@Iku- you scared us for life......how could we NOT remember.

Good point, probably better that way.

I'd forget if I could... but of all the things on the internet I've seen that was the most scarring...

You got to go where the money is. Surprisingly, it seems like there is no market for my Cecil Beaton style pigeon portraits :( :(

What exactly is a pigeon portrait?

Tasteful headshots... of pigeons.

Well I wonder why.....xP

What about the fact that Ikuto Akihiko Hasegawa:s current avatar has a green happy trail [shock]

hehe well at least it matches his AVI and 'squees' star got her ink blott

you bet, hey velvet 'waves'

I sort of like the idea of older items as recolors, as that would definitely bring in more revenue..

I do like the idea of evolving items. Oh, if only we could apply they little coding resources we have for that.

Seeing this makes some part of me want to start using my crafting skills to make a small etsy shop with Mene related things in it, and donate all of the proceeds to Menewsha. It's not like I don't have the time at the moment.

Also, if lack of members/users to donate is the problem, methinks I'll be finding some way to advertise at AB and CTCon this year. The folks there ought to make for a nice target demographic and tend to be pretty easily swayed by nifty things (and Mene is pretty nifty).

/wears Yumeh button
Everyone loves cats, right?...

For those going to conventions, it may be an idea to look into hold a fan gathering panel and use it to promote the site.* Users can work with staff to create an exclusive con item and have a little redeem code that can be PM'd to an NPC to Staff member to receive the exclusive item.

Users LOVE exclusive items. That should be common knowledge.

Anyway... even if you have something like:

Donate $25.00 and receive Vicki's hairstyle.
Donate $50.00 to have Mr. Mayor stand next to your avatar! (NPC Celebrity)

Or, even have users VOTE on a premium item that they want to purchase.

I may not have been on Menewsha for very long since my return, but I dunno... same song-same dance. Nothing new, or shiny, or whatever to show the users that they should invest in the site. MCs and the occasional premium item can only do so much. Why should anyone invest in a company, or site, when the employees are just going to do the same things over and over?

At best, Menewsha is like a lemonade stand. It's always there, selling the same old lemonade with an occasional buyer.

I care. I really do. I dunno... Menewsha just seems to be more of a hobby for Staff than a business, to make money on. That's a personal opinion of what I've seen.

*Otakon, for example, has more fan panels that anything else.

That's my thoughts. But I think the items should be in the shop for very little time at a time, kind of keeps the item rare and doesn't cause much deflation on the original items if not many of the recolored versions are redistributed.

It would be such a great idea. I don't mean how Gaia has become money hungry and everything costs a whole lot of money, but a simple new item that could cost the same as a CI, but evolves every now and then. I think the mystery would drive people to want it and to buy it.

Yumeh would be a great advertisement method in my opinion. Everybody loves a cat with an attitude. :P But that sounds like such a fantastic idea. The more people that know about Menewsha, the better.

I do love how Menewsha does keep its stand on being different and not turning into a money hungry and have advertisements on the sides slowing down the pages. But sometimes things do need to grow in order to grow. If that makes sense. x)
I think Mene needs to spice some things up a bit. Don't get me wrong, Mene Staff, I love how this site is. I just would love to see it grow and not have money problems. I would hate to see this site go downhill.

So that's why I believe bringing in new would greatly help. Yes, it costs money to bring in new items and new things, but it would be worth it. I guarantee the regular donators would donate a little more for new types of items. I donate every chance I get and if an evolving item was to show up in the store, I would be grabbing it as fast as I could. I LOVE items that have stories and it would be so neat to watch Mene items evolve and change. I bet it would be even more tempting to other users to donate.

The recolors would definitely help, in my opinion because I know there are many users questing for some of those rare and very expensive past CI's, me included. And if a recolor of one of those items was in the CI shop, I would definitely donate to get it. I would still try to get the original item though because I am a collector.. but either way, recolors on older items wouldn't decrease the values of the original because I think the originals will still be just as rare and wanted.

I agree, Velvet. Something to spice up the site is so desperately needed. An Evolving Item... would be something I know a few users would be excited over, and perhaps invest in. Hell, just pixel mods would be lovely. New hand gestures, leg mods, more wigs and eye mods... users would LOVE them.

