I just thought of something, though me trying to explain it would be hard to do, there's a thing called Squidoo (its a website), basically its free to set up from my understanding, and have like a paypal running to collect the money. You make a page(which I'll call a billboard) about a topic, say drawing, you describe it a bit and post pictures and links to places of interest of possibly buying stuff related to the topic. Getting a person to go through that particular link and buying something from the site not only generates sales for the site but a bit of it goes back to the billboard maker. Every little bit counts right?

It would ruin gold economy, I think. Cis are already all expensive and if we have to buy each pose from users that donate, I would just give up on it as a whole. I think many people, donating or not, would eventually quit and donators could just give up donating. Some, for example, also can't spare much more than five dollars each month.

Wow. I don't know what to say... I would hate to see mene shutdown. I like this site better than all the others I have seen.
I should get some of my farmville addict friends to join here and spend there money on something better. : )
I'm really sorry though. I wish I could donate.

I'd make it a point to donate more... If Inso goes and beats up the people at Paypal (incognito, of course) and makes them 'verify my bank account', I'll donate much more. :ninja:
Online is much easier than the money orders I ususally send, for me and juru XD

A cash shop can only help so much. It's not going to save the site alone. : /

I agree that you guys need to draw in a new demographic--but... you've been trying to do it for ages and it hasn't quite worked. Can you maybe expand and create more normal-looking outfits/hairstyles for our avatars? Since most people here are teenagers, try getting more Abercrombie & Fitch or Hollister-style clothes. I mean, when you release more steampunk and lolita sets, you're really not opening yourselves up to a new audience. I think a lot of normal items, like mp3 players, skateboards and swimsuits would be really helpful in getting more users who like more 'normal' things and want an avatar that represents themselves.

Also, is there any way that you rearrange the main forum and make the site more appealing to people who aren't into anime? Right now, our main forum has a lot of fanfiction, role-playing, art shops, (and of those, most topics are anime/fantasy based). Almost everyone on this site is into anime and it's rather off-putting if you don't like it. I mean... even our artwork for the monthly CI's is anime-style, which isn't really too popular anymore. Same goes for our lovely pixel NPC's... they're all rather similar to generic anime characters (lol, even our NPC Magnus falls into the Japanese anime stereotype of black men, ie. the tough bodyguard-like character).

I might also be better for you guys not to alienate the user base that you currently have. I don't mind the cash shop--I think it's a great idea for the site (well, as long as you promise to run it the way you've suggested so far). But... at the same time, I know a lot of people hate the idea. Maybe it would be better to simply release a third CI each month for another $2.50?

And... don't take this the wrong way, but maybe the staff needs to back off the site for a little bit? Some people are arguing that the staff is ban-happy and/or that you guys help yourselves out (such as being more likely to get the rare NPC items). Seriously... there has been so much tension between the staff and various users since I first joined in 2007 and I still feel like it's very much there. If the admins could separate their own private accounts and their admin accounts--I feel like there would be far less personal attacks and less problems overall. I suppose it seems like I'm going on a tangent here--but it's very off-putting and many good users quit when someone gets banned or if a fight breaks out and is handled the wrong way (i.e. in public on our forums).

Finally, activity is maybe the biggest problem on the site. Everyone is more active during events and when people obsess over the site, they're probably more likely to donate (I don't know if this is true, but it makes sense to me). If someone cares a lot about the site and is really into it, they'll be questing more actively than if the site has been dead for a month and they haven't been interested in it at all. Sometimes we go from month to month without even a single announcement. Seriously... that's just boring. I think we need to get some staff-run mini-events and contests... they're not hard to run and won't cost anything. You just need to put forth the time and effort to run them.

I know that you guys won't do gift boxes and we've come out with the NPC items instead. But gift boxes on gaia encouraged posting because you would randomly get the item when you were active on the site no matter what... with the NPC's, people will post more only when the NPC's themselves are active. And like our site events, sometimes I feel like I don't see them for an entire month. D:

I know you guys have done a lot of work behind the scenes (we did just get a new game), but I think your priority should run with more community-based mini-events and forum activity boosters. It's great that there's a new game, but it seems like user reactions were a bit mixed and even if someone does play the game, it doesn't encourage any forum activity. If anything, our arcade games have helped make our site less active because now most users earn their gold without contributing to the site's discussions.

So... yes, you need to evolve. But as the site is now, you're definitely not going to be able to attract a new audience. I mean... don't even waste money advertising right now. Even if someone outside the anime crowd would be interested in our site after seeing an ad somewhere else, they'd lose interest after exploring here for a little bit. If you want to cater to a new audience, I think you need to make some fundamental changes to the site itself and raise it's activity levels. Only then can you focus on advertising/attracting new members.

I hope Gaia and Menewsha don't die T.T
All....my friends there...would be gone from me! T.T

For them to verify your bank account, Rainbows, PayPal sends you a statement in the mail with two temporary charges to your account. They're in the few cents range - typically nothing more than 20 or 30 cents each. Anyway, all you have to do is look at the bank statement, and type in the amounts of money charged to your bank account on PayPal. It's their way of verifying your address, so as not to have some random person's bank account hijacked without them even knowing. :)

I wish that I could donate also, but we're on a fixed income.

If advertising would help, then I would not be against it.

This is very depressing but inevitable news. All types of economical endeavors have ups and downs and sometimes the downs are too low to climb out of again... I hope the fact that so many different people are emotionally invested in Mene we stand a better chance than something purely financial where money spent and earned is all there is to care about. Mene is a community and people will fight harder to save a community than a company. There's a difference, and I hope we users see that Menewsha is something unique, wonderful and 'best in show' and make our best efforts to help ^^

For myself, I can say that I will be more in control of my own economy from August of (and have more of an economy to speak of), and will be able to donate regularly (at last)... I just need to get my own computer back first... (it chose the perfect time to go broke on me, and I'm currently sitting in a usually very croded kitchen typing this... I don't like have people watch my every step online, at least not when it's my judgemental parents who can't believe I actually care about this stuff....)

