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

[mark]

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!

Comments

[mark]

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.

[sanders]

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.

[owl]

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?

[denise]

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

[jeeps]

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.

[mark]

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.

[dantean]

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.