Thursday, Mar 24, 2011 at 13:44
There's not much
feedback in this post about the new Search by Name feature here but I thought I would comment on the misinformation in the discussion about ExplorOz being a "money making venture".
We would love for the site to run purely on
Membership, but 5%
membership cannot sustain the operating costs of the site so we need to generate revenue from our audience in other ways. We make no apology for that! Some of you may be surprised to know that at the end of the day there is no "profits" gained from our business in fact we simply cover the operating costs. We have even considered listing as a "not for profit" organisation, however our intent is that there is still a lot of opportunity left in our model and we believe we will see further growth and is one of the reasons why we've created and taken TriathlonOz.com out to a new market.
The choices for covering costs have always been to either ask the user to pay, or take payment from advertisers. We have a model that combines both - where consumers only pay when they want more than what the basic free offering provides.
It is the individual's choice and people can use the
Forum without being a Member but if they want access to the enhanced features, or want to use other features, or would benefit from the Member savings when ordering through our
shop, then they have the option to pay
Membership to access these
services and benefits.
We are always focussing on building better
Membership features to increase the attraction of this, and also WE ENJOY creating online features for travellers! Some of the stuff on ExplorOz is totally unique and I.T. Beyond is often approached to provide business-business
services based on the ExplorOz proof of concepts. If we were a bigger business, we could probably focus on that more, but we are very restricted by the limitation of running our business so lean and having limited staff. Increased
Membership may also enable us to reduce the reliance on ad revenue, so it is something we continue to focus on.
At the end of the day, whilst we can adequately continue to cover current costs with our "imperfect" model, this is only achieved by keeping our operating costs to a minimum. However, the peformance of the system and the satisfaction of our customers (those who buy from our
shop, buy trader ads, buy advertising, or buy
membership) are our No. 1 priority. So most of the operating costs are to do with system and customer satisfaction. Any income derived from the site goes right back into these core areas of the operation.
We know we can't please everyone, all of the time but if you chose to use ExplorOz then that's how it works.
Regards,
Michelle
AnswerID:
449130