Facade; I know, but I still haven't gotten the statements online. xD Do they usually take more than their stated two to three business days? I'm setting it all up with my bank account online.. @_@ They never mentioned sending things through the post.
This is kind of off-topic, so I'm going to go check my bank, and see if anything's happened.. >w>"

awwww i re3eally hope Mene stays alive for the fact that it helps me make friends all over the world and even close to home even if i do not know where they live....it helps nice people met other nice people i really do hope it lives

This site can't disappear! This has been my home since it opened up!! I'll try and start donating if I can. If there is anything else I can do, please tell me so I can try too!

...OH! I just thought up a semi-marvelous idea, Inso. I hope you read this. ...I know there's so much to read in this thread already, but yeah. :rofl:

A roleplaying forum I frequent (which has been open since 2004, and has been running solely on donations since) has this counter up each and every month, at the very top of the site, viewable on every page. This counter is basically the current total of donations received (in $USD), out of the monthly server costs' total. For example, their measly server only costs $80 per month. So if it's July 15th and two people have donated $20 each, the counter at the top of the page will read: $40/$80. Simple as that.

Anyway, show us what is needed to cover the monthly fees of the site. Visually show us - daily. When someone donates, have it update instantly. Don't hide the truth from us; if we don't make the cap of what's required to keep the site running in one month, it'll be a clear sign of the ill fate ahead of us Menewshans.

I know this doesn't seem like a way to alleviate the stress on your wallet and whatnot, but it would definitely motivate people to donate, to see astronomical numbers like that on a daily basis, everywhere. Just my opinion, though. :)

(Also shouldn't bee hard to code!)

Siri, I agree, the staff has been one the reasons I stopped donating. I would donate from 10 to 20 a month, I like the site, and I wanted to support it. But when the staff started doing that, and being deffensive and attacking people, I stopped donating. I couldn't support that kind of behavior.

I agree with other parts of your too. It can get boring, not much encouragement to post and the fact it's mostly focused on anime and sub-genres in that field make it hard to get into. I still find it off putting there is nothing there for american comics.

I've noticed most people here just talking about donating 5 something, for 2 items, that can be used multiple ways. While it may be off putting to some, it's still something to consider to change. Some business descissions are not what you want to make it. Adding something to encourage donating more or some kind of other incentive could help.

Thanks so much for this information. I hope the downward trend is simply a side effect of the overall recession, and will be turning around slowly as things recover.

I had a random idea last night that people should feel free to shoot down:

What if CIs continued being released in the months after their original month, but at a constantly increasing price? Say $5 for last month's CI, which isn't a huge amount to swing, but still more, making it accessible to people who missed out but still give preference to those who were around during its release. And a CI from, say, a year ago might cost $100, which would mean someone who really wanted to help the site could do so, and get a rare item in exchange.

I'd be curious to hear Inso's thoughts on this. I can understand if people are passionately in love with the idea that CIs are a status symbol of how long you've been around more than how much cash you've given to the site or how much you've quested for site currency.

Here's another idea that just came to me as I was sitting here: why not put a bar on the front page with the costs and how much has been covered this month? A lot of sites do that, and I personally find myself a little more impelled to donate when I know that a site means money.

I never looked at Mene as anime-related, it was something on it's own for me, but I suppose Siri has a point. I like mene's artwork, though, and the fantasy Cis we get, but maybe some more regular items would be nice, yes.

Bahh mene can't die!! T_______T

I kind of agree with Facade, that little bar really makes one want to donate. >o<;;

Yes, the counter bar is a nice idea.

If there was a counter on the site, I'd feel slightly annoyed and maybe more likely to not log on with it. Depends on how intrusive it is.

I do like the artwork here, but it does seem to be more focused on the fantasy/anime elements. Would be nice to have some more variety.

Well, not too huge, just somewhere in the header.

And maybe one fantasy-ish and one more regular CI? It would split up/go both ways then.

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From example, the backgrounds from June work for regular avvies already, too.

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If truthfully, I am very uninterested in items like rolling pins or aprons~ XD;

And actually, anime isn't getting less and less popular -- I was just at Anime Expo the other weekend, and anime is getting *more* popular. Perhaps just not with the generation who initially joined Gaia and Menewsha. But there were TONS of younger teenagers waiting in line for events, TONS of male otaku, TONS and TONS of people really into anime, willing to pay ridiculous amounts of money.

I mentioned in a post elsewhere that I was a bit dismayed to see how much advertising Gaia had at AnimeExpo -- three entire panels, their name was on the bag, and they took over the inside front cover of the program (or the back cover, can't remember). I don't know if that was a sign of desperation on their part, or simply an advertisement of size. But they were very much present, with every single person's bag of goodies saying "GAIA" on it.

Yes, not too huge for sure maybe something like this:

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I love fantasy theme, though a regular theme would be alright too.

I bet that bought them lot of attention. @_@'

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It could be even few lines longer, Dragoness. x3

The counter on the site I mentioned is in about size twelve Times New Roman font. :lol: Not big, let me just tell you!! :P
...But it should still be noticeable. And perhaps towards the end of the month, the counter can get noticeably larger. Not massive, mind you, but larger to signify, "END OF THE MONTH. NEED TO PAY BILLS. P.S. THIS MONTH'S CIs ARE LEAVING!"

:P