Keep on,guys!!
Let all know that to be a Armorama member is priceless

I would like to thank all those members who gave me some good tips on how to get started doing kit reviews. I'm motivated to try one at some point.

What started out as another possible flame-war, turned out to be a great thread

Thanks reichsfox

Cheers !!

Alpen

IMHO, getting paid for submitting features / reviews wont be beneficial for both parties ( jim and armorama members). Why i say this is because from a members stand point, what was once done through the kindness of the community is now being valued in terms of dollars and cents. It doesnt work from jim's perspective as you will in one way or another seggregate members according to either quality or credentials in the scale modelling world. There is always that chance of reduced participation once you start seperateing paying and non paying members. No one can predict this.

I also understand that as the site owner, eventually you will have to start thinking about ROI (Return on investment) which is where i think the A guard membership should be expanded and built on. So providing more perks for being an A guard member like ... for example, hosting space. Currently they have more gallery space and access to the support forums but having web hosting space with the www.armorama.com infront (ie: www.armorama.com/jazza) would certainly provide indirect advertising especially when members share the URL to others outside armorama. Basically the same model Geocities used to have before they got swallowed by Yahoo. Members can then build their scale model homepage. This would obviously attract additional fees. There is also the option of armorama acting as a reseller for the advertisers with discounts only applicable to premium paying members.

I personally think A-guard membership and attracting advertisers is the winning formula for this site so we should really build on that and get the ROI from there. Members in return still enjoy the free nature of the community but have a choice to adopt these different packages within A Guard. Im also basically saying that i dont think paid reviews is necessarily the best revenue generating strategy.

Just my 0.02.