Nickao, I would think of your suggestion as the minimum needed to maintain the current membership level, but I don't think it would be better at getting members than full guest access with ads.
I completely understand how it is with a website attracting too much work. My website is a rotting, boring, blog which at this point is more intended to repel work more than anything.
For FOG, the stated goal is attracting new members and building the community to enhance the site's appeal to the market. There are a few good examples I can think of which follow the same model, where the critical mass of membership combined with key ultra-qualified members produces the right culture for long term success. I think the perfect example is the
AV Science Forums which are run by a dealer of high-end AV equipment. The forums have ads even for members, which is somewhat annoying, but then again, they have more than a quarter million users, which gets them into the space where they have to match the bandwidth scale with the revenue generation. Even though it is run by a dealer, they essentially treat it as a separate entity and don't try any lowbrow self promotion in the interest of maintaing the community. It is the go-to site for anyone getting av equipment, and it is also prime space for both dealers and manufacturers to advertise. I'm sure it is much more than self-sustaining. I could name a handful of other sites and do a complete competitive analysis, but that is getting way to much like work for me
While I personally prefer guest access to everything, it isn't unusual for guest access to certain forums with restricted access to others. It would be easier to implement and maintain than a separate blog sort of preview area, and fits better with the community driven nature of this type of forum. I could possibly see a potential benefit from keeping the ability for guests to access "Festool tools in general" "Sales Zone" and "Festool Connections", while making the other sections of the site members-only. Prohibiting non-member access to "Festool Tools In Action" section would be a decent reason to push someone to join, with minimal impact in terms of getting new people to the site. Guests could see the culture here from "Festool Tools in General" and the sales and connections areas, and then decide to sign up so they can see the cool member projects and jigs and such in "Festool Tools in Action". The off topic stuff is probably better to keep from the search engines anyway.
I guess I'll just state it one more time: I think guests are this site's most precious natural resource, and while they should be enticed to join, they shouldn't be asked to leave.
I just want to touch on one more topic, that of sponsorship. Matthew hasn't said too much about it, but has insinuated a little bit. I would love to see dealers and other hand-picked sponsors getting a little bit of real estate here. It seems natural for Festool to offer some form of sponsorship to this site, and if dealers, or other folks - like those with their own web sites - wanted to do some sponsorship (other than a donation), I know it wouldn't bother me. This topic isn't about sponsorship or ad space, so I'll end it here, with the observation that we're likely to be having that discussion one way or the other in the next few months
I just hope random google ads don't suddenly appear on father's day!
Does anyone watch formula 1? I think Festool should sponsor the Honda team; they already seem to be wearing festool green!
