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Ning Will Take a Percentage of Membership Fees - What Are Your Thoughts?

Ning Will Take a Percentage of future Membership Fees - What Are Your Thoughts?

I just found this out from the Ning Creator site. Ning will take a revenue share (percentage) for membership fees. These are fees you will be able to charge your members in the future, if you choose to charge for membership.

Question that was asked on Creators - Original Discussion:
When the new pricing goes into affect, and owners of websites began to charge members a fee, will we have to split the profits with Ning?

Eric's Answer - Original Post: (Eric is the Community Manager of Ning Creators)
Great question! We do plan to take a revenue share on membership fees, partly to cover the costs of processing the payment. We get charged fees by our credit card processor and PayPal. I don't have the final details to share, but I will when I can. Our intention is to provide NCs with as many money-making opportunities as possible, and some of those opportunities will include revenue sharing, which I think genuinely benefits both parties.

Jen's Thoughts:
I can understand Ning charging a percentage, no problem. Especially since they will incur a fee for processing the payments. I mean after all, anything I charge for my Website Design Services or anything else online, I end up paying someone a fee for processing, understandably. It's goodbye to the days of old fashioned Merchant Credit accounts, and "in with the easy-breezy - - umbrella accounts" - - works for me. I do have concerns about this setup, but not enough to matter.

Here's the way I look at this situation overall:
If I own a Social Community that utilizes the Ning platform, I would like to have easy built-in features to monetize my site. To add a membership feature that is not integrated would take a good deal of coding (if even possible), would likely get messy, and could break when the Ning platform implements updates. I would much rather have those features built-in, and share the profits with Ning - - within reason of course.

As a Network Creator, what are your thoughts? Join the Conversation.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by JenSocial on May 17, 2010 at 1:12pm

Hi Cara,
Yeah, it is nice how fellow NCs pull together. :-)

If Eric has made this statement, it is likely true. He works for Ning and manages their main site for Creators. Eric's Official title is: Senior Community Manager of Ning.

If you look in my original Discussion, I provided both links where this topic started, from the main Creator site that Ning manages.
Original Discussion Question on Creators.ning.com
http://creators.ning.com/forum/topics/when-the-new-pricing-goes-in

Eric's Response:
http://creators.ning.com/xn/detail/4244211:Comment:178856

Best Regards,
Jen

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Permalink Reply by Papillon Casse on May 17, 2010 at 2:12pm

I don't plan on charging members.. so that effects me minimally... when you have places like facebook and myspace and blogspot... for my type of social network that would be murder.. Heck look at how upset people got when they found out NING was charging for packages.. I can only imagine the fiasco that woulld go down if I charged my members.. I suggest creators to be a little creative and find ways to generate income outside of charging membership fees... We have a magazine that we sell that off sets costs.. we are alos looking for ways to charge for other things that members can purchase but dont have to... just some whoistles and bells...;)

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Permalink Reply by JenSocial on May 28, 2010 at 9:36pm

Nice share, thanks John! Hopefully Ning will offer in the near future. But, from first glance, it will be hard pressed to be as nice as what you've shown here.

Welcome to JenSocial - - very happy to have you!

Best Regards,
Jen

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Permalink Reply by JenSocial on May 28, 2010 at 9:48pm

Thanks John!

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Permalink Reply by LOVING A CONVICT on August 12, 2010 at 2:23pm

Honestly i do NOT like that idea at all..
we was going to charge $10.00 a YEAr for membership.. What would we do that now if there going to take MORE money from us.. Just inst right..

I would rather set up my own processing and all instead of going thru them if i got to pay..

And they said Our site is OURS..
JMO.

Unless there going to give our members more things to access with a paying membership then fine but for now ill use my own Paypal account to accept payment

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Permalink Reply by Whazzup on August 31, 2010 at 12:28pm

I just don't understand why people still create NING networks.

Maybe the software is interesting but i no longer prefer to use the software of a company that looks like the Illuminati.

NING is like a drugdealer... first they make you hooked and, when you are totally hooked to the drug, they start charging for it.

No way am i going to cooperate on this, therefore i find it ridiculous that NING wants to milk its networkcreators and steal from their revenue. after all, the creators ARE already paying for the premium service, who does NING think they are stealing revenue from it's networkcreators? THEY are the ones to put in the efford.. NING just provides the platform and they have NO right to steal from the ones that are already paying.

Ning just wants MORE and MORE and MORE... stupid capitalists in Sillicon Valley...

I''m glad i'm outta here and hosted my network on Grou.ps, their team is much cooler then this ILLUMINATI NING!!!

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Permalink Reply by Whazzup on August 31, 2010 at 12:44pm

I discovered another socialnetworking platform named Socialparadox. It works almost the same as NING, i am still in doubt of creating a network there , no one can tell me they will go in the same direction as NING but it looks very promising.

As i can see you can use your NING CSS template there and it has cool features that NING doesn't have, the subgroups are way cooler then the groups on a NING network...

I am tired of NING and i am sure NING will die a terrible death just because of the direction they chose...

Maybe Socialparadox will be the next cool platform!

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Permalink Reply by Martin de Goede on September 5, 2010 at 4:09pm

No problem as long as they will add more payment options. Here in the Netherlands one of the most popular ways of paying on the internet is iDeal. If NING will make that possible they can have a percentage (if they keep it reasonable)

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Permalink Reply by Digital Janitor on September 8, 2010 at 8:42pm

If they are going to take a percentage of the membership fees then they should not be charging us for our network. If the fees are strictly to cover the processing fees, that is a different story.

I have no intention of charging for my network but if I was, even if I was not charged a monthly fee, I would still implement my own membership fee program that will not require ning's involvement if it was a revenue share program.

Ning has plenty of revenue streams they can take advantage of just through the current networks they have. Why do they feel the need to dig in to my pocket. Their venture is a social network platform and I am willing to pay a standard fee for that but then to say we want a percentage of all the revenue your network makes in memberships, when my network deals with national distribution through Universal Music Group, is just wrong on so many levels.

My content, that I am entrusting on the Ning platform is my content. I worked hard to build the relationships, (over 15 years) that I have built in the multiple industries I work in. There is no way I am paying anyone a monthly fee so they can take a percentage of my hard work. What did they do for that content, which is what drives the social network. Nothing, you as the NC did with the help of YOUR members.

Without your content, it's just an empty shell that, unless your willing to deal with all that we as NC's deal with, is only worth the plan you paid for, and at this point that may be doubtful in some peoples minds based on the current state of support. They are slammed and don't have enough people to do the work. Just before all this took place Ning let go of about 40% of their work force so all the people who were here to help seem to have been let go.

I am sure Ning will get most, if not all, the issues taken care of but there are so many platforms on the horizon right now that if they don't do it quick they will loose more of their market share. I am aware of a social network platform that provides unlimited storage space to the member and also allows them to create their own social network, oh yea, for free. It's a very unique business model and social network platform that I am looking very forward to hitting the market near the end of this year or the first of next. We will see what happens.