So I want to start a discussion about the membership base and the dwindling numbers.

 

I know we have less zeds on the road so the number of people visiting our club forums is decreasing year by year and that is fact.

 

First I would like to break down the user stats as follows :

 

Registered Users :- 221 ( user accounts that have not posted in 365 days but have logged in )

 

Standard Members :- 602 ( user accounts which will need to pay the £1 membership fee after 6 months )

Premium Members :- 152 ( user accounts which have paid the £20 membership fee )

 

Dormant accounts :- 8467 ( user account that has not been logged into in over 365 days )

 

 

First thing I would like to say is thanks to the 152 premium users; without you this club would not exist :thumbup1:

 

 

Now for the 602 users what can we do to improve the services so that you will in the future consider subscribing as a Premium User ?

 

There could be many of you that do not subscribe simply because you don't own a zed; which is fine.

 

Or

 

There could be many of you in circumstances beyond control and simply cannot subscribe.

 

I don't want this to be a fight into the justification of subscribing but rather a positive thread to direct us in getting a better conversion rate.

 

As the better subscribed user base we have then the more people will take part and feel part of a club.

Edited August 4, 20187 yr by JaiKai

I think it needs more promotion, many of the newer members I see have no idea about a subscription or the benefits. Apologies if this is already being done but as a Tapatalk user I barely browse on the website!

I come and visit forum daily but i very rarely post. I am not subscribed and i doubt i will, i was a subscribed member for two years and I just did not see enough value for me to to pay the fee. Mainly because of my location (Aberdeen), there are no scottish club meets which i would like to attend if there were any and coming to Coventry once a year would be a massive inconvenience. In my personal view subscription to forum is more or less is just paying for permission to sell stuff on the forum and allowed to attend meets and to represent club at the stands, yet again the numbers of zeds in uk are so small that i have seen a trend of allowing just registered members to join. In my opinion this £1 charge might drive some people away and isolate current members from the rest of the world.

Titus that’s not a Scottish problem though that’s a UK wide issue. There are too fewer meets and too fewer members who attend. There are various reasons for that and I’ve seen both sides of the coin. I appreciate Coventry is over 400 miles from you but it’s not an insignificant distance from me, in fact from some parts of southwest England it is over 300 miles. In a car that does 20 to the gallon and ownership base that isn’t compromised of millionaires that adds up. Btw meets are open to all, you don’t even have to be a member, it’s a free world...

I do agree with your main sentiment though. The fee regardless how small does not warrent itself. An ability to send PMs in a small community that many of us talk outside the forum anyways, makes that less worthwhile. The amount of items for sale on here, is a fraction of what’s available.

Forums in general not just this one are suffering and many are dying. Facebook is the reason, end of. To be a forum is not enough, you need to be a club and to be a club you need to do more than provide a forum.

I visit the forum most days too.

I don't use Facebook, maybe I should?

I like the meets & the tech stuff I get from here. I'm no mechanic but with some advice from the forum I could & have tackled jobs that would have cost a lot more! Eg changed a failed injector ( one you have to dremmel to get to the other screw)

That in itself is worth my subscription.

I don't think £20 is much to ask as a member.

Also I live down in Folkestone it's a 100 mile round trip to the M25 & civilisation :laugh:

I visit the forum most days too.

I don't use Facebook, maybe I should?

 

I don't use facebook either, haven't done for two years now. This is the place to learn about meetings, items for sale and general chitchat.

 

I like the meets & the tech stuff I get from here. I'm no mechanic but with some advice from the forum I could & have tackled jobs that would have cost a lot more!

 

Agree with this, I have developed my car skills from not knowing which end of the spanner to use to being able to replace my entire suspension thanks to this forum. In my mind the £20 is well spent, its 5p/day or the cost of a mcdonalds latte a month...

I see the problem you have and are trying to get an answer to, but, and this is part of the problem you are facing, at this time there has been 92 views and only four member replies.

