LONGECITY

As has been discussed previously, the $5 membership level - per Board of Directors vote - is going to be phased out soon.

As part of the transition, Longecity/Immortality Institute would like to offer a little something extra for joining at the $50 membership level. There are already a few benefits for becoming a new member, but we were thinking along the lines of a little welcome packet, or a thank you card, maybe a little schwag, as well as attempt to help new members connect with other people with similar interests or who live in close proximity to each other. I ask all prospective new members if there is something special we could throw in with a new membership purchase, what would it be? The perfect "gift" would be something memorable or useful but cost very little, less than $10, I suggest.

Coffee mug with the Longecity logo and motto on it. Useful, good publicity too if you take it to work and let it sit on your desk

Thanks for the idea PGN! I would definitely use a Longecity coffee mug. I wore my old Imminst t-shirt until it fell apart.

If I can have the names, screen names and addresses sent to me periodically then I will send the item(s) out along with membership "cards" (post-cards).

I know I've been a member for a while now so is it too cheeky of me to request whatever freebies will be given out even though I didn't gee one first time round? Got to try...can't pass up potential free stuff that also advertises our cause.

If there is not a possibility of sending you a free one "on the house", then I would buy one (a mug) for you. You have certainly been a good promoter of Longecity.

Is anyone familiar with outfits that sell promotional stuff like coffee mugs? We have used CafePress in the past, but it seems a little expensive. It seems their mugs are $15 per mug. This site: http://www.showyourl...coffee-mugs.htm seems to be selling them for around $1-2 a piece. Maybe their mugs are crappy though. Or we might have to order 10,000 at a time or something.
Edited by Mind, 21 June 2012 - 06:33 PM.

If there is not a possibility of sending you a free one "on the house", then I would buy one (a mug) for you. You have certainly been a good promoter of Longecity.

Thank you very much Mind, I would like that very much and it's good to know that my efforts are appreciated.

Any suggestions besides mugs? We have to order 216 to get them with one side and one color at $2 apiece, or about $14 at another place for two sides and multiple colors.

If you shop around there are occasionally tee-shirt places that will make custom shirts for $5-7 when ordered in quantity. Of course there would still be shipping costs, time expenditure, etc. when compared to using one of the print on demand places.

I am not sure of the price of one Vimmortal container, but perhaps a sample of 1 weeks supply? Another idea is If someone were to compile a short list with descriptions of the top supplements and lifestyle choices recommended by Longecity for longevity, in a form a booklet, that could be interesting as well.
Edited by Artificiality, 02 July 2012 - 11:27 PM.

I am not sure of the price of one Vimmortal container, but perhaps a sample of 1 weeks supply? Another idea is If someone were to compile a short list with descriptions of the top supplements and lifestyle choices recommended by Longecity for longevity, in a form a booklet, that could be interesting as well.

That idea is interesting and might provide as much value or more than a membership card/postcard.

As for the way forward in cancelling the $5 membership level.

1. At the end of July, let us remove the $5 membership package. This can be done in the Admin CP. We will also have to check various pages and forums that mention the $5 membership level and edit those.

2. Send an email (or PM) to all of the current $5 membership subscribers on August 1st stating that the $5 membership level has been cancelled. Give those members one month to upgrade to the $50 yearly subscription.

3. On September 1st, change all remaining 5$ membership level subscribers to "Registered User".

Any thoughts?

That sounds like a fine time table.

For line 2.5 there in the way forward I would add, initiate this meet and greet thank you message for all new members.


This sample greeting letter for new members is just a rough draft, I think much of this will change, but its a spring board to start creating it from:

Hello,

Welcome to our membership and thank you for joining us in this quest for unlimited lifespans. What do you think is one of the main things that the cause would be well off to work on now to make progress? Then also, please do consider looking through our Take Action index and join in on anything there that may interest you. We can go over it or any parts of it if you have any questions. We sometimes give out merchandise to new members, if you want a Longecity coffee mug, and a Longecity post card then send me your address and I'll send them out to you.


Regards,
Eric Schulke
Volunteer Coordinator
Director
Longecity

What are your ideas?

