if you only do one month. Some websites, if you want to pay maybe $15 a month, you have to pay 6 or 12 months at that rate at once. I didn’t hesitate to just pay the $14, and it is very worth it just to support this cause and all who are working to support this. I would like to see this gain more and more traction. All the other sites I have tried are all for profit, too expensive and hardly any matches or conversations. Thanks again for this effort.
- Topics: 124
- Replies: 42
- Total Posts: 166
The majority of people on this site don’t take out a subscription or donate money. This means we have limited funds for advertising. For the last few months, we have been advertising on Twitter (X.com) and targeted various countries such as the USA, Canada, Australia, the UK, the Netherlands, Sweden, France, German and to a lesser extent Italy.
Currently our annual subscription is very low priced. We do not store financial information and we won’t bill you again when the year is over. It is a pity that most people don’t even want to pay a small amount of money which would help us pay for more advertising. This would bring in more users, which means people have a greater chance of finding someone in their city.
At the time of writing, this website makes a loss. More money has been spent on advertising than on webserver hosting.
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