 

Hate to say it but there is a general apathy here that is going to be a hard nut to crack, not having a go at the members but even tech threads now get very little interest. I believe we now have a different mindset of owners / members than 10+ years ago, those really were the golden years of the forum and the owners enthusiasm.

 

So much has changed in the car scene and how we view on line media, that the few long term members still here are the last of the breed and trying to meet the new memberships requirements will most likely need a total rethink for the forum rather than some small tweaks if indeed that is actually possible.

 

I can see how frustrating it must feel / be to have created and maintained the forum for so long to see it dwindling, I have taken defeat in tech thread interest now, maybe I am not seen the same by many now I semi retired from Zedworld, time was when my tech threads with pics could end up as a long multi layer thread full of interest over many days. That said many of the mysteries of the zx have long since been exposed / solved and can more easily be found by a simple Google search, which if course is instant and requires no input.

 

Interestingly I am also a member on the Australian zx forum and that has also seen a change over the years and for a little time went off line whilst they decided what to do, it came back with a fresh look and new format some time back but I see no change in their membership, and if anything is worse.

 

I do think it is time to accept that there is no simple answer, as I said above, I retired from the hands on part of the zx scene as many here know to go to sunnier climes, of course there was much more to it than wanting sun on my face 300 days a year. I created my own niche in the market and enjoyed doing so, many long hours and lots of £££ss I can tell you, it not easy, many tried and failed before and after me and proud of what I achieved, but I could see the writing on the wall for the amount of work that was going through / required for our very expensive to maintain unit was getting less and less. Due in most part to descending numbers, but also new owners not having to try so hard any more to find tech info out, and 5 or so years ago when a good tt could be found sub £2.5k there was a new younger less bothered owner circle emerging, that basically drove them like they stole them and when they broke, just scrapped them or sold for parts on e-bay, then move on to another type of car, they were not Zx enthusiasts they were just car nuts.

 

For me deciding to bow out while we were at the top of our game seemed the best way, unlike most other criminal zx specialist gone before and a couple after who bail out as the ship is sinking and take owners cash with them.

 

Anyhow I believe that same effect has now become relevant to the forum, and do I have an answer? well heck no ! I do hope you get some continued support but the general day to day threads and poor attendance to meets really are not looking great guys, wish I could help :sad:

 

Jeff

Edited August 5, 20187 yr by JeffTT

Just want to add one thing to this thread. We are more than a forum yes we started of as a forum but now we are also the only UK 300zx club. This forum is the face of our club were we chat, organize events and ask questions.

As for the two types membership is very hard to put your finger on why standard members dont upgrade I guess its for lots of different reasons for different people and I respect your reasons.

 

I am a very easygoing type of person and what will be will be. Yes I will try to do my best for the club and encourage members to upgrade but we will end up with a smaller club and the plus side of this is we will have a quality club with a very enthusiastic membership.

 

I also remember the good old days with lots of members and a very busy forum I also remember lots of Moderators trying to keep the peace with key board warriors doing their best to cause havoc. We dont have that now we dont even have any Moderators!

 

Just do your best for the club and I promise the club will do there best for you.

As a man famous for my sideways thinking / never did what I was told when I worked for other people, here's a quick thought for you.

We can't be the only forum that's dwindling in numbers, we might be the only ones being honest about it, but it is definitely happening elsewhere as well.

Would it be possible to link with other clubs, so your membership fee is still paid to your primary club, but your log in would then give you access to their club as well.

Maybe have a different tier where you don't quite get everything. So you stick with your primary club.

Obviously fees would have to be standardised across the participating forums ( so people don't sign with one because its cheaper), but that would immediately give you significantly more value for money for no further outlay. Most of us are car nuts not just Zed nuts I think.

I appreciate I'm just kicking an idea around and it may not be possible, but you never know.

To play devils advocate Gary, what exactly does the club offer to make it more than just a forum?