I think things like bumper stickers and mugs stay in the open and dont get shoved into drawers and things like stickers, pens and key chains and stuff do. What other things might fall into that category of bumper sticker and mug? Book for yearly membership was floated recently and sounds good. The supplement sample and things like that sound like something to consider. Then also, what for lifetime members?

That is a good first draft of the welcome message. We will want to polish it up a little yet. Good idea to offer promotional items instead of just mail them out to everyone, even people who would rather not have any membership schwag.

Also, on point two, are there any mentions of the $5 membership level specific to the Google Checkout or Paypal websites, or are the IPB membership packages very first step for everyone who becomes a member? Shepard, you would probably have the best info/answer on this.

Alright, so proposal so far is, line 2.5:

• initiate greeting for new members (new draft proposed, what do you think? It's from the members page with this line added "-- Eligibility for various gifts and perks.")
• send membership card plus SCOD to yearly members
• send membership card, SCOD and $50 in misc. Longecity schwag to lifetime members (unless we lock in on what "misc." will be, and or a value other than $50)

Hello,

Thank you for joining us as a member.

Since 2002, the 'Immortality Institute' has stood for grass-roots activism in support of indefinite life extension. By joining as a Member you are helping the world’s premier grassroots life extension organization push the limits of human lifespan. LongeCity is democratically controlled by Immortality Institute Members. Without these Members, projects such as the documentary film “Exploring Life Extension”, the groundbreaking book “The Scientific Conquest of Death”, our various outreach activities and the support for scientific research, as well as our international networking activities would not be possible. Our Members support also helps to maintain the most active and informative life extension forum on the Internet.

As a member, your benefits include:

-- You become a virtual 'shareholder' of LongeCity and help determine future initiatives.
-- Vote in Director elections and on important referenda at LongeCity.
-- Access the members forum in order to discuss projects, share photos and resources not open to the public.
-- Discounts to sponsored conferences.
-- Discounts for specific products promoted by our Sponsors.
-- Certain features of the forum software are only available to Members.
-- Eligibility for various gifts and perks.

If you have any questions about your membership then feel free to contact management at any time. Have a great day.


Regards,
Longecity Management

Edited by brokenportal, 01 August 2012 - 12:12 AM.

I checked out the "packages" in the Admin area. There is an option to delete the $5 dollar package. Which is what we want to do. We have 14 members right now using the monthly membership option. I wasn't sure if I should go ahead an delete the $5 membership right now because then those people might be demoted to registered user. I am not sure how that would work out. So I am going to send them all a message first, then delete the $5 membership package. If their member status changes, I will manually renew their membership through the end of August.

So what is the plan for tiered membership? The Board mentioned a possible option for getting gifts, that it should be a tiered membership. I guess would suggest $80 for the gift package. $50 would get regular welcome message and a postcard.

If it is decided to give a gift package, then what would we offer? SCOD, a mug, t-shirt?

In order to keep it simple and wrap this up, I would suggest just dropping the idea of a tiered membership. Just go with the Student and Employed yearly memberships. Send them all a nice message an a postcard. Sending out gifts is a nice idea, but maybe we should focus our time and energy on other things.

So this is how it would go: Jeremy would gather a list of all the new members on or very near the 25th of each month (or near the end) and then BP would send out the emails/cards on or around the 1st of every month. I still want to take a closer look at the welcome message and add suggestions/edit.

Oh, thats a relief, at first I thought you were making a case for the tiers. It would be good to have but I would rather keep it simpler with the people-power we have right now too.

If you want to drop gifts, I do too, for yearly, just postcard and letter for them. Lifetime then would get some $X in gifts. So if you want, pick a dollar amount for lifetime member gifts and lets lock it in, enough for mug, book and t shirt plus shipping sounds about the right range. Its a bit subjective, so pretty much any reasonable number you or Shepard or others think works, I think works.

I dont know who all wants to edit the member welcome message, if you post an edited version of the member welcome message and there are no objections then I'll use that.

Send me the addresses at that time, and if you forget then Ill have it on my list of volunteer report tasks to do each month and I'll remind you when I get to that part.

Are we doing postcards or membership cards?

EDIT: Really doesn't matter right now, I suppose. We can always change what we send out in the future once the structure is established.

I confirm that I can send bp a list of new members by the 25th of each month, as long as new subscribers supply a mailing address in the payment notes.

