dw_news | Update: Seed Account Re-sale, Free Users + Custom Styles

Update: Seed Account Re-sale, Free Users + Custom Styles

Two things for you today!

Thing the first:

We have not been able to finish and fully test the new site functionality that enables people to purchase accounts without a PayPal account. Instead of finishing it up an hour before the first sale is scheduled and crossing our fingers that it works, we've decided to push the sale off another week.

The new time of the Seed Account re-sale is Thursday, May 14th, 9PM EDT and again at Friday, May 15th, 9AM EDT. In total 200 accounts will be available.

Thing the second:

People with free accounts have probably noticed that a few days ago we took away the Advanced Customization area of the site. (The pages that let you make a custom style.) We had never intended for it to be available unless you paid, and having it on was an oversight on our part. After we turned it off, we got to hear a lot of really good comments from people and we reevaluated the original decision.

We've turned it back on, but gave free users a pretty low limit on the number of styles you can create (1 custom style, up to 5 layers). Short story: you can once again go back to customizing and importing styles from other sites. Sorry for the trouble!

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omg thank you thank you thank you.

thanks so much for reevaluating your decision with the free accounts and styles! i'm so glad to see you guys listening to your users like this. we appreciate it.

Thank you for being nice to us users ^_^

Thank you for giving free accounts at least one custom style! ♥

Thank you so much! :)

Thank you for being nice. :)

Wow, that's really nice of you guys. :)

You guys are awesome ♥

What exactly is a seed account and how much are they?

Seed Accounts are Dreamwidth's permanent account. It has the exact same functionality and features of a Premium Paid Account and will never have anything extra, and they're $200.

It's really just for supporting the site for the first year, if someone's particularly interested in doing so.

Awesome, thank you! <3

Can all current users buy them?

Anybody can buy them, yes.

I have been up clicking tonight (in the UK) trying to buy one and JUST saw this. UGH!

Thank you for posting info about it and how much it costs. I would like to buy one for myself... when it is available, will it show up under paid accounts? Or will it be different link?

Is it possible to post a link to where it will be? Also what is PDT? Is that pacific time aka PST? Being an American in the UK, I have gotten myself all turned around in trying to sort out when I need to be awake to buy a seed account.

Any help in the right direction would be appreciated!

It will show up in the Shop, yes. You're in the right area, but the sale isn't until next week.

9PM EDT is Eastern Time, aka 0100 GMT on May 15th for the first sale, and twelve hours later at 1300 GMT for the second batch.

Thank you for the prompt reply... now I am really confused! I think this ENT bug is doing me in! I have been up since 2AM my time and I need to get back to sleep! I was a travel and tourism major when I lived in the states and we didnt use the EDT but EST and the like. So London time aka GMT it will be one am and one pm?

A friend said it was at two! I just need to get it sorted corretly so I dont miss out. I am definately buying one for myself! Will I be able to PURCHASE A PAID ACCOUNT for someone else at the same time (not necessarily a seed account) Or will it have to be two separate transactions?

Thanks again for the help. (again!)

GMT is not London time. GMT is GMT. London is on British Summer Time or something, I don't know. It's up to you to convert from GMT (also called UTC, if that helps you any) to your local time!

EDT is Eastern time in the summer, EST is Eastern time in the winter. So EST is GMT-5, and EDT is GMT-4.

Yes, you can buy several accounts in one order. For different users, for yourself, whatever! :)

It's like a permanent account, which means it'll never expire and you'll always have all the privilages that a premium paid account has at that moment. They're $200.

Wow, you guys are fast! Excellent ♥

A Seed account is a permanent (never expiring) Premium Paid account, intended to support the business and provide our intial year of funding. They cost $200 USD (the price of four years of premium paid service). We originally intended to sell 400 of them, which is what we estimated would be our costs for the first year of operation, but thanks to some bugs in the payment system, we decided to hold another limited sale for the people who wanted to get one and couldn't thanks to PayPal errors.

Thank you!

While we can create ONE custom style. If we delete that one, can we create another?

Absolutely. It's just a limit of one-at-a-time.

It doesn't seem to be that way at the moment. Even after deleting a previous a custom style (for a community, in this case) I still can't create a new custom style; I'm told I've reached my limit.

Just wanted to bring that to your attention, and to say THANK YOU. ♥

Please ignore the fact that I am apparently a huge dork. Either this issues been fixed (y'all are pretty fast ;)) or the site just needed time and my patience, as the style I created that wasn't showing up is now. ::g::

Edited 2009-05-07 16:46 (UTC)

I didn't do anything! Glad it's working now. :)

Re: Advanced Customizations, I'm really glad to see a viable option for us free users. The only reason I ever bought a paid LJ account was being able to customize my layout, and I was super excited to be able to do so from my free account here and then sad that the option literally was gone overnight. I'm one of the few who couldn't care less about having more icons and frills, I just want my journal to look the way I want it to, so thank you, thank you, thank you.

