Jazzy said:
Yeah, I know how you feel. I've even seen it happen on small forums. There's a forum I used to go on which has a couple of hundred members and about 800 posts. They'd send out at least 2 emails a week talking about their VIP Membership which was $25 dollars which would go towards the ever rising administration and web hosting costs. They're on a shared host which is what $8-$10 a month? They've probably made a couple of hundred from members subscribing and they've been around for about a month and ever since they opened they've been going on about the VIP Membership.
In my opinion, subscriptions and private membership features should be one of the options if your site's becoming large on you need to bring in some sort of revenue to keep it going. I don't see anything wrong with wanting to bring in a small amount for your efforts via Google Ad's or something but there's no need to mislead members into thinking they're supporting the site when all they're doing is putting money in the owners pocket. Some forums are quite clearly nothing more than a business venture.
And rant... over. LOL
