I HAVE NO PROBLEMS WITH ADS ON THE SITE AS LONG IT'S STAYS FREE
AND I DON'T HAVE TO CLOSE THE SITE JUST LIKE ON NING/SOC.

Our group has been here almost 6 months now. For what is available here, I think that is an extremely cheap pricing plan.
Just have some questions though -
Q1 - Will there be some tools for us to monitor the storage and bandwidth of our group?
Q2 - Will there be a group admin feature that alows us to control the display of ads and make payments?

For the Premium Support, will there be a best practice support ticket system rather than the posting of support Forum messages?

I signed up Grou.ps not so long ago to use with my students (yes, a non-adult site and for educational purposes) because you advertized the following (it's still there today as I'm writing this - http://grou.ps/introduction.php):

>Totally Free
>GROU.PS is totally free! You pay nothing. Plus, we don't force you to show your community our brand and/or our ads.

>No Branding
>Your site is yours. GROU.PS doesn't bug you with its branding on your site. Your site looks totally yours, no compromises. If you want, you can use your own domain for free.

>Everything is Unlimited
>We offer virtually unlimited disk space to use. You and your members can upload as many videos as you need!

>No Ads
>It's your site, so it should be your decision to show ads or Not. GROU.PS comes with No ads. But you are free to put yours.

How can you go from "Totally Free (with No Ads)" and "Everything is Unlimited" to "free for 3GB storage/30GB bandwidth" OR "free with ads"? And the service is still in Beta with LOTS of bugs (just look at the support forum).

I don't mean to sound ungrateful (because I AM using this service for free right now), but I can't help feeling I've been misled. Had I known earlier about this storage/bandwidth limit and pricing plan, would I have chosen this buggy, beta service over other existing services that are more mature and refined? Once I exceed the 3/30 limit and have to display Grou.ps ads, what differentiates this service from the likes of Ning or KickApps? Granted, many free services display ads from the beginning, but then again I wouldn't have to suffer so many annoying bugs/glitches everyday that are not dealt with by the support team fast enough... So now, to hear about the pricing plan...

thats fair

I'm agree with Demouser. I also chose this site for educational use specifically because you advertised it as...

>Totally Free
>GROU.PS is totally free! You pay nothing. Plus, we don't force you to show your community our brand and/or our ads.

>No Branding
>Your site is yours. GROU.PS doesn't bug you with its branding on your site. Your site looks totally yours, no compromises. If you want, you can use your own domain for free.

>Everything is Unlimited
>We offer virtually unlimited disk space to use. You and your members can upload as many videos as you need!

>No Ads
>It's your site, so it should be your decision to show ads or Not. GROU.PS comes with No ads. But you are free to put yours.

I've been struggling to get my CNAME configured to be able to use a custom name (http://ncsm09.info instead of http://grou.ps/mathedleaders/) without success. Will I now have to pay for this to happen? That's also disappointing.

I like the model that the folks at http://wikispaces.com uses... totally free and ad-free wikis for educators!!

The pricing does sound fair, if only the network was reliable.

As with everything that starts for free, eventually you will have to pay..

The prices are reasonable, but i advise Grou.ps to get rid of all the bugs first, give a quicker service when there are bugs.

I posted some bugs onthe forum yesterday and still no answer. When i pay for something then i think there should be an accurate service within a couple of hours. So members dont have to wait when - for example - we can not post comments and change our profiles... etc. etc. etc.

3 GB is still A LOT... most webservices give about 500 Megabyte with a simple start up plan and you pay at least 25 dollars a month for that. So 3 GB is ok when there is no advertising. I dont mind advertisements also.

But, i AM surprised by the certain change in direction. AGAIN we are lured in by a service that at FIRST shows us a pretty face and when we are finally addicted to it, we have to pay because we are used to it.

Well, before i am going to pay i want a BUG FREE system that doenst have as many errors as we have to endure here in grou.ps.

I think grou.ps is VERY unready for a final release... VERY unready because the system is yet too instable.

