> It'll have to wait until after I get back from Ohio, but it's entirely possible that I'll be able to continue to offer an ads-based version of RinkWorks, while simultaneously offering a subscription service that allows access without any advertising at all. I'd have to sit down and figure out how much I'd have to charge to offset the missed ads, but I'm sure I could come up with a reasonable guess.

While we're talking about subscription services, can I just ask - is there anyone out there, like me, who just can't be bothered to pay for anything at all on-line? I know that sounds really terribly apathetic and cheapskatish, but the fact of the matter is that I've got used to the Internet being, by and large, free.

Recently several webmasters have caught on to the fact that it's very tricky to run a dotcom business entirely on advertising revenue, and they've begun subscription services. The thing is, the services offered for free have become absolutely SHODDY. Hotmail, for instance, is a reasonable service for free, but it has taken out everything that was really useful, such as POP access. (By the way, does it cost anything to offer POP access? If not, why the heck did they pull the service?) Moreover, the fact that I'm getting quite a quantity of junk indicates that Microsoft sold my address at the earliest opportunity, and not to very reputable people either, judging by the amount of very dodgy stuff dropping into my inbox. I'm not even going to bother ranting about how hard you have to search the page to get free access in the first place.

The other option for webmasters is to make their entire site subscription-only. This happened on another.com, the email provider that I used to have. The charge they wanted - £15 a year - was actually very very cheap, and I could have easily paid it. The difference was, I liked my free Internet and didn't want to spend anything, even a tiny amount, on a previously free service. That their revenue plummeted madly is shown by the fact that, soon after they went subscription-only, they emailed me offering the service for £5 a year instead. Evidently, subscription-only is not the way to go.

Is there a point to this? Well, not much. Only that, although I can see why companies generally offer substandard services when they're free, it doesn't give them a very good corporate image. And I also wanted to say that, great site though Rinkworks is, it would be a terrible shame for it to go subscription-only, as I just wouldn't bother.

Not that I'm expecting that to happen.

Si-"Or this post to be accepted, come to think of it"-gi