Yeah we had a pretty heated discussion about enabling this option for free users. It IS a popular feature, and it DOES drive paid accounts. We DO need paid accounts in order for Dreamwidth to survive, so it makes sense from a business perspective to make people pay for the pretty.

Time will tell whether or not this is a good decision for the business. It's certainly the best decision for the users, and we'll see how that plays out in the numbers over the coming months.

I can't even imagine the discussion; I definitely appreciate y'all being willing to wade through it and come out with an option that is user friendly. I know that, for myself, I plan to switch to a paid DW account in the next few months, and I feel really good about that decision because of things like the responsiveness about the customization area, getting an actual, thoughtful response from staff, and seeing how (relatively) smoothly the launch went. It's heartening as a user to see that there is a quick response when an issue arises and that you all haven't hesitated to say "Oops, this went wrong." Thanks again.

I really hope this doesn't hurt the uptake of paid accounts. Are you planning at the minute that this should remain permanently for free users?

Yes, we are -- see here for our reasoning. :)

i have the same question and concern. though i think once the style system is finished and more extensive and polished, people will be much less likely to use advanced customisation anyway as opposed to the css editor in the general customisation area. which, if i'm not mistaken, is already available to free users.

Yes, we plan for it to be permanent.

It may hurt the revenue short term, I feel it will make up for that long term through increasing people's happiness with the site. Happy people tend to stick around more, talk to their friends, and in the end I expect that to make up for any short term loss of paid accounts!

Also, we have a lot of really cool paid user features planned for the rest of the year, so we're going to have plenty of things to have people interested in besides pretty journal styles.

I want to weigh in on this: I bought my livejournal paid account in 2004 and have renewed it faithfully every year since. I had a free account for around a year before that. I paid for my account for three reasons:
1) I hated, hated, hated the limited customisation, and wanted the good stuff so I could have a nice journal
2) The extra icons, poll-making ability, and other sundry perks ARE nice to have around and I wanted them
3) The biggest reason: I found I was spending A LOT of time on that site, hours a DAY, and decided that if a site really was going to be worth that much of my time they'd be worth $25 a year, too.

I wouldn't continue to pay for lj if all of the same reasons above aren't met. I don't have a huge enough problem with lj's policies that I won't pay for an account anymore, because I still use it for a lot of things and spend a lot of time on it.

Basically, I don't know if I want to pay for a dreamwidth account and a livejournal account unless both of them are really worth it to me. If I don't spend any time on dreamwidth, I don't really want to pay for the service. But if I end up spending more time here than on lj, I might just go for a paid account here and let my lj account go back to being free.

It all depends on how things go here and at lj.

tl;dr: for me, it's not just about the perks, but the site itself. So yes, if you guys are awesome enough, I might pay for an account and not just to get the unlimited customisation ability. :) I can of course only speak for myself.

So to follow up on what

mark said, everyone should encourage people to buy paid accounts so that we can continue to offer this feature. ;)

I know one user doesn't make all that much of a difference in the long run, but I can at least say that I intend to stay here and keep paying, this officially convinced me. :)

Ditto that. The features of a paid account came in at a far second for me... I just really want to support the site.

I'm starting to wonder if you guys sleep. I just responded to Mark, and I do plan to move to a paid account before the year is out, and this is one of the reasons. You seem to be actually listening to users and responding in sane and helpful ways, and I'll definitely be encouraging people to support DW because of that.

I have the worst case of Non-24-Hour Sleep-Wake Syndrome I've ever encountered anywhere -- my sleep/wake cycle runs over about anywhere between 36-48 hours -- so my 'day' does not concide with anyone else's definition of the word. :)

You are the only person I have ever met who has even heard of non-24-hour sleep-wake syndrome. I have more problems with delayed sleep phase syndrome, but given my penchant for 28+ hour days (when I'm not trying to twist my sleep schedule into something work-friendly, that is), I am at least familiar with the concept of non-24-hour schedules.

And in keeping with the topic of the post, thank you guys so much for adding in the advanced customization options to those of us with free accounts. To be honest, the lack of customization as a free user greatly irritated me and was one of the biggest things keeping me from buying a paid account. Now that I have more abilities as a free user and have seen how Dreamwidth responds to its customers, I am seriously considering upgrading when I receive my next paycheck. =D

Back in my earlier days, I could hold myself to a 24-hour schedule if I tried really hard, as long as it was nightshift. Much of my personal work history can basically be explained by "every time I tried to hold down a 9-5 job, I quit before they could fire me for oversleeping all the time".

And we will cheerfully and happily take your money. ;) (Okay, okay, and bust our asses to give you kickass service for it. But you can feel free to imagine the little happy chairdance I do every time someone makes a payment. Because I totally do.)

