Right. And the two month membership is not our product. A full year-membership is our product.
Then why are we creating this 2-month membership?
I can’t understand the target audience of this pseudo-product. No one would ever buy one of them for the tournaments that I might attend. (i.e library quads and the like, with ten dollar or less entry fees.)
Troll.
I can’t see any reason to sell this form of membership to anyone who plays in our club’s tournaments. This only looks optimal for someone who wants to play one time in a Millionaire Open or a foreign player playing once on a lark in a USCF tournament just to see what it is like. When I played in a tournament in Canada, I paid a tournament membership fee to play rather than pay for a full CFC membership. IIRC, it was about 20 Canadian dollars to do that.
No unfortunately you’re wrong Micah.
Let’s take lessons from a 2 Trillion Dollar market which is the Direct Mail Industry (you know those annoying pieces of mail that comes through the postal service). Their industry relies on immediate decisions, not protracted ones. Their research has shown that the more options you provide at time of purchase the less likely an immediate decision will be made and the purchase may be done at a later time. That’s why in direct mail campaigns you don’t see a pick list or an a la carte menu.
The same is here.
The 2-month membership is more of a fail-safe than anything else. The product is the full membership. That’s what is to be sold. That is promoted. Is it promoted as effectively as I think it could be. No, but that’s a topic for a different discussion.
Now personally I think we have too many membership options as it stands and it confuses people. It makes it difficult as an affiliate to be able to go over all of the options with parents or players. But that’s a topic for a different discussion.
Now you may not wish to agree with any of what anyone has written. But to continue repeating and rehashing isn’t going to solve anything.
Very good. That is exactly the point. We do not want short term memberships to cannibalize our annual memberships. We have a membership that someone can use as a promotional tool to introduce a player to the USCF at a lower cost - if cost is really the barrier. But we want members to get annual memberships as quickly as possible. It costs us the same to process a membership no matter what type it is - 2 month or annual.
With the 3 month membership and the way we do membership expirations, it could be cheaper to string together those to be a member for a full year for a slightly lower cost than the annual membership and required the federation to process the membership 3 times raising our servicing cost.
As to why to have a 2 month membership at all? Simple. Several of our key affiliates demanded some sort of promotional membership. And the prior promotional membership had some good results, but the cost structure was not good. So we are still experimenting to find the right mix. This promotional membership may well change too if we find it is not doing what we want for it to do.
If any organizer/TD doesn’t like the structure for the 2 month membership, then don’t offer it as a promotion at your events. That is why it is not and will not be offered on-line - it is a tool for local organizers should they choose to use it.
This. 100 percent this.
No, it’s a legitimate question .
No unfortunately you’re wrong Sevan. You see, a fail-safe against players who might not pay $40 to play in a tournament won’t work if they don’t know about this option.
Foreign players can purchase the international membership for $20 which gives them a membership for a year.
And having this membership mentioned in the webstore would help us use this “promotional tool to introduce a player to the USCF at a lower cost”
The fail-safe is not for players, it’s for organizers.
You seem to think that the membership is really meant for players, it’s not…
I thought the fail-safe for organizers was going to be the $10 ‘correction’ fee.
Player: Hello, I’d like to register for this tournament that I just came to play at.
Organizer: OK great, the Entry Fee is $20, what’s your USCF ID number.
Player: Oh I’m not a member (or my membership expired). Do I have to pay a fee for that as well?
Organizer: Yes you do, the membership fee is $40 for 1 year and you can use that membership anywhere in the US to register for a USCF rated tournament and work towards / update your official USCF rating which is a gold standard for over the board ratings!
Player: Geez I don’t have that much on me. I only have the entry fee and a bit more.
Organizer: Well there is a $20 2-month membership we can do, but overall you don’t want to do this each time you come and play because you’ll pay more than purchasing a full membership.
Player: Ok I can do that.
This is a fail safe for the organizer, not the member. Because if the organizer does not then present this fail safe option:
(a) the player walks away and the organizer gets bunk
(b) the organizer gets stuck with a $10 fee when he/she submits the rating report
(c) the organizer, if they keep using the ‘correction fee’ option will have that taken away and potentially other sanctions against them.
The foes list works wonders.
What? You mean the correction fee is not designed as a salable product? I’m appalled.
Over time I’ve realized that the foes list only goes so far. The drivel is easily seen through the quotes. How many months does it take someone like this guy to realize his approach isn’t working?
First, it is designed to have a very limited “target audience”. Second, if someone is only intending to play one tournament per year (or ever) it does make sense. Third, there is a very limited audience for that type of tournament. Players like prizes. This http://www.uschess.org/msa/XtblMain.php?201408174072 is my latest demonstration of that. It had a $1 entry fee and a $100 prize fund. You can judge the success for yourself.
Alex Relyea
I applaud those who can subsidize events, whether that comes from the organizer’s own pocket or from other donors or sponsors. But as long as most tournaments have to be self-sustaining, with $17 in entry fees and $100 in prizes, plus any site costs and ratings fees, there’s a limit to how many similar events can be run.
Absolutely. Note that the expected rating fee is 62.5c per player. This was my attempt to see if this sort of event is attractive to players. I think that the answer is a resounding “No.”
Alex Relyea
In my experience, ‘plus score’ events did very well attracting enough players to be revenue-positive. Having a free or very inexpensive site and a TD willing to work for free or nominal pay helps, too.
Of whom? I can’t figure out anyone who would want to use it, except possibly someone who plays in one, single, high entry fee tournament each year. If they go to the World Open, and that’s all, then they save 20 bucks.
And I don’t object to such a person saving 20 bucks, but I can’t figure out why we would bother creating special circumstances for such a player. There’s nothing “wrong” with it per se, but there’s also not really a point, unless maybe you are concerned about getting a handful of extra entries for a big event. That sort of player doesn’t grow a community, and I’m willing to bet at least half of those players would be willing to pay 40, so it doesn’t raise USCF revenue. It makes a few bucks for the organizers, but not much. Is that really the intent? I’m baffled.
A person who goes to a single low entry fee tournament per year would also save 20 bucks, but only if they paid it, which they would not. If you are looking for a ten dollar event, you aren’t going to pay an extra 20 to play. You might pay an extra 10.
I’m afraid I can’t. It seems like you might be suggesting the event was a failure, but it doesn’t look that way to me. Did the players enjoy the event? I can’t tell from the cross table. Did the organizer lose money? It depends on the site and the source of the 100 dollars. Surely he wasn’t expecting 100 players to show up, was he?
Well, one thing is for certain, whatever it is that USCF players seem to want, it isn’t what I want. None of it makes any sense to me, so I will certainly give up on organizing. My “business model” for my events required me to pay for some short term memberships. With the higher price, I can’t do that. As for playing, I’ll have to decide what to do come January when my membership expires. The USCF and I don’t seem to have the same goals, so perhaps it is time to part ways. Ever since I got into robotics competitions, my interest in Chess plummeted anyway.