And we need better features and the things i have suggested on the forum previously this week... Better profiles architecture and SOOO much more BEFORE i am going to pay a THING!

I experimented with the system, it;s fun, but i think i am also going to leave again... :(

For the time being, i will not recommend grou.ps to anyone. There are too many bugs and the staff is too slow with answering questions and bug reports.

Thanks,
Zohra

everyone needs to make money , adds are fine with me , but i dont visit my own site very often because its slow , embed codes are missing on all the videos so you cant share them on other sites , i would love to know how to turn off new member emails , at ning i had 30,000 members i dont even know how many members i have here because until the site works it dont interest me , i sure most people who join don't come back ! . don

I have a mixed feeling of this new pricing plan.
First off, it is good to see the long term future of the Grou.ps cuz I was first worried about the sustainability of the site without any monetizing plan. Like Mr. Barlow has mentioned, I am curious to know
1. whether we can monitor the storage and bandwidth
2. control over the way the ads are displayed and the rejection of some ads
3. how many ads are we supposed to show
4. whether the storage and bandwidth will be unlimited once we allow the ads
5. will allow adult content FOREVER and will never fail to live this promise like the way u fail for "forciing ads and keeping it free"

However, the way that Grou.ps initially advertise really bugs me and I felt misled because it contradicts your own promise as it will be free forever and that it will not force to show advertisements. It make me feel skeptical of the credibility of Grou.ps and worried Grou.ps might change the rate and rules very often. If Grou.ps has initially advertise this way, i will not have any problem dealing with the ads.

PS. Please fix the bugs if you are serious about monetizing with your product. Since it was free, I am always hesitant to complain about what you have to offer. I have some sites making money out of it and as an entrepreneur, I have to satisfy the customers in order to get profit in return.

I am fine with displaying GROUPS ads on my site. I still have unanswered questions.

1. Do we have any control over the placement of the ads?
2. If this is still in the planning stage, I would like to offer a suggestion. Take a section of the top or bottom for GROUPS ads and let the remainder of the pages stay as is. That will allow us the ownership that we believed to have when starting our group.
3. I also agree with other users that if we are expected to pay for the service, the service needs to improve. My group has suffered along with many with the reliability issues. Are there plans in the works to increase speed and reliability? As it stands today, I will close my group before I pay anything. I mean no disrespect but I don't see the value in paying for unreliable service.

Hopefully, as others have mentioned, this means bigger and better things for GROUPS!

I am fine with displaying GROUPS ads on my site. I still have unanswered questions.

1. Do we have any control over the placement of the ads?
2. If this is still in the planning stage, I would like to offer a suggestion. Take a section of the top or bottom for GROUPS ads and let the remainder of the pages stay as is. That will allow us the ownership that we believed to have when starting our group.
3. I also agree with other users that if we are expected to pay for the service, the service needs to improve. My group has suffered along with many with the reliability issues. Are there plans in the works to increase speed and reliability? As it stands today, I will close my group before I pay anything. I mean no disrespect but I don't see the value in paying for unreliable service.

Hopefully, as others have mentioned, this means bigger and better things for GROUPS!

I fully set up my site, but held off on inviting any members for just this reason. I just KNEW that something like this was gonna happen; it's just too bad that it happened so quickly...before the site even functioned properly!

IMHO, there are way too many bugs and things not working for this to be implemented right now. And honestly, I feel very very misled. Don't think I'll be pursuing this any further. Ning and SocialGo pulled the same nonsense on its members and I left them immediately. I simply cannot do business with someone I cannot trust to keep their word. BTW, the main page STILL advertises that everything is free and unlimited.

Bottom line, I feel that this was a very sneaky thing to do...especially so soon, when the site is soo slow and there are so many bugs and glitches. No way I'd pay for something that doesn't even work in the first place. I am very bothered by this sudden change, and at this point, I don't feel like I can trust this service. I wonder what the next change will be...Probably something like: "Sorry, adult sites are no longer allowed." Wouldn't surprise me.