There is a difference between being profitable, and being money hungry. Look at TinierMe (also check out SoliaOnline)- THAT is the definition of being money hungry. Gaia is trying to be profitable. Unlike Menewsha, they have hundreds of people to staff and a load full of other costs to keep the site running. Just because they have an average 15-30K users online at any given time, they may not be as "rolling in the dough" as users may think.

Menewsha NEEDS to be profitable. Not just some short sight quick scheme, but something long terms that can be a worth while investment.

If Menewsha is a lemonade stand, maybe selling some lemon pie with that lemonade will not only bring in the current clientele, but new ones because, hey, who doesn't like pie? :D

FYI: I bitch because I care. Simple as that. If I didn't care, I wouldn't offer my suggestions. I'm hard of staff because I know they can do better. I hold them to higher standards because I know they'll rise above them.

You CAN'T please everyone. So what a few users get butthurt over a feature. You're going to have that. However, if the majority of the users like, or even love, the new feature, I will call that a success.

I agree with the fact that change needs to happen in order to achieve growth, so that is not what I'm arguing here. HOWEVER, your statement that gaia isn't money hungry made me laugh a little just saying. I've been a gaia member since 2003, and I've seen it go downhill fast. They DO make money....they make money because the only way that you can get any decent items these days is by donating to the site. Gaia sold its soul to commercialism. *Shrugs*

I DO however understand the point you where trying to put across, You need to turn a profit in some way shape or form, but you need to do it in a tactful manner. There is a difference between being money hungry and needing to earn money.

EDIT: I am also a fan of Evolving items, just putting that out there.

Maybe Mene should just absorb wtfrpg and expand on the RP section of the site. D:

Ouch :( That's harsh, Senpai.

Well, it sounds harsh to me, I'm reading that from the perspective of you think we don't make enough effort, which hurts. But the simple fact of the matter is, for all of us other than Wishie, a hobby is what Mene is. A thankless, soul-destroying hobby some of the time, it has to be said. Sometimes/often I wonder if I'm completely crazy for still being here and doing all that I do, for nothing. But I love Mene -shrugs- so I do it.

But somewhere can't run like a business when it's run by volunteers in their spare time [sweat] I do see how it must look to you guys, and I honestly don't expect people to truly understand how it is for us. I wish people didn't have the impression that we were just coasting along and not making much effort (not saying everyone feels this, but some surely do). Just that we're stuck between a rock and a hard place, and threads like this really make that clear.

It warms my heart when suggestion threads like this are made, because it shows people really care. But the flipside of them, for me at least, is immense frustration. Frustration stemming from knowing you guys are gonna think we don't care because stuff doesn't get implimented, which couldn't be further from the truth.

Plus there's the simple issue of it being our job to think any suggestion through to it's ultimate conclusion, and consider every likely stumbling block along the way. Also, gotta bear this in mind guys, any suggestions that are made that are actually something that could be done, are 95% likely to be ideas we've already had ourselves. So they've already been through the thought mill and presented their own various reasons for why they might not work, or why they're just not something that's currently feasible, for more various reasons.

You know what one of our largest stumbling blocks is? And this is nothing to do with finances/coders/pixelists etc. as you might imagine It's, um...butthurtedness [sweat] We have an idea, we know a lot of people would like it, but we also know that a small but very loud contingent would absolutely hate it, and expend a whole lot of energy telling us and all the other users just how much they absolutely hated it, and us for implimenting it, how very awful we are, and how we deserve to die, etc. etc. Making Mene a pretty unpleasant place to be :( That kind of drama drives users away, usually for good it has to be said.

Our main issue for a long time though has been lack of enough people with disposable income. Mene used to give a misleading impression of solvency because of a very small amount of large donators, but when those people's lives changed and they no longer donated our income took a steep dive and has never recovered. We need more to donate so the site can grow; develop more features and so on. But we need more features to bring that growth in in the first place.

Yum yum, Catch 22, my favourite! [headdesk]

Now I've been sat here with this for so long that I've no idea if I actually answered anything! So I'm just gonna hit submit [sweat]

[hug] for Jelly. ;_;

other suggestions that people can't possibly get too butthurt about:
- more incentives for logging in daily

jellysundae:

I'm sorry your hurt, but that wasn't my intention. I'm but a simple user and can only make opinions based on what I see.