 

There’s a real lack of activity of late. Yeah there’s some high end OEM+ builds but not many. I can think of several active members who have disappeared of late. There’s lots of young single blokes with money in the car scene, they aren’t here though, they are spending small fortunes on Hondas and VWs, the Z32 doesn’t attract these people nor does it attract the wealthy collectors.

I don’t know the ins and outs of the forum nor the history. I do however injoy 90% of the posts here and most of those post aren’t in the “subscribed” members forum. To me there is little point to being a subscribed member, I only subscribe to show my appreciation for the forum and help it continue to run as I’m sure most of the subscribed members also do.

In my humble opinion this forum should be for paid up members only. As said by others we have a unique car and club. Take the bull by the horns and if people want to take advantage of the skills and knowledge of the people here then they will pay the small fee of £20pa to do so.

Just my thoughts and said with no offence to those who don’t pay the fee and enjoy this forum for nothing.

 

Cheers,

Chris.

I see the problem you have and are trying to get an answer to, but, and this is part of the problem you are facing, at this time there has been 92 views and only four member replies.

 

Hate to say it but there is a general apathy here that is going to be a hard nut to crack, not having a go at the members but even tech threads now get very little interest. I believe we now have a different mindset of owners / members than 10+ years ago, those really were the golden years of the forum and the owners enthusiasm.

 

So much has changed in the car scene and how we view on line media, that the few long term members still here are the last of the breed and trying to meet the new memberships requirements will most likely need a total rethink for the forum rather than some small tweaks if indeed that is actually possible.

 

I can see how frustrating it must feel / be to have created and maintained the forum for so long to see it dwindling, I have taken defeat in tech thread interest now, maybe I am not seen the same by many now I semi retired from Zedworld, time was when my tech threads with pics could end up as a long multi layer thread full of interest over many days. That said many of the mysteries of the zx have long since been exposed / solved and can more easily be found by a simple Google search, which if course is instant and requires no input from the

 

Interestingly I am also a member on the Australian zx forum and that has also seen a change of the years and for a little time went off line whilst they decided what to do, it came back with a fresh look and new format some time back but I see no change in their membership, and if anything is worse.

 

I do think it is time to accept that there is no simple answer, as I said above, I retired from the hands on part of the zx scene as many here know to go to sunnier climes, of course there was much more to it than wanting sun on my face 300 days a year. I created my own niche in the market and enjoyed doing so, many long hours and lots of £££ss I can tell you, it not easy, many tried and failed before and after me and proud of what I achieved, but I could see the writing on the wall for the amount of work that was going through / required for our very expensive to maintain unit was getting less and less. Due in most part to descending numbers, but also new owners not having to try so hard any more to find tech info out, and 5 or so years ago when a good tt could be found sub £2.5k there was a new younger less bothered owner circle emerging, that basically drove them like they stole them and when they broke, just scrapped them or sold for parts on e-bay, then move on to another type of car, they were not Zx enthusiasts they were just car nuts.

 

For me deciding to bow out while we were at the top of our game seemed the best way, unlike most other criminal zx specialist gone before and a couple after who bail out as the ship is sinking and take owners cash with them.

 

Anyhow I believe that same effect has now become relevant to the forum, and do I have an answer? well heck no ! I do hope you get some continued support but the general day to day threads and poor attendance to meets really are not looking great guys, wish I could help :sad:

 

Jeff

 

 

???

To play devils advocate Gary, what exactly does the club offer to make it more than just a forum?

 

There’s a real lack of activity of late. Yeah there’s some high end OEM+ builds but not many. I can think of several active members who have disappeared of late. There’s lots of young single blokes with money in the car scene, they aren’t here though, they are spending small fortunes on Hondas and VWs, the Z32 doesn’t attract these people nor does it attract the wealthy collectors.

