Have You Enjoyed Fotozones This Year?

[Dallas]

I have laboured during 2019 to bring you a good site that runs properly and on software that makes the user experience easy on just about any device. Unfortunately that software comes at a price of around $210 each year, split into 2 payments. This excludes the cost of hosting Fotozones, which runs considerably higher than that. I pay for these costs out of my own pocket along with the help from a few members who have opted to assist me by taking up a monthly subscription of $2,95. I don't want any advertising or affiliate programs on Fotozones and the only commercial activity I engage in is the promotion of my safaris, which ultimately pay the bills here. 

 

The invoice for the license refresh for the next 6 months has been issued and I will pay this shortly, but I would like to appeal to the members of the site to consider either joining the small group of subscribing members, or consider assisting Fotozones with an ad hoc donation to help with the overhead. I have also just introduced an annual subscription option of $25, which is a saving over the monthly option, but commits you to just one payment a year. You will get all the benefits of the monthly subscription and can decide to renew or not at the end of the year. 

 

I do hope that you will be able to assist on either basis and I look forward to bringing you a great photographer's community going forward.  

[atpaula]

I'm an annual subscriber now.

Thanks for the effort of making a nice and friendly website.

[Dallas]

Thank you, Aguinaldo for your continued support and great photos! 

[blurmagic]

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Indeed, this website is getting better each year, and it has been enjoyable here in 2019. 

 

I'm here for one reason - there are 3 members here whose photography opinions I hold in high regard.  I have learned a few things from their posts.  However, I ask myself, is it worth $25 per year to stop by every week or two to see what these members are talking about?

 

I currently pay about the same amount to subscribe to two other photo websites.  On one (Flickr) I can post an unlimited number of huge photo files.  It's much cheaper photo storage than paying $10 USD per month for either the Google or Dropbox clouds.  The other, I subscribe to in order to be able to sell my used gear there.  Each year I save much money selling gear at that site over what it would have cost me to sell it on Ebay.

 

Rather than a donation, I see such requests for support as a a value proposition.  But it's not clear to me yet what exactly I'd receive with a supporting membership here.  The new groups here hold promise, but being that my main cameras are not used by anyone else here, and the fact that I mostly build/create/adapt my own lenses, I don't see much value in starting a new group here in which I would be the only member.

[Dallas]

Thanks Dave. It is very difficult to compete with the big sites in terms of value offering, I agree. But, I have to at least try to make it worthwhile and so that’s why the small subscription just helps me to monitor site interest.

 

For 2020 my priority is to keep the site moving forward with new features that Invision are developing which can be useful to our membership. I am trying to improve the storage by incorporating Amazon S3 Here, but my word, that is a complicated process! If I do succeed in getting it right I will be able to offer the kind of storage scale that other bigger sites do. I’m working on it. 

 

Of course I would love to hear ideas from other members on how to improve FZ and what is important to you. 

[Dallas]

FYI, we are renewed until June 13 2020. The renewal of the license means that we get spam protection against bots and other nasties, plus we also get new features of the software and of course support for when things go wrong. 

 

I'd just like to publicly thank those members who donated and who also subscribed to the site either monthly or annually. Your contributions make a big difference.