Paying to get into trackers?

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Originally Posted by stoi

you probably did, but everyone is going on about selling and trading invites, which has absolutely nothing to do with this thread at all, (which is typical BT, no one reads anything properly anymore) i got confused lol

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Well I reread it properly, but I stand mostly by what I wrote earlier.
If a tracker doesn't get enough donations eventhough the members know it's staff/owner can't afford to support the tracker any longer, I don't see any reason why you shouldn't close the tracker.
It clearly indicates the members, nor the staff are capable or willing to invest anything in return for whatever satisfaction they get out of using the tracker. Pretty clear to me the only thing to do is closing it.

About the selling of 'memberships'. I do believe you will get a lot of scum in your tracker. There are many traders that are willing to pay for an open slot to a tracker, and trade it afterwards to get into a harder to get tracker. The moment you start 'commercialising' access to a tracker the chances of it all ending badly are far greater than if you don't.

Just my personal view on the issue.

On the subject of me personally paying money to get access to a tracker...no, I wouldn't. Why? Because I wouldn't be getting access to any content that I don't already have access to at another tracker. It would be very stupid of me to waste my money like that just so I can call myself a member at whatever tracker.

Now, I personally don't agree with the fact that one of my favorite trackers, BTmusic, sells accounts. But, I can say that only because I'm a member. My view may be something different if I were to be an owner of a tracker. Perhaps that greed factor would kick in where I would want more and more money, and I would then start selling invites/accounts.

So just because right now I don't agree with sites selling access to their tracker I certainly can't fault them for it either. And I think it's unfair for any other members only to fault these trackers for it too. As you really don't know what you would do until you are in that position.

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Originally Posted by stoi

before i start i will just say i do not agree with it at all, and there is about a 0.0001% chance of this ever happening with us, I wont say never but it is very very slim.

So what do you think about this, Would you do it, have you done it, Do you just not bother if they have this, If you are already in a tracker like this, do you/ would you still donate etc etc

I have been thinking about this for the past few days, again though not to do it myself, but i can see it being a way to get only good members, lets say we done it for arguments sake.

£5 donation gets you in, you also get 1 month of full bonuses (which even i admit are not a lot lol but its something).

those that do pay to get in, will or i would say will be a 95% chance to be a good member, you are not going to pay and then trade the account, you may pay £5 and then sell the account for £20 though i suppose. You are very unlikely to cheat if you have paid to get in.

So i can see some sort of sense in doing it, still does not mean i would do it on my tracker though, as i still think it is wrong.

but just wondering what the rest of you think.

PS: I do not mean Donating and getting an Invite, I mean actually paying to get access like a few are doing.

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Ok this just my option and just that but are u NUTS if u said people come into a tracker a great one at that Say Sct or BCG and only pay £5 and u get gets you in, you also get 1 month of full bonuses..there would be so many hit and runs it would not be funny...Well am I right or not???:unsure:

Well maybe with SCT (but i do not know how their donation system works), but for us no, even if you do donate you cant hit and run.

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I would gladly pay to get into trackers. It would be cool if there was a pay2leech tracker that required a subscription each month/year or whatever to be a member. Like nzb indexing sites.

Just imagine how great a tracker could be if funded by all the seedboxers who, instead of spending 25-50-100 Euro a month on a server, could contribute at least some of that to the tracker's servers/seedboxes.

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Originally Posted by CoD

I would gladly pay to get into trackers. It would be cool if there was a pay2leech tracker that required a subscription each month/year or whatever to be a member. Like nzb indexing sites.

Just imagine how great a tracker could be if funded by all the seedboxers who, instead of spending 25-50-100 Euro a month on a server, could contribute at least some of that to the tracker's servers/seedboxes.

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So basically you just want scene access?

I think if you start a torrent tracker, you should have a back up way to fund it. Maybe start a secondary site based on something else that is open and has no legal pitfalls. Then you could try to make enough advertising money to fund both sites for half a month. And then still set a full months goal for the torrent tracker just the same.

You can't always count on your members having extra cash to donate. Look at the music industry there so stuck in there usual way of making money off of artists. And only now are they realizing they need to find new streams of revenue.

I don't claim to know the final solution to keeping a safe haven for file shares. What I do know is that, putting a tax on site memberships will effect the overall torrent community negatively. Once site owners lose the passion for running there site and are only fueled by profits things turn bad. It starts becoming less about what the members want and more about how to survive and increase profit margins. All the while taxing members, until it becomes the Boston Tea Party(Revolution) all over again :)

Of course that's worst case but still, once you start focusing on money it's hard to stop. The easiest thing to do is to stop focusing on one way to make money and find many ways to make money. By doing this there's less stress on your site members. And yes I own a torrent tracker and use many ways to fund it.

It seems to me that anti P2L is the result of the ultra1337ness BT community. While there's nothing wrong with it, obviously you're going to have to consider whether or not it's good value. If you're charging as much as newsgroups obviously you won't have any success, but for a small fee (even just something like 3 USD) think of the benefits to the tracker...no collectors/traders/cheaters making dupe accounts upon open signup, and a handy amount of cash to help support the site, maybe just for emergencies.

Naturally you'll lose some users who prefer to get their files 100% free, like some of the guys have mentioned before, but I think for a one-time payment (of just a few dollars) I think the tracker environment would be improved for it to be worth it by far.

I think there is nothing wrong if members get invites by donation but accepting payments from total strangers to get into the site could attract a lot of snitches from CopyRight organizations and could put in risk the current members. Imo, sites which sell membership don't really care about its current members.

On the other hand, donations are never enough, if donations of the month surpass the server costs you can give the surplus to release groups to buy new stuff to be ripped and shared with the community. I can't see anything bad in reward a donation with an invite or upload amount. At the end donators are the ones who keep alive the tracker.