I didn’t have to. None of the touted features of being a paid member are even that appealing to me.
Honestly, I was convinced by their marketing copy. They wrote that the site is their full time job, that they want the community to thrive, that they want to make it better, and release updates faster.
I did it because it felt like the right thing to do. We live in a world where we’ve come to expect our websites and online services to be free. Why? Real people work hard on them.
Real people spend years building the experience and skills to put in a lot of mental energy and very long working hours into sites like Fitocracy, Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, etc. They contemplate several ways a person could perform the most minute tasks, how they might interact with this button or that box, or some group of form fields. What if we put this notification here? Should we add that feature? How will people keep track of this? It goes on and on.
It’s what I do, too. I build things on computers. I make websites