to hotcopper mods - $$$$$$$$$

So you want to make Hotcopper financially self sufficient?

I met with the Bourse guys when St George pulled the plug on Hotcopper at Christmas three years ago in Melbourne and couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the backroom they were supporting.

Then Pat Hammond took it over and rebuilt the whole Hotcopper show to what it is today also merging the other websites such as Ozestock to form TFA. he bought some decent servers I had lying around and took it from running quite literally on some (damn near) desktops to Netfinity's. He also cut the costs to next to nothing (but yes they are still significant because of hosting / maintenance etc etc.)

And as I said right at the beginning and I'll say it again after every other possible way of funding this site has been tried and failed - the only sustainable way to keep a HIGH QUALITY chatroom of this type going in Australia is to merge all the sites together - shut down Ozestock - and make Hotcopper subscription only, say $100 a year.

And the reason this will work is because;

a/ Hotcopper has the easiest and best designed format for a chatroom in Australia

b/ Home trading is incredibly isolating and Hotcopper offers an irreplaceable community despite all its faults

c/ With subscription the quality of postings will rise because the tossers that lower the quality of the site will either not bother to pay or will get kicked off and not be prepared to open another account.

d/ The rampers who want to have 10 accounts will also have to pay for 10 subscrptions each year and on that basis are welcome to post away - we can all work out ramps anyway so good luck to them and for the first time they will be performing a community service by paying extra to fund the site.

This is THE ONLY WAY you will cover the operating costs AND maybe get the funds for additional enhancements that would attract new members.

And the posters that never post, that simply increase the traffic numbers (and therefore the data load and hosting costs)?

If they want to read then they pay - otherwise they are better gone. Hint - they will pay because where else will they get to eavesdrop on some of the quality players who DO use this site and probably would use it even more with the trash excluded?

What have you got to lose if you now have to beg for dnations. I'd rather test subscriptions out then try to log in to HC and/or Ozestock one morning and find them and this community gone for ever. And if the members of this community cannot afford it? Then they should give up trading. $100 less than brokerage on one decent one way trade for the information on here that has often made all of us lots of money!!

And yes, along with 100 other Hotcopper members I was a subscriber for the brief period that was tried on a voluntary basis (what a joke that was, LOL!!)

Cheers,