Now, if the bugs were fixed, and if I knew that adult sites wouldn't someday be threatened, then it would be a totally different story. But as it stands right now, I am very let down over this sudden change in direction, and don't feel I can take the chance of growing a community that may one day no longer exist. If someone breaks one promise, you can bet your boots that they'll do it again and again and again. If changes like this can occur when the site is so new and unstable, just imagine what can happen when the service is viable and popular. Like with Ning and SocialGo, the only choice may be to leave indefinitely.

I certainly hope that GROU.PS can rise above, offer a great service, and stick to their word. In the meantime, I remain hesitant to work on this any further.

difficult to say anything..... on one hand.... m feeling ok...... on the another hand.... m feeling bad....

downloading speed is very slow...... it shud definitely be increased a lot......... if u wanna network owners to pay......
I have said my friends to stop working on this site... cuz i wud like to wait and watch....

I am not surprised.

I was excepting this and I really don’t oppose it.
Neither the fee for the group owner or the option to have no fees but accepting ads in the group.
How else would grou.ps manage to have an economy for the further development and maintenance.

But there is still need to be work done for stability and functionality

When grou.ps still was quite new (and all free) I even suggested a “plan” with that both group owner and grou.ps could benefit from

In short it has 3 “payment options” for the group owner to chose from:

1. Free with ads (profit sharing from ad profits with the group owner)
2. Fee for the group owner
3. Fee for members in the group

For option 3 there could even be a “Try-IT-Before-You-Buy-IT” time for new member selectable from 0-30 days
During that period (from registration date) the group would be fully free for that member
(0 = no free time at all)

I also suggested an affiliate program that both grou.ps and Group Owners could benefit from.
That means even if a Group Owner choose “lowest” option (# 1) he/she would be able to make some money just from requiting new Group Owner to start their own groups.

In full my suggestions was like this. Modifications can of course be done

-------------------------------------------
Suggestion to monetize more both for Group Owners AND Grou.ps.com and STILL keeping groups that is fully free

The more I look around and work with grou.ps the more potential I can see it has.

One thing I don’t understand is how you finance it as it is both free to start a group and free to be a member and without ads.

Do you plan to introduce charges or ads you control in the future when you get more groups and more developed applications? And if a Group Owner wants ad free he can pay for that. Or will it remain free and without ads you control in the future too?

In that case I have a suggestion that could be a win win for both you and Group Owners and still have the possibility to have fully free groups. This suggestion could actually be used already now even if you do not plan to charge the Group Owners or have ads in the future. This suggestion would make it possible to have both free groups that are free from your ads and groups with charge for some or all of its content. This could attract BOTH the freebie users and professional users that would like to use the group for business.


It could work something like this:

When a Group Owner creates a group you let him decide if the group will be free or if it is a group with “considerable” value in and then with charge for one or more of the modules for the members.


Free or charge for group members

The Group Owner can then chose from 3 options when starting up or updating the group.

1. The group will be fully free (as now) for members (with ads – preferably profit sharing with group owner from the profit from ads within each group)
2. The group will be fully free (as now) for members (ad-free and group owner pay a fee)
3. The group will have charge for some (selectable) content (any modules/extra pages) for the members. And a selectable “Try-
IT-Before-You-Buy-IT” it for the member.


Time periods and cost for each time period

If it is with charge for group members you can then let the Group Owner chose one, more or all “time increments” and set the cost for each increment. This is done with check boxes to tick select for time and a form field to fill in cost for each increment. That membership cost will be shared between the Group owner and grou.ps (50%-50%)

For example: Any combinations of the following options could be checked and set
• 1 month for $ 10
• 3 month for $ 25
• 6 month for $ 45
• 12 month for $ 85
• Lifetime for $ 150

There could also be a possibility for the member signing up to chose to set that the fee can be rebilled. That means when the time paid for is over the member is automatically rebilled for the same time/amount as member paid for. IF the member is not rebilled he will still have access to the free pages. He can change the rebilling option at any time. Rebill should however be selected as a default when paying and the member have to uncheck it to not be rebilled.

