Several people have already offered cash to support the forum.
How much are those willing to offer to keep the forum going?

IMHO there should ALWAYS be free content offered since that's always been the spirit of this place.
Depending on the software platform used, there could possibly be different levels of content available for different 'subscription levels'.
Maybe a tiered level structure, it works for a lot of web based content - not just forums.

If not actually contributing money, maybe how much embedded advertising are you willing to put up with?

Let's toss some ideas around - any & all. Go!

How many other subscription sites are you currently contributing too?

Bike information is a lot like porn,
you can always find plenty for free.

People that know this site and the history might be willing, while they are around.
But jump on Facebook and tell them you have cool paid forum that they can join,
see how much response you get there.

i dont think we have the numbers anymore to worry about a multi tier forum. 3 or 4 years ago sure but new forum posts last for weeks rather than hours now. a few more adds and a few bucks from members is all thats needed.

being able to have larger sig pics would be nice though

chopped baggers is a site i visit and they have a striped down free version and then a pay version. i think its $20 a year but i never bothered cause im not on that site near enough.

I will throw down $73.00 Canadian to start with to get the ball rolling. That is 20 cents a day for a year. That works out to $36.00 every 6 months. Plus buy a DVD if that helps. That is a fraction of the cost of a cup of coffee per day.

I think somewhere between $25 and $50 a year for an annual subscription is reasonable. Anything more than that and lots of people will not sign up.

The idea of a DVD with archive information tech tips etc is also appealing. I would pay $50 for that no problem.

My .02 worth

I had a class in marketing once. $24.95 annually.

I could see maybe $20 a year but there would need to be more meets than current.

I would do 20. I also don't think the numbers are there for more than that and the sign ups would likely be met with price resistance. I wish I was tech oriented but I'm not so can't help with that. Administration or some other support I could do. I will have finished my Doctoral program in March and will have more free time then for some kind of function in that way.

I would be willing to support a new site with yearly dues and with a 3 tiered memberiship system.

Web only, can read only.
Non-paying member, read, reply and start post only, Sig pic only.
Full dues paying member, all of the above, private messaging and picture posting.

And for FIW, I think the big appeal to facebook is how easy it is to post pics.

The biggest pain for this site is the posting of pics. Being able to post pics/videos of our bikes is the best way for us to show off our bikes, to others that enjoy what we do!
I myself would love to post mores pics, but it is such a pain in the ...

I am not a facepuke fan. Never have been nor will I ever try to follow anything there.

I think archiving this site and saving all tech, posts and etc.

Start a New site and slowly migrate the old to the new.

I would go $20 year easy, $20 every 6 months. I belong to a meet up site for rides and I put that in easy. Its like $180 a year to keep the page open and it got about 180 members, so technically thats $1 each but only about 8 to 10 of us contribute, so I don't mind a little extra to keep it there for all of us.