> And who would spend their precious time constantly reviewing > the 1,000's of listings every week to make sure they are not > obsolete or unsupported? And how would one know if a product > is still supported without spending some more extra time to > contact the developer? Since many times the product may no > longer be supported but the developer still has their web > page up, making it hard to easily identify what products are > still valid. > > RBGarage.com currently relies on the developers who post > their listings to keep them updated and current. It is the > developer's responsibility to log into their RBGarage.com > account and remove discontinued products. This is how > VersionTracker.com does it as well.
VersionTracker also makes money off of advertising - you don't need to go this route exactly though. > I've always been a huge supporter of the REALbasic community, > which has been my driving force to continue offering > RBGarage.com as a free online resource, but I don't make any > money from RBGarage.com. Since 2003, RBGarage.com has only > received 1 donation from a kind member, even though thousands > of people use the site on a daily basis. The advertising > that the site currently displays only pays for some of the > bandwidth and hosting fees, so RBGarage.com actually costs me > money every month, and yet and I continue to offer it as a > free web site to the REALbasic community. Ive wondered :-) > So here's my big question to the REALbasic community: > > The only way I could afford to dedicate time to "policing" > the RBGarage.com database to personally weed out obsolete and > old listings is if RBGarage.com's revenue stream increased to > the point where the site was actually making some money > instead of losing money. Then I could dedicate some of the > revenue to increased site development. > > The only way I see that happening is if I charge a membership > fee to search RBGarage.com's database. Listings would > continue to be free to submit, but using the site to find > helpful items would require a monthly or annual membership > fee. This would also allow me to add more services and > features, such as removing advertising and offering a handy > desktop app for searching and tracking listings on RBGarage.com. > > Would REALbasic developers be willing to pay a membership fee > to subscribe to RBGarage.com??? > > My guess is that everyone's answer will be "no" and that they > will want to see RBGarage.com continue as a free site, yet > people will still complain about the listings (even though it > is a free service). I think a membership to subscribe would be a later step to a premium offering and would end up hurting you as an initial action. There are steps you can take to shore this up. If you want to discuss, Im open for a call :-) Best regards, Lynn Fredricks President Paradigma Software, Inc Joining Worlds of Information Deploy True Client-Server Database Solutions Royalty Free with Valentina Developer Network http://www.paradigmasoft.com _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe or switch delivery mode: <http://www.realsoftware.com/support/listmanager/> Search the archives of this list here: <http://support.realsoftware.com/listarchives/lists.html>