If we swap over to a manual membership system, it will be easy enough to set up an official welcome PM to send out to new members instead of an e-mail.
Edited by Shepard, 03 August 2012 - 03:34 PM.

We are finally getting going with offering something for yearly memberships. It was decided recently that we would offer a membership card and the "Scientific Conquest of Death", just to try out the mechanics of the "gift" thing. Well, it just so happens that the first person who wanted the book, wanted an e-book. Yes, I offered an e-book option without checking if Libros provided that (it was an error, so flog me). We don't have an e-book version. Libros offers an e-book option but it looks like it will cost $600. Here is a partial google translate version of what they said:

we offer the edition of his book in Book Nook & Kindle Edition (Editions e-book selling Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com, respectively) at a super discounted price. That is:

• If you purchase the edition Professional (Publishing and paper 2 books for you), we will, as always, $ 495. But if we add the Kindle Edition edition & Nook Book, instead of costing $ 495 + list price, $ 255 (ie, a total of U.S. $ 750), you will, for these 15 days, Only $ 600!

• If you purchase the edition Absolute (Publishing 20 books and paper for you, more campaign launch), I will, as always, $ 995. But if to this we add the Kindle Edition edition & Nook Book, instead of costing $ 995 + U.S. $ 255 (or U.S. $ 1,250), These 15 days you will only $ 1100!

• And finally, if you hire the edition Premium (Publishing 40 books and paper for you, plus full launch campaign that includes editing of promotional material), we will, as always, U.S. $ 1295. But if we add the Kindle Edition edition & Nook Book, instead of costing $ 1295 + $ 255 (or U.S. $ 1,550), he will, for the next 15 days, Only U.S. $ 1,400!

Is $600 an outrageous amount? What is so hard about taking the electronic form of the book that they already have and making it e-book compatible? Does anyone have any insight into this? Can we just take the digital files we have and make an e-book ourselves? Does Libros have legal possession of SCOD that would prevent us from making our own e-book? Is it worth paying the $600?

Note that this is not just a .pdf version of the book, but Nook/Kindle versions. From my understanding from what I've heard from a few authors, Kindle preparation requires an extensive editing process independent of normal print editing.

And my opinion is that, yes, $600 is a bit much if that is our only option. If we ever do another book, it may be a more promising platform for the Kindle.

Hmmm, maybe we can do our own e-book. I know there are a lot of self-publishing sites out there for hard covers (like blurb). What about do-it-yourself e-books? Maybe there is some software that automatically converts PDFs to e-book format.

In the end, I am unsure if $600 for an e-book is worth it. It certainly would make the purchase of the book more frictionless. It is a popular option for book-worms nowadays.

I believe calibre will do the job if we can get our hands on the pdf.

Both the Kindle and i<Device>s can import PDFs directly. $600 seems a lot for what's being discussed.

I like the concept of the membership card and ebooks/pdfs, btw. I'd be just as happy with a PDF plaque/certificate (that could be framed) as a membership 'card' - especially if it was tastefully done. You could even automate the creation in PHP upon joining/renewal - or just a creator that you can access in the member's area.
Edited by MrHappy, 11 November 2012 - 03:01 AM.

Kindle software is free on a PC and on Android tablets, and it can read pdf files. So 600 is way toooo much. And I am sure there are conversion programs around. You can offer a link to the Kindle software download site, plus a pdf file.

Awesome, thanks for the input everyone! Sometimes solutions are easily found.

We have the PDF version already: http://www.imminst.org/book/ offered for free.

So it would seem we only need to get some e-book conversion software and then we can start offering it here on the website. Am I missing something? Hmmmm, maybe it would not be a member "benefit" then. Everyone would just get it free (which is fine from our non-profit org standpoint). However, when we sell hard/soft-covers through Libros, we do get a cut of the sales. I assume that if we went through Libros, we would get a cut of e-book sales as well. I expect that this would be a lot smaller than the amount we get off of the regular book sales.

Overall, I think the benefit (to the life extension movement as a whole) would be greater, if we just converted to the e-book and offered it for free on the website.

Sounds like it would be easy to convert with the right software since the .pdf files are up for free. I wonder how hard it would be to get it added to the Amazon listing of our book though.