This could be a good idea, except that what price would offer them at?

$50 is the market rate for a one off template, which gets you 3 months worth here.

If you sold them at $20-30 that is so close to the 3 month price you would be crazy not to pay the extra $20 or so for 3 months of options, support and new templates.

I doubt they would even sell unless you offered them at ridiculously low prices like $10 in which case you would lose a fair few of the $50 payers, but you certainly wouldn't gain 5x as many one off buyers.

Then we would also get the one offs complaining that they don't get any support, or access to the forums.

I wouldn't say that making one offs and a club available at comparable prices is good solid business sense.

The club model is by far the best and most solid model for this type of business.

If people aren't happy with the RT system they are more than able and free (as in free liberty) to start a free (as in free beer) open forum for anyone to discuss templates. Or a free template club, or one off purchase template site. Or any other variation that has been presented here. Instead of trying to re-craft RT to meet their wants.

A forum takes approximately 15 seconds to install into a Joomla site. Go start the 'RT templates former members who still want in but don't want to pay for it forum.'

Or ask Andy to create a new level of membership that is $1000 a year or something and includes full RT support (with a cap on number of sites perhaps)

Or a charter life member - $500 for unlimited lifelong (life of the website/company) access at the Pro level to RT templates. (no extra benefits except an even cooler forum logo than pros. )

Then people can have their cake, and even eat it too, but for an appropriate price, and not $50.

I have had just over a thousand visitors to nonjoomla since I started it a week ago. (not bad for a week woo) And have a donation system in place. Despite around a thousand downloads of the free modules and CSS, the only donations I have received were specifically for the donationware modules (and a couple for personal reasons). Out of a thousand people not one was willing to share a single dollar for the hours of work I saved them with those modules and CSS/images.

You can't honestly expect me to believe that people wouldn't exploit this system if it was implemented.

Because that is what I see here, a cheap exploit for access to the forums that RT would need to spend a fortune implementing in the first place.

Maybe put up a poll and see who many people want it.

I think you'd be amazed how many people would buy a one-off template at the same price of a 3 month membership if they had non-expiring access to a support forum for that specific template. Solution? Create a user group for each template offered as a one-off in a specific forum for that template. They don't get access to the members' forum, only to the template specific forum.

If you notice, most of the complaints that come from unhappy customers (at least the ones voiced on the forums) fall into two categories. 1) price and 2) lack of continuing support. The price issue is easy to counter. Simply look at what everyone else offers. Hand down, RT is the best bang for your buck. But that doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement to the overall system, simply that no one has a valid gripe about pricing. The lack of continued support however, is not as easy to dismiss regardless of how the bandwagoneers try to dismiss it. I see several poor analogies being thrown around but any of them can easily be countered.

Maybe for a web designer who wants to use multiple templates over an extended period of time but that shuts out a whole 'nother sector of buyers... the person or business who only wants and/or needs one template. Catering only to the former is elitist and in the long run self-defeating. For instance, FF may be "better" than IE but they have significantly less market share so it's pointless to only develop for IE. Likewise it wouldn't be smart to only develop with IE in mind.

I've actually thought of this but this would inevitably end up infringing on RT's licensing when people started offering modded or fixed template files. Piracy is already rampant enough not that I actually believe most people involved in it would ever have been able to or paid for membership anyway.

I don't see anything wrong with this at all. Hell let's get a support wiki set up. Let's get FAQs up. Throw up some tutorials and videos. The funny thing is that RT wouldn't even have to do the work. Practically all the support given here has come from the community and then from an even smaller pool of regular forum users. Offer people who help set up a support system a free month or some other goodie that wont have to come directly out of RT's pocket. Either way RT gets a support system for free and all members and former members are happy. And who said you couldn't please all of the people all of the time? ;P

I've seen several people sit here and say that the current system is best, and if it's not broken don't fix it but I'm here to tell you it can be fixed because some of it is broken. Maybe not for you (and by you I don't mean you specifically), but certainly for others. Example of broken? The member submission forum vs. the template specific forums. ALL members should have access to the template specific forums because the only issues that should be addressed in thos forums is template specific problems and fixes. The member submission forums is where people give away goodies like Youyou's kickass mobius experiment. WOOHOO FREE TEMPLATE ACESSIBLE TO NONMEMBERS. That, my friend, is broken.