In the admin of each of the modules you let the Group Owner chose if that module is free or if it is a part of the charged modules. If the Group Owner makes an extra page there should also be an option to set if it should be free or to be in the category of modules/extra pages that are charged for.


Try-IT-before-you-buy-IT

At set up of the group you could also let the Group Owner chose if and for how long after the membership registration to the group all modules are free of charge. This to let new members have a “try it before you buy it” time.
For example: An option for number of days is written into ONE form field. The Group Owner can set whatever time he likes

• 0 is no free time
• 10 is 10 days free then charge as above for modules that the Group Owner chosen as a part of the pay-package
• 30 is 30 days free then charge as above for modules that the Group Owner chosen as a part of the pay-package

In admin the Group Owner should at any time be able to change from free to charged. And from charged to free. And change any payment level setting and combinations and the free time setting. However there should be a “warning” that it is NOT recommended to go from charged to free. And not lower the price, at least not to often. This as it could confuse members and upset members that have already paid or paid a higher price.


Pay for access and payment info to members

When a group member try to access a charged page/module after the free time at registration is over he gets a message that this and maybe some pages is charged and to have access to them he have to pay for that access. And there should also be a “Pay now to get access” link/button to a payment page that you control.

For charging fees from group members you could choose and integrate a “simple” solution like PayPal and/or any other solution that is simple to use for the members signing up for a group that have charged content.


“Promotional free time”

Maybe you could also have an option for a temporary “Everything free for all members” setting that a Group Owner can set to the number of days up to 10 and not more often that 4 times in a year if he for example likes to do a promotion for some reason.


Why all this and who can have use of this?

The Group Owner might have a group that he consider is of high value for the members.

It could be a closed group with moderated membership for a sports club where the group fee is also the membership fee for the physical club and all pages except start page are charged.

It could be a photographer who likes to share his forum and wiki free but charge for pages with his own photos.

It could be a rock band that like to have a kind of fan club and share photos and everything else for free but charge for a “download music page”.

It could a company that has online education that they want to sell on line. They might want to share photos and videos for free but charge for forum and wiki and extra pages with educational material.

Or it could be just any type of group where a Group Owner put in a lot of work with content, administration and expanding the group with new members and like to make some profit from that work.

And the list can go on.

It would be at bit like a web shop for “intellectual/electronic products/commodities”. But you would still be able to have BOTH fully free groups AND groups with charge. The possibility to charge members for some or all content could attract professional users as Group Owners. I have a friend that sell educations and have been looking for this type of solutions for doing it effectively and “cheap” on line.


How can YOU at grou.ps (besides Group Owners) benefit from this?

You and the Group Owners could share the revenues from fees that the members are charged. Let’s say 50% to you and 50% to the Group Owner. Even small monthly charges for the members can mage quite big money for both you and the Group Owner. And with some of the money you make you can still afford to have free groups and develop the applications.

If the Group Owner has a group with highly valuable/exclusive content with high fees for the group members the Group Owner can contact you for to make an agreement for other revenue sharing %

What if you in the future should change mind and decide to charge Group Owners for groups or have them free with ads controlled by you that you make money from?

Well there can be different options for the Group Owner when he creates the group that both can benefit from in that case too:

• Just like in the suggestion above the Group Owner could chose to have the members pay a fee for modules/pages selected by the Group Owner and share that fee with you. In that case you could set a fix level for lowest fee for each increment of time and if the Group Owner would like to he can set any amount above that and still set what combinations of time increments to use. Free days can then only be set up to the maximum days that you decide and use “Promotional free time” up to the maximum days that you decide.

• The Group Owner could chose to let you charge him directly to have the group free from your ads but still run it free for the members or, if he chooses, to have his own ads (Google ads or other ads) at start page, sub page or extra pages.

• The Group Owner could chose to run the group free and accept that your run the ads controlled by you.