 

The shows for one. Our shows are the best 300zx shows in the UK. Help. You will not get better help and advice than whats offered here. History. Years of old posts with "how to's" and advice. Friendship. Members here care for each other as in giving free parts and their time to help new members with personal visits at their home. For sure there is lots more but I would be getting boring listing them all and you know them anyway Steven. :)

As for making people like the Z32 300zx that is beyond my powers and the clubs.

The shows for one. Our shows are the best 300zx shows in the UK. Help. You will not get better help and advice than whats offered here. History. Years of old posts with "how to's" and advice. Friendship. Members here care for each other as in giving free parts and their time to help new members with personal visits at their home. For sure there is lots more but I would be getting boring listing them all and you know them anyway Steven. :)

As for making people like the Z32 300zx that is beyond my powers and the clubs.

 

 

For this club to keep going you need to reduce membership fee to £10 year £5 renewal or even free membership

 

There should be free private messages for everyone like on other forums

 

Sorry to say this but a lot of people don't want to pay for forums because of Facebook , you can buy sell and message on Fb for free and this is why I have seen other forums having to offer the same stuff.

 

Plus you can get tech info etc off google

 

Nico club

 

Aus club

 

Twin turbo net

 

300zx club USA

The shows for one. Our shows are the best 300zx shows in the UK. Help. You will not get better help and advice than whats offered here. History. Years of old posts with "how to's" and advice. Friendship. Members here care for each other as in giving free parts and their time to help new members with personal visits at their home. For sure there is lots more but I would be getting boring listing them all and you know them anyway Steven. :)

As for making people like the Z32 300zx that is beyond my powers and the clubs.

 

Remember I’m not asking for answers I don’t have. I’m expanding the point.

 

How many shows do we have each year? Are these exclusive to members, full or part.

 

Help and advice. It’s an open forum, so not only do you not need to be a full member to get that you can read all this without any membership. Also that doesn’t make it more of a club that is the forum.

 

There’s no exclusive access to parts, no discounts (aside from insurance) no group buys anymore, no news letter, no Callander. Maybe we need higher memberships prices but you get something in return for that investment... at present all I can see being a full member gets you is PMs and the ability to sell.

For this club to keep going you need to reduce membership fee to £10 year £5 renewal or even free membership

 

There should be free private messages for everyone like on other forums

 

Sorry to say this but a lot of people don't want to pay for forums because of Facebook , you can buy sell and message on Fb for free and this is why I have seen other forums having to offer the same stuff.

 

Plus you can get tech info etc off google

 

Nico club

 

Aus club

 

Twin turbo net

 

300zx club USA

 

I would love access to the forum to be free but how would we survive?

 

Do the members on FB have high profile shows like Coventry Transport Museum and the NEC Classic Car Show. No they join in with us and we accept them.

Edited August 5, 20187 yr by Gaz 300

I'd say I'm one of the more long standing members like what Jeff TT mentioned. Sure I've said most of this before.

 

1 - the what I did today thread. I said this at the time the thread started but... I like this thread and think it's a great idea which from member was an idea copied from one elsewhere, however I see it as a little counter productive now. Many people will post there rather than creating new threads. Which in turn, means less threads being created in relation to stuff people are doing. I rarely look through those ones. I'd suggest closing it, maybe leave as a sticky and leaving a last post asking people to create threads.

 

2 - membership fees - I think the membership fee should be less. Years ago, traders such as Danny (DTA), smithy and other venders would sell to the community as decent/Better prices. So to me, the fee helped pay for itself a bit if you opted to buy products via the forum. We have none of that now unless im missing comething, apart from Mondos group buy a year or so back. But I'm not sure if that was just to paid up members or to all forum members.

 

The benefits I see are use of Pm's and selling on the forum. The selling side is a funny one because years ago, you had to be a paid up member to sell on the forum. The main reason being is that people should have more faith in buying from paid up, long standing members. I feel we lost our way a little as now, you just sign up specifically to sell, so you lose the second part of the benefit, where it's from established members. I never sell anything from aladins have because I just don't want the hassle of stuff going wrong.

