Yes. A message about this will be going out first thing tomorrow.

Best wishes
Pecked out on an iPhone

On Jan 11, 2011, at 6:36 PM, Concrete5 Community <discussions@concretecms.co=
m> wrote:

>=20

Yes, also looking for some info on this, I found the previous program had value (and I had paid to be in it like the author of this thread!)

Anyone in the Hosting or Services partner plan will be made a Pro Account member for the full duration of their previous commitment. We have a nice chatty email about it, but we just ran out of steam on making sure everyone was in the right group this evening. We will send out a blast first thing tomorrow.
Thanks for your patience.

Sorry, but really not keen on this at all!

I was a Hosting and Services Partner, costing me $370 a year. The only real benefits for me, were getting access to jobs quicker (minor benefit as most of the jobs of of fairly low value) and the big benefit, getting to say I'm a Concrete5 partner on my website. Which I say in big letters :)

Saying I'm a Pro Member, just doesn't carry the same weight as saying I'm a Hosting and Services Partner. And then increase in cost from $370 a year for 2 badges to $1140 a year for something that doesn't even sound quite as good as 1 of the previous badges is something I just can't find a way to reasonably justify.

The email you're sending round will need to be very nice and very chatty to convince me to part with that much cash...

Jon

Jbx, your reply essentially expands on my reply above, and the post I made on the new 'pro board'.

Being a 'partner' carries a lot more weight than a 'pro user'.

$100/mo is a lot.

What this says to me is this: "We don't want that many partners....they better freeking want it if we are going to support them."

I understand that there are X number of staff there at your disposal. so your thinking is to up the anny. ok. fine. I have no issue with that. but then the support better step up for damn sure. it's implausible for you to ask people to spend $100/mo and get the same vague/"we are to busy" answers as of past.

From my seat...ok...I feel like I am doing my part...you are getting %25 of all my sales as a developer to do what? host them. Which you know what?...that's great with me...without your medium (marketplace)...those sales would not be there. But still...that %25 adds up for not really doing that much in specific to my products.

Is there a way your Pro Membership can be scaleable? or based on certain criteria that qualify you for that? for example...this developer has had less than X% of returned products, and also maintains a negative feedback ratio of Y.

if not....I feel $ wise, I am doing my part to support you and the team and will not be re-aligning myself for $100/mo. I just can't. that value add is simply not there for me.

now...if you tell me you will push all my products to maximum exposure and advertising....THEN we may have something to think about.

sorry.

C

I have to agree with Chad. I won't repeat everything I agree with but I do want to emphasize a few things.

This new pricing structure needs to add a lot more value than the old Partner plans to be worthwhile. I was NOT a partner before because frankly even at that level it didn't make a lot of sense for me. I'm an individual developer with more work than I can handle already. I don't generally need any support from the C5 team because I answer my own questions. For the most part the only time I contact the C5 team is to provide support to them (to report bugs and offer solutions).

Although it wasn't a priority to me, I was planning to become a partner soon. With the new plan, though, there is no way I could afford or justify being a "pro user". It might make sense for shops or groups that hope to derive a lot of new business through the program or for people like Chad that have a lot of add-ons and could get significant marketing support.

I would like to see a tiered system. I also like Chad's suggestion that people who get good ratings on their products, provide good support, and support the community in other ways should be offered something in exchange. Doing these things pays back indirectly but it takes time, and for people that are always on the clock it costs them money.

As OP posted, I'm in the same boat. Just signed up as a service partner.

Great to hear that we'll get pro-member status for the duration that we'd have had service partner, but as a sole developer $100 a month is totally unrealistic.

Sorry

The email just went out, let me know if you don't get it.

Also, thank you for sharing your concerns.

The goal with the Pro Accounts is to create business development benefits for your organization.

We tookhttp://sortfolio.com as inspiration.

I recognize that the Pro Account idea is not for everyone, and that's okay. I hope you also recognize we've always done everything we've promised for Partners, and we're grandfathering all Partners in for the full amount of time they expected.

Best wishes.
-Frz.

Sortfolio has two tiers: free and $99/mo. I know it's bit apples to oranges, but on C5.org we have free profiles that apply to everyone (not just people who provide services) and a very expensive "I provide services" program.

I do recognize that you recognize that the program is not for everyone one, though. :-) That's fine with me. Just offering my $.02.

I think that's actually apples to apples. The only thing you get as a Pro member today in the account listing is 6 pictures and being at the top of the sort order. All the other data in your profile is listed if you choose the "I make websites for a living." in your portfolio.

That's exactly the same as sortfolio. How do you see it as different?

We're talking about a total opt-in program for driving business. If it's valuable to you, stay in it. If not, don't. It's monthly and we've grandfathered everyone in for the same time commitment as they had before.

My goal (as the email said) is to really invest in bringing up awareness of concrete5 to prospective clients. So if lots of shops join the Pro account plan and we goto lots of tradeshows on that revenue and we talk about the slew of local talent that can help them, that's awesome for everyone.

If it doesn't work out that way, bummer. You still got an awful cool CMS for nuthin. No?

I sincerely doubt you'll be getting enough new people to sign up as pro members to go to any trade shows.