Affiliate program

On top of that you could also introduce an affiliate program:

All Group Owners would automatically become affiliates. And the group page has a uniquely personalized code “Start your own group”-link somewhere on all pages that links to your corporate web page http://grou.ps/ or to the create group page https://grou.ps/create_group_wizard_new.php?step1=custom where the person who clicked the link can sign up to start an own group and is then also assigned as a “recrutiee” to the Group Owner that “recruited” him.

Anyone independent person can also sign up for your affiliate program without being a Group Owner

Both have access to affiliate banners and links that are personally uniquely code for him that he can put up on any page of his choice that links as above.

From the part of the revenue that YOU make from the recruited group (both from fees and ads income) that is a result from that recruit you pay let’s say 5-10% to the recruiting Group Owner of affiliate. From the ads you might have in a fully free group you can also share the revenue you make with the Group Owner who have the ads in her group with let’s say 5-10%. That could mean that from ads revenue you pay 5-10% to the affiliate and 5-10% to the Group Owner of that free group.

For pay out of his/her part of member’s fees or commission to Group Owner or commissions to affiliate the best would be to have a number of solutions to let the member chose from.

• Neteller https://www.neteller.com/
• PayPal https://www.paypal.com/
• Prepaid cash card https://www.first-pay.com/
• Bank check sent
• Wire transfer
• You could charge some for the 2 last as it requires more job from your side.

Personally I prefer and use Neteller as it is “of shore” and also have their own debit card connected to the account (it is also possible to withdraw from Neteller to any bank account Worldwide)

All these can of course be refined and improved but I hope you like the basic ideas of these suggestions.

Best Regards
Janne

I like grou.ps - it's honest, it's responsive, it works and it sticks to it's agenda re pricing and free options. Can't fault it. (I'm a former Ning and Socialgo site owner)

Same here... No problems with adds as long as the service remains free and open source as promised right from the beginning.
---Plus--- This move be used to enhance Grou.ps to the level of other similar networks like Ning.

More over my network is a no-profit educational network... Can I be exempted. :)

I have a suggestion for the ads. Currently, my group is an adult gay mens group but we have ads that are adult in nature (which is okay) but are geared toward straight men. Is there any way that we can better describe our groups to you so that the ads better match the content? I am starting to get complaints from my members regarding the content of the ads.

How do I pay for the premium support and extra storage capacity

How do i make payment to grou.ps for the exceeding limit?
I still wan my adsense ads to be posted here rather than group.ps
ads
Thanks

I do not complaint for the pricing plan, but I do complaint because you did exactly the same thing you say you would never do, you misled all of your users! You could have said from the very beginning that this service wasn't gonna be free forever, but for a limited period of time and for limit storage and bandwidth!

Anyway, you already announced the plan and I am pretty sure you won't change it, so all we can do is to try to keep under those limits or allow showing ads in our sites, but not before having some questions answered:

1. will you implement any tool that allows groups owners know and manage the amount of storage and bandwidth the group is using?
2. if a group exceeds that amount of storage and bandwidth, how would you implement the pricing plan? will you contact the group owner to let him know his limit was exceeded and that he needs to choose any of the two options, or you'll implement any at your own criteria? What happen if the owner does not want to pay or allow ads, would you shut down the group or block it so that when the limit is reached it is unaccesable? I mean, if the owner wants to keep his site free and ad-free too, can he do it? how?
3. will you keep your word in allowing adult content or are you going to change your policy regarding this, forcing owners of adult groups to pay a monthly feed or show ads?? PLEASE, ANSWER OUR QUESTIONS!

Some feel that you promised too much and now rescind. ("free," "unlimited") On the surface that might be true.
However, I find your pricing plan fair and very reasonable.
The real problem will come if you can not/will not stay with this pricing plan for long, and need to change from "reasonable".

I see that I am not alone in my views, as we all think, how to pay for something that has a lot of bugs?
Support remains deaf to users suggestions and submissions. I would suggest first to exit from Beta and then charging (as socialgo and ning did it).