I'm not stealing anything by going into a forum for a template I paid to use and asking someone how to change a header. RT loses nothing because the person who replies with a fix is probably another member. RT does lose, however, when anyone registered on the forums can download a cool ajaxified version of one of their popular templates for free. Broken.

First of all I want to say your site and your work kicks ass. I'm on the Joomla extensions directory every single day like a kid on Christmas so that's how I first found out about ninjoomla. Mhmm... I was one of those thousand people who graciously took your freebies and didn't donate. Why? My PayPal/bank account account is jacked up at the moment (gotta love clients who bounce checks then disappear). PM me your name and mailing address and I'll gladly send you a money order for a donation. Why? because you do kick ass work, your extensions are innovative as hell, and dammit you're just a good guy. You have to ask yourself though, "I said these extensions were free, and these over here were donationware, why would someone donate for the free ones?".

Now I gotta ask, out of those thousand downloads, how many of those people do you think are actually using your extensions or just downloaded them out of curiousity (like me)? how many do you think are using them for clients (i.e. making money from them)? how many do you think are what I like to call "collectors" who simply have a compulsion to download every Joomla extension they can and end up using less than 1% of them?

I know of dozens of places to get every RT template, including source files, and pay nothing. I still joined RT for a three month membership, which ran out like in Jan or Feb, and I still plan to get a pro membership when funds allow (although anyone who has more money than they know what do do with is always welcome to hook me up). I also don't use any templates that weren't available when my membership expired. I don't even use a rockettheme template on my own site and only have one template in use on a friend's site. I do have clients who have sites based on RT templates that weren't done by me. But anyway, so tell me, what was the point of me signing up for something I could get for free anyway? It's called honesty. I appreciate the work RT does and I feel the price they ask is fair. If they offer it for free, they may get a donation from me, they may not. I simply don't have the disposable income to donate to every I think does a good job in this world. I know I sure as hell don't get donations for helping people.

Bottom line. The exploiters will always exploit and they don't always have the same motivation. Offering access to template specific support, where no modded files or revised templates, are available will do nothing to further exploitation.

you mean that forum "takes approximately 15 seconds to install into a Joomla site."? c'mon, hyperbole's fine here and there but there would be no need to spend any fortune implenting some simple user groups and permissions changes.

excellent idea. you'll get more response from a poll than you ever will on the forums. Hell, I cna't believe how much time I'm spending just writing this single post :\

Dan, thanks for you insight and talking the time to share them. And thanks for your awesome work over at www.ninjoomla.com

Andy, thanks for popping in and at least letting us know you're listening and paying attention and open to suggestions whether you implement them or not.

To the bandwagoneers, learn to think outside of just your needs. If your needs are fulfilled by the current system, great. I am truly happy for you but your needs are your own and to stunt progress simply because your needs are fulfilled is just plain silly. You don't speak for the community as a whole any more than I do and swarming on someone who feels they have a legitimate complaint and keeps it somewhat civil is just bad form. Go look at the oldest RT club templates. Their great. They certainly fulfill my needs. I don't need suckerfish, transmenu, rokmoomenu, rocketfish, moofish, moorocket, transsuckermoorocketfish and god knows what else will be cooked up. I do web design, I don't need a control panel dropdown login, 20 different color variations, 8 module variations, and 16 module positions. Neither does anyone else honestly but we like it because it's cool as hell and opens up greater possibilities for us. That's progress baby. Should RT have stopped back at Versatility?

learn to think outside of just your needs

OMG! You logged out of the forum!? And you survived?! Wow. there is life outside of rockettheme! Who knew?

OMG! You logged out of the forum!? And you survived?! Wow. there is life outside of rockettheme! Who knew?