Dude. Awesome. :D
/utterly ineloquent.

You guys ♥♥♥♥♥.

While I never had a problem with that option being turned off, I must say that you're amazing for turning the option back on.

thank you for re-scheduling the sale. that's a call which (once again) confirms my confidence in you guys.

i personally don't care for css, because they break my brain, but thank you anyway for listening to user concerns.

I think I love you. Thanks

Oh wow!
THANKS!!!

I'd say that sounds fair very fair! Cheers, guys, I'm really happy that you took our concerns seriously. I'm definitely more optimistic about the site, now :)

You're awesome.

Thanks for the reevaluation!

We've turned it back on
You are amazingly generous. Go you!

Oh, wow, thanks!

I must admit that I wasn't really expecting free users to ever have Advanced Customization, so I'm kind of curious about the reasoning behind the change, other than the mix-up from a few days ago. Do you guys mind sharing when you get a chance? (Not that I don't appreciate it! Just curious.)

We thought about it, took a look at the numbers, took a look at the latest poll in

paidmembers, and decided to make the gamble that the people who'd be paying us just to create a style would likely also be the type who'd buy one month of paid time at $3 and then let it lapse. Looking at our numbers from the first week post-launch (which we'll be posting more about in

dw_biz as soon as we get our better stats module committed), we decided that even if half of the people paying us $3/1 month were doing so only to customize (not to create an account without an invite), it wouldn't seriously impact our bottom line.

Basically, we're gambling that the benefit we'd gain from people being happy that they could completely customize their journal here (thus making them more likely to want to fiscally support us down the line) would outweigh the potential loss of revenue.

I like this logic. And it does make sense. I was seriously considering putting $3 down just to do it before 'Fey gifted me 6 months, and I really want to start paying eventually.

Happy users make for better customers, and one off payments are probably more hassle than they're worth.

It also means I can post hacked layers to Layout comms without Liz growling at me because free users can't make use of my code, which is good. Now all I need to do is figure out how to use multiple sheets instead of putting it all in one big set of code.

the awesome thing is that this decision actually makes me WANT to buy a paid account over here :D

Now I can have the layout that is befitting for a King. ~~Almost~~.

Once again the Lich King is proud of you. Perhaps we should look into you all joining my legion aand scourge.

....but we have our own legion already. ;)

But you would be a great addition to the scourge armies I have already amassed......

Obligatory "yay for more Warcraft folks" comment.

You guys are absolutely fantastic. Here's to a good, long run. ♥ I just wish I could afford a seed account so I could support you; $200 bucks, though worth it imho, is hard to drop with the economy as it is 8( that being said, I do plan to keep up with my paid accounts so thank you thank you thank you, you are appreciated. ♥

It's actually better for us in the long run if people pay year-by-year! That way we get the payments spread out, not in a lump sum.

yeah! definitely, and I certainly appreciate being able to chose between the accounts and what have you; have you considered maybe a Premium 3-month for $10?

We thought about that, but decided that six payment options was probably enough -- research tends to show that the more payment options you offer people, the more confused they get.

(We actually may wind up doing away with the six-month option entirely, sometime down the road -- not soon, we have to see the data, but still -- because so few people choose it. The two most popular units of time are two-month and twelve-month.)

Mm, that makes sense! It's strange, you'd think people would do better with more options, but I'm not surprised they get confused. Haha.

Mm! I'll have to definitely get mine then, 6 month, soon. :0 I've been eying it. Thanks for responding. ♥ It's refreshing to see such friendly staff.

I like the 2 and 6 month chunks because they make it easy to gift more of my friends with paid benefits despite my fairly limited $$. But I can certainly understand your reasons for getting rid of an less popular option for the sake of streamlining the payment process.

Yeah, I do like the six-month option for that very reason -- the people for whom it's the right choice really like that choice. But it's definitely the least popular option, both the 6-month paid and the 6-month premium paid.

Time will tell!

Echoing

sofiaviolet, above! It's definitely easier to work the two- and six-month chunks into a budget. :)

.
That's good to know! I bought premium paid, just to support you folks (if I ever use more than 10 icon slots, it'll be a miracle, and I have no interest in email posting, etc, etc, etc). But I wondered if a seed account would help you more, and was juggling to see if I could afford one for my pending fic-account.

I'll buy a regular account for my fic, though; once the stories are posted, it won't see much activity except readers dropping by.
.

i have to say, this definitely pushes me one more step further in giving up livejournal completely (eventually), for you guys. one thing i've always been bugged by was livejournal not listening to us, the people who pay to keep them going. you guys just showed me with this, that you're listening.

thank you ♥

I was thinking the very same.

Same here. I've used their site for 7 years now, but feel more valued HERE over the course of a couple months than I did in my entire 7 and counting years with LiveJournal.

♥ Seconding

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