Outside that I noticed that you have a problem with understanding and definition of words 'free' and 'unlimited'

In conclusion: Get rid of bugs > Create real support > Exit Beta > Start charging (if you have to) > with this money buy dictionaries and learn what means free & unlimited

No problems with adds as long as the service remains free and open source as promised right from the beginning.

I have np problems with the ADS. But ,what is the difference between grou.ps and others.As the Admins promised it should not charge now grou.ps users.

But ,you can do this --1) Encourage the users to promote grou.ps by paying commission or with affliates or offering the affliate features.

I strongly oppose with this decision as it leads to a negative impression on grou.ps motive. Now more than 95 % of the users opinion is against the decision.
So as i am the Great fan of the grou.ps i suggest you to immediatly take back this decision ,as it is against the promise of Admin --(>Totally Free
>GROU.PS is totally free! You pay nothing. Plus, we don't force you to show your community our brand and/or our ads.

>No Branding
>Your site is yours. GROU.PS doesn't bug you with its branding on your site. Your site looks totally yours, no compromises. If you want, you can use your own domain for free.

>Everything is Unlimited
>We offer virtually unlimited disk space to use. You and your members can upload as many videos as you need!
.......)

I expect the more replies from the users. My dear friends What you say ....?

For most people adds will be acceptable for their group. BUT, adult content groups will not have the option of adds instead of the $10 fee. As far as I know google are the leader in web advertising and if they are responsible for the advertising here then the adult content groups with adds will have to pay to remove the adds or be deleted. More than likely be kicked out altogether in the near future just like ning, payment or not.
I wonder if my adult group is over 3gb already....Mmmm.

Idon't mindpaying for a service like this, after all i am using discspace and bandwidth, but i feel we are mislead for a free service and now we have to pay.

by the way, the service sucks, i reported an issue about my network almost two weeks ago now, and still the problem isnt fixed.

My members and i can not change our profiles, leave comments, videos get stuck when uploading and my members are complaignig they can not leave comments, how the hell could i rely in a system like this and having to pay for a system that doesnt work????

Will this fix the video issues?

ya i strongly agree on this it is dishonest and i did see on a few reviews on how many bugs there are but at the time i saw sick and also i have been to a few othere places and come accrost this one and i didnt know either but i was like who knows butur guys are very right i wouldnt pay for poor service and preformance it dont make cents at all no way now would you go out and buy software that is very buggy and unstable and pay $50.00 to $100.00 i personally wouldnt and i wouldnt even put it in my machine its a total waste and i have posted a few problems my self and only one thing has been fixed and was the chat thing and i still cant chenge the profile picture and the wikie thing still dont work at all and its anoying me and im goldin off of addin new stuff all cause of it and honestly i can see there side they are farily new and small but this its too much of a demand if they dont corrnate this better theyll burn them selvs out i can say that my self this is all new to my even though i have had a little site but this is a big change and i did this my self for a while and it is alot of work and time and now i have 2 others helping i know its small but i can tell you that when u have more it does help and u need coverages cause u cant always be there and i konw it i have a job and manage this so when im not there i have them manage it and yea u have to corrnate to so as i said payin is ok as long as they dont do silly things like remove essential features that really sgould be basic like social charging to use the editor and thats nuts. well enough said if any of you guys would like to reply to this please do so.

buster

I really wonder why the grou.ps staff is not mingling in this discussion and doesnt give ANY reply.

I reported teh bugs on my networks now WEEKS ago, how can i ever rely on a system like this to host my services and no one ever solves my problem.

No, grou.ps, if you want to make serious money, then you need to answer more accurately and solve problems people have on their networks!!!

My members are complaigning they can not change their profile nor leave comments on peoples walls and change their profilephoto...

When will my problems be solved?

http://grou.ps/sexnet is my network

Admin
How may i get the premium support or pay the payment monthly for xtra storage and bandwith

Thanks