As I said on the pro board, I'd need a lot more value in order to justify this as an ongoing business expense, and will not be renewing. I'm not going to pay 100/month just for 6 pictures and being higher on the sort order.

I signed up for the partner program mostly for the badge and earlier access to the jobs board, but to be honest in 3 months I haven't seen anything that looked interesting or profitable on the board, and most of them are scooped up by firms rather than individuals.

I'm wondering what badge do I even put on my website now? Where do I download it? Since I'm no longer a partner, I don't want to keep listing myself as such.

I wasn't very clear about what meant. Every account on Sortfolio is owned by an individual or company that provides design services. Non-providers don't have accounts. Thus there are two levels of accounts for service providers. On C5 now there are "Pro Partners" and then there is everyone else. Even though I provide coding services for C5 users and have ~10 add-ons in the marketplace, if it doesn't make sense for me to be a Pro User I don't really have an official way to identify/distinguish myself from regular users.

Mm. We will likely be excluding people from the community search (at least d=
efault sort settings) who haven't picked "I build many websites"

We may also change the sort results to display some pro accounts instead of a=
ll pro accounts before it gets into "regular" users who meet the filter/sort=
settings

Given that, it is /exactly/ the same. No?

Best wishes,
(Pecked out on a mobile device...)
http://about.me/frz

On Jan 12, 2011, at 7:51 PM, Concrete5 Community <discussions@concretecms.co=
m> wrote:

>=20

An idea that maybe a bit neat would be including some sort of certification with the pro account.

It's kinda hard to sell something to a client when they have no clue what a cms is...

Yes. Certification should come in 2011 and in my eyes should be a very affor=
dable process that is not dependent on the pro account tat us at all

Best wishes,
(Pecked out on a mobile device...)
http://about.me/frz

On Jan 12, 2011, at 10:12 PM, Concrete5 Community <discussions@concretecms.c=
om> wrote:

>=20

I just want to start this post by saying that like others in this thread I love your CMS and what we are discussing here will not effect that or stop me using it.
I was seriously thinking about joining your old programme just for the right to use the logo, the other benefits were not a top priority for me. This new Pro plan just kills all that for me. The benefits are nowhere near what I would expect for the price unless I had all the core team on speed dial 24/7 and Andrew on a plane to me on a monthly basis.
I appreciate you have to make a (good) living out of this CMS as is your right for the hard work you do but I think this combined with the gradual increase in the cost of Concrete's own addons is just milking it a bit far.
Your business model and plan is no ones but your own and I am sure it will do well but is pricing out the small guy the right way to go?
Yes your right we do still get a great CMS for free and for that I will always be grateful but now I am just a little jaded about the extra costs.
Here's hoping you may have a rethink on this topic.
Respect as ever....

Depending on how the certification process that Franz mentioned previously works, I think that would be a suitable answer to your concerns. Based on what you said, you're in exactly the same boat I'm in. I just would like to have an official badge/banner I can obtain that I can place in my profile and on my web site that identifies me as someone who provides C5 services. A certification process would be ideal because it would also ensure (to some as yet unknown standard) that "certified" individuals or companies do actually know something about C5. Being a "Pro User" doesn't say the same thing at all, it just means I'm somebody who can afford and is willing to pay $95/mo for some support and marketing features.

I hear ya totally.

Discussions have been going on with the Old Partners, new Pros and a few take aways have come out that are worth sharing:

1) The Pro account thing certainly is different. It does actually make sense to the small or mid sized shop that is looking at it as a marketing opportunity, but it also ignores a lot of what others had been getting out of the Partner program. This is not shocking, the Partner program was doing too many different things for too many different people. While in retrospect it would have been nice to launch a wider array of options all at once instead of just dropping this change on y'all unannounced, I'm confident with your continued patience and faith we'll find solutions that work for everyone.

2) Certification is going to be fast tracked so people can get that. It will be cheap, we're not looking at it as a revenue generator, it will be easy to do online and its gonna come out soon.

3) we're going to launch a "Community Leaders" program that comes with some benefits similar to pro accounts but is entirely based on reaching a certain level of Karma. You can't buy your way in, but you can earn your way in by being an active supporter.

4) We're going to change our job board process around so it does a better job of matching Pro accounts to opportunities, and there are better opportunities in there.

5) That should speak to everyone's concerns.

Thank you so much for sharing them, we'll get this right and happy for everyone.

Sounds good to me. Really good. Thanks for listening.

of course! we'd be no where without the community.

I love C5, and it has resulted in a considerable amount of business for me in the past year, and I will continue to support it, sell it, and work with it. It solves so many business problems for the average joe and for developers.

I had been waiting for a large payment for a project to join the partner program. The old pricing structure was a bit more palatable for a small shop (or a sole proprietor like me), but I can't justify $100/mo.

Needless to say, I was surprised to find out about this program change, and I'm on this site every day.

You may want to consider putting up page redirects, rather than 404's. Even the search on this site goes to 404s.

Do 'Pro Accounts' still exist?

No. This became community leaders

Best wishes,
(Pecked out on a mobile device...)
http://about.me/frz

Thanks!