 

I think a smaller fee would be a little more suitable, maybe £10. I know this was discussed at the AGM last year, and whilst some don't mind paying the current/higher fee (me included), I'm not sure what incentive there is.

 

Maybe trader fees should be reduced from say £100 to £50 So vendors might be willing to take a punt on seeing a return on their investment.

 

I know me saying reducing fees could mean less money into the club, but 50% of something is better than 100% of nothing perhaps.

 

 

3 - Tech thread type stuff. The forum has some great detail on it from where people have answered questions or done tech threads or write ups like Jeff used to do regularly. Lots of these dont even have pictures that are viewable. Maybe due to the likes of photobucket changes, and also old forum versions where the data has been lost. Maybe some tech thrrad stuff could be a part of a paid up membership area, but at the reduced rate as theres several other places people can look, like the aussy site, the american ones, Robo, Wiki (now on CZP I think).

 

Also a lot of old stuff is archived, like old traders forums, some of which I'd like to still be able.to view, for example seeing historical prices of stuff.

 

4 - I like the idea of paid members having access to other sites, not sure how feasible it is, but probably the Z-club would be the vast move if that were a possibility.

Edited August 5, 20187 yr by bird

I think it's very difficult to get a 'one size fits all' answer to getting folks to subscribe.

 

As you can see I'm not a prolific poster but I've been around for quite a while.

 

We all tend to use owners clubs/forums differently. Maybe if you can find out what most members use the club for it may help with the answer in how to attract more to subscribe.

 

I tend to use the help & advice section and the great database for searching to resolve problems. Some of the build threads are great but I'm not really interested in 'who's got the shiniest car' etc, I've been to a few meets over the years and would probably do a few more.

 

In the past group buys and traders discounts were really great ways to give people the feeling that they were getting value for money. Because there was a larger membership questions got answered quickly and there was a much more active For Sale section as well.

 

Now I pay my subs to help the club but if I was new to the scene I'm not sure I would see enough value to it.

Well like I said earlier, post view count against replies... dreadfull take up, now stands around 187 views, but only nine actual replies from members,that nut is really hard to crack eh?? there has been some suggestions of lowering costs and that seems to have legs, some about making it subscription only, but sure that actually would be the death knell of the forum to be honest for new owners/ members.

 

Ok not an answer to the immediate problem but the forum does look flabby and although smooth is clunky compared to other later car site`s, please do not take as a criticism just an observation, quite why there are so many sections and sub sections, member only areas and sales area of which some areas are probably infrequently visited.

 

Trial a slimmed down version to evaluate the response, with maybe just three areas is all that is needed tech, general and admin, kind of thing, that should keep it tighter whilst actually logged in, as to attracting more threads then make it interesting with some kind of member input areas, a simple one, the old car of the month gig, make it that the car is featured on the header each month, voted by the membership, everyone can take a go each month, or even weekly, that said I understand this does increase admin time which can be a problem, but this is commonly used on Fb, who I really consider the forums nemesis today.

 

Long, long threads such as what Bird mentioned an very correctly said is stopping new threads been formed need to be time limited to prevent it going on and on to the detriment to fresh threads ( well said Lee ) This needs to be done now, I did mention this some time back and actually got some negative replies against my view on it, it needs to be done NOW, end it and lets have some fresh threads... please.

 

Leave selling parts to ebay and private messaging, does not really need an area of its own.

 

And one final thought, I use and others use the word "forum" and of recent times the word "club" is used in part I think to elevate the "forums" importance in the z scene. But and with the exception of the Coventry meet I do not see a club, a few banners, a few leaflets and flags do not make a "club" when the big funds were in the kitty £25k if I remember correctly there was talk of why the money was not been used to promote, to expand and to grow. Now years later with nothing like the same fees coming in it really is a bit late, unless of course the money was kept safe and is still available, if so how about we SPEND IT, proper like, "club funded prizes, club funded lunch and evening meets, club funded 300zx only meets ( not unlike Coventry meet but better) get traders to attend with actual stands with stock on like I used to at JAE before it was out priced by the greedy corporation now running it.

