The Marketplace is under renovation. Thank you for your patience.
Behind The Firm List Blog
The End of Free, pt. 3
More in the series of postings about the changes in policy re: profiles.
I've never claimed to be perfect or to have a perfect site. It's all a matter of learning as I go.
I don't think it's possible to have thought of everything before you've built it and tested it. Things don't work the way you planned
them to and people use things in ways you never expected.
The whole process of contacting firms with profiles took much longer than I expected. I never had a email database set up because
I had no intentions of using/renting/selling that kind of database, so I had to go in and get all the emails from my records in a
much more tedious process.
I apologize if you got the email at the last moment. Please take as much time as you need to make your decision. While profiles
may be removed this weekend, they will be archived and can be easily dusted off and brought back should you choose to upgrade at a
later date.
It's been no surprise that a lot of the contact info is no longer valid. That's one of the reasons I think reducing the number of profiles
will benefit the site. When profiles were just another free part of adding a firm, many firms filled out the forms and never came
back. Thus there was all this detailed info which appeared to be valid, but wasn't. That's not of much value to anyone using the
site.
So it makes sense that firms who are serious about promoting their firms and who want to keep the information up to date would
also be interested in paying for that privledge.
I also wanted to express the fact that I am not doing this to make a boat load of money. The reality is that I won't. Very few
firms will actually upgrade, so we're not really talking much money. It may be enough to cover some of the hard costs of the site,
but certainly not enough to make some of the really big changes I would like for the site, including more advertising/promotion
of The Firm List. Something like that would benefit all firms listed on the site... but alas, I can't do it out of my own pocked.
In addition, I have been very accomodating with firms who have a genuine interest in helping out but who just can't justify spending
the money. There are many ways one can "give back" to The Firm List without spending money and in most cases I will waive the
fee if you do.
Well, anyways, I would do things a little differently if I had it to do over, but I don't regret the decision. I have had to cut
down on the amount of time I spend on this site, so this has helped with that. It will allow me to focus on adding new features
rather than trimming the bloat left behind by less than serious firms from the past 4 years.
Thanks for all those who have "given back" and I invite all firms to email me and let me know what you think about this policy
change and if you have feel that you'd like to give back but can't pay the fee, do send me an email and we'll see what can be
done.
