Prices (General)

by Don Lester, Tuesday, March 21, 2006, 05:23 (6969 days ago) @ Tony Kosten

? What do members prefer, the current $10 per month, or the former yearly
? tariff?
? Also, do you think it is too expensive, and if so what would be the right
? price?

A few comments to the folks thinking about a 'pay as you go' system, or some such thing like that. For small businesses, which this is, the billing process generally has significant overhead. It isn't like Visa where everything is automated. Billing oftentimes entails at least a slight manual process. So, a pay as you go system will probably be more expensive than you will want it to be. True, it doesn't have to be that way, but the only way for it not to be that way is to pay to have a pay as you go system developed and automated, which is development costs that small businesses usually don't have, so catch 22.

By that same token, you can often expect a significant discount on an annual subscription vs a monthly one for the exact same reason. There is a cost to do billing every month, and they don't have to incur that expense and can subsequently pass that on in a savings for annual subscriptions. Additionally there is value in money now vs money later, and paid subscribers look good to investors. So, it has a lot going for it. What this overhead is for IYC I do not know, but back in the early ISP days when I did that for a living I gave really deep discounts to annual vs monthly subscribers. It just made sense.

Having said all that, I would love to hear some kind of 'vision statement' that describes where the site is headed. Now that it appears there is new leadership, there are probably also new ideas.

Some thoughts of my own...

The Daniel King HGIYC is a really nice feature. I certainly hope it continues as a weekly offering. I don't think the value of going through a GM level game once a week with professional annotation can ever be over-emphasized. My scores are never very good on this section, and occasionally I don't understand why a move I considered isn't even mentioned, but it is probably because I still have a lot to learn (which I do).

The monthly tactics puzzles are also a very nice augmentation to the series I do regularly at the Chess Tactics Server (chess.emrald.net). The puzzles on that site are expected to be quick 3 to 12 seconds to solve type puzzles. The puzzles here were expected to be something you have to think on. Either by accident or design, early in the year we gained the ability to do the puzzles in all three sections. I really liked this as I wanted more puzzles. It would be nice to see this continue, even though it was never originally intended to work this way.

The monthly strategy stuff could be expanded on. I am finding myself losing on this more and more. A typical scenario for me is to muddle through the opening without making any horrible blunders, achieve what appears to be a balanced middle game, and then have no real idea what to do next to improve my position. I end up making fairly passive moves waiting to see what my opponent does. If he blunders I pounce. If he doesn't blunder, my passive play is my ultimate undoing. Changing the frequency of the strategy lesson from monthly to weekly, like HGIYC, would allow more reinforcement of the concepts, and even allow the lessons to build on one another and have continuity. When they are monthly, too much time passes between each one, in my opinion.

The 'Your Move' section isn't inherently bad, but it seems to be a duplicate of existing content. The puzzles are provided in a different format, and scored differently, but in the end they are another set of monthly tactical puzzles. Any of those could appear as normal puzzles and not be out of place.

With the apparent affiliation with ChessPublishing.com, it would seem to make sense that the IYC opening repertoire section close its doors. Maybe have IYC members get a discount on one opening section in chesspublishing.com, but given the annual price on one section is only around $20 US that is already pretty cheap (cheaper than the monthly cost here x 12). I have no idea what content lies behind one of those links, but it is a safe bet it is more detailed than what would be here simply due to the amount of time it has had to develop over there.

The coaching section, well, I don't know what to say about the coaching section. I never participated in that, and probably never will. It is kind of expensive, and that isn't to say I think it is too expensive, it is just hard to imagine a novice like myself getting any real value from the sessions. I already know several weaknesses I have that I can't get enough time to fix as it is. I once commented about how initial subscribers were promised an assessment of their play and that mine would be the equivalent of a drunken orangutan. After a year of study, the orangutan is now only slightly inebriated.