Wincustomize to charge?!?!?!

1) I'd rather not have to close pop up windows and neither do most people.

2) People who have purchased Object Desktop or one of its components probably would rather not have to deal with pop up windows either (and they have no limits whatsoever).

3) WindowBlinds, DesktopX, ObjectBar, IconPackager, WinStyles, and so forth aren't "free". If you registered one of those programs, you would have no limits.

4) The site is still free. And you don't even have to buy software to have unlimited use of the site's limited bandwidth. You could make skins, contribute comments, become an active participant on the message boards. Users who become apprentice access or higher (which costs nothing) also have unlimited use of the site's limited bandwidth.

Deja vu?

5) It's for TWO years.

Thankyou for clearing that up Frogboy, honestly. I would like more information on the apprentice access if you wouldnt mind.

Dan,

read #4) above.

I do see a benefit. I don't want popups or creepy advertising. I will gladly pay 2.75 cents per day to use this site.

btw, how much bandwidth does your site use per day?

No popups No popups keep the popups and advertising OUT. OK I feel better now that I got my 2 cents in.

as if anybody would care about popups. use Opera or Mozilla and the popups are gone i see this place as a service site for Object Desktop customers. it´s free for them, so that´s probably ok. if you aren´t an OD customer, but want to fill your hd with hundreds of skins, there are plenty of sites around: Skinbase.org, LotsOfSkins.com, Deskmod.com, VelocityArt.com, DeviantArt.com, Skinz.org, Customize.org and many more. you could even make your own skins & wallpapers, getting a little creative is fun so why complaining?

Popup advertising is evil. If I ever put popup adverts on any site I create, you all have permission to inflict great pain on me. Whoever invented popups had to be a salesman, not a web designer.

Grayhaze....can we start now and avoid the rush?...

Pop ups are ruining the Internet experience for me. And while I use WebBlinds (part of Object Desktop) to block pop ups, it's still annoying that some get through and when I go onto a machine without some blocking involved.

WebBlinds Stops PopUps? How did i miss that? Better go check it out

I'll let you have first choice of weapon Jafo. Just so long as it isn't the lawnmower again... that just plain hurt.

Try 'Pop-UpStopper' from www.panicware.com , it never fails to stop those evil nasties from appearing.

I don't mind banner ads but those popups are very annoying. Especially the ones that creep across your screen abstructing what you're trying to read on a webpage. I don't know how much revenue bannder ads generate but if it's enough and it works for keeping a website free, why not?

Mozilla !!!! Opera !!!! both browsers will block popups, you won´t need a third-party app to do this.

Here's a new twist on this old story....

I'd be willing to pay more (yes, you heard right!) Way more, if it meant there would be even more bandwidth at your disposal and therefore a faster site. Sometimes it's a little slow, and I have no qualms about paying whatever to keep it fast and ad free.

Now I don't need any t-shirts, I've got plenty.
I have all of the Stardock applications that I want. (all paid for) And I have the WC subscription. So, what's left?

Is there a way to invest that doesn't involve merchandise?

Danamal: I'am an apprentice and I've never made any apps., I just post messages on the board and comment on the skins. I have only downloaded about 20k's worth of skins, but I like this site enough to subscribe for the $20 for two years. So what are you crying about? I can piss away $20 in a heart beat, so why not put it to good use.

I'm with motion...

I know what WinCustomize needs in the near term:

1) 10 more megabits of bandwith would get things fast.
2) One really fast state of the art dual processor server for handling SQL.

Those two things would cost about $50,000 over the next year.

Another thing that would help would be to have one more IT person to help write the scripts and optimize the site. The salary of IT people varies widely, let's say $50k.

So $100k during the next year.

This site gets about a million monthly visitors. 2 year subscriptions are $20.

Would take 5,000 people to subscribe or 5% of the monthly visitors over the course of the year.

do you have any current statistics of % #visitors>#subscribers

(what percentage of visitors become subscribers) 5% does not seem unreasonable

Are those unique visitors or hits? I would guess that most of the subscribers are the regulars to this site. The ones that take part on the message board regulary and not the normal visitors. Just a guess. So I would say that 5% would be hard to get.(listening to all the bitching going on).

unique visitors. The site gets millions of page views.

There are something like > 50,000 users (accounts) who have downloaded over 50 megabytes.

Frogboy, I guess that if you had all the windowblind skinners include a wallpaper, you probably could close the wapllpaper section down or at least shrink it considerably. Just a thought.

YEa, the wallpaper section is always a tough call.

However, I can't imagine closing it. One of the appeals of WinCustomize is the knowledge that artists and skin authors can submit their work and know it's safe and sound and under their control.

But I think ultimtaely there's no real way around the continued growth of customization in general. We knew it would grow after Windows XP came out but not to this level. We now get nearly 5X the traffic from a year ago.

to be honest I'm suprised you don't sell some of these skins...I would gladly pay a couple of bucks for some of them...and I'm a registered ObjectDesktop user.