 

As a forum the question is what do we ( the paying members want?) how about what we can we as a "club" afford? and can we ask that?

 

 

Jeff

Edited August 5, 20187 yr by JeffTT

199 views and only 10 replies, come on guys !!

I want it to be better

I dont have any answers

I dont see the point in repeating stuff others have said

So i havnt posted

 

That said i did find myself unnecesarily using the stupidly long thread today

I think if we had things like JAE again/still... perhaps the club could help take the cost of tickets down Maybe? It's a risk of buying some then them not selling to members, so May be members buy via the club first at whatever the decided rate is, then the club get the tickets from the JAE dudes

wow,

 

Lots of views but not so much participation.

 

Are people scared to voice opinions these days; as it doesn't seem to stop people doing it on face book.

 

I've been a member of this club since 2009 and then quickly became a mod then promoted to committee within a few years,

at the start I was on the club forums posting on a daily basis and loved posting pictures and taking part in all of the daily chat.

 

Then we had the likes of JAE which I first attended in 2009 with my first zed which was a 91 NA, every single year I eagerly

awaited its arrival and even when I wasn't a mod or committee I helped out and took part and I loved every bit of it.

 

In the last three years everything has changed, The numbers have dropped, we stopped going to JAE and the overall buzz sad

to say is all but lost.

 

I would very much like all that back but we need the support to do it.

 

At the 2017 AGM it was brought to the discussion about upgrading the site and also doing a new front web page and make the club

a proper website with the extras like the forums accessible via a link on the top menu, sad to say this year for me and personal events

have made this a near impossibility.

 

However i'm now self employed and own a IT and Web Hosting business and I now have the time to do it.

 

We have avoided vBulliten version 5 because we have to strip the club back to basics, but I think this is what we need.

 

A good old shakeup of how we operate the club site and forum.

 

The general upgrade would take a few hours to complete but if we put a vote to it I could basically put the site offline

from tomorrow at 10am and take a full backup and upgrade it tomorrow.

 

We then should create a sub committee (previously discussed at the AGM) and delegate tasks out to enhance the site.

 

I don't think we should drop the Premium membership but after all the comments i'm starting to thing the £1 is a no go.

 

If we can somehow make the £20 more worth while either by subsidising events that is something we will do but at the

same time we need to ensure that people do subscribe to get these benefits.

 

So if we are all in agreement I can put up a short vote if we all agree that the radical move should be done now then great.

Edited August 5, 20187 yr by JaiKai

£20 is very good value if you go to events, especially the agm, food, attendance plaques , banners etc. However if you dont or cant make meets then you are infact subsidising my fun. Thanks :)

 

I think this might be why the 2017 agm said they would pay more, if you had asked all the members not there they might have said pay less

 

I was initiall a fan of the new website club page interesting stufff get new members, now i,m not sure it will help.

Zclub did this a while ago and i thought great idea. However every time i go to the zclub site i just click, forum/ new posts. Just like i do here. So i'm not sure wrapping interesting stuff in glitter will make it be read more, or people to write more interesting stuff

 

So if we are all in agreement I can put up a short vote if we all agree that the radical move should be done now then great.

 

Yes you have my vote !

 

Oh and as the thread starter you can see who has read the thread, maybe if you number crunch how many members who viewed that have not added any comments are paid up and how many are not, may go some way to answering if it is infact going to make any difference changing things.

TBH, I don't mind the way the forum looks or reads etc. If it is upgraded etc, maybe you could have the option to view the old forum as it currently is, or perhaps have a selection where people can use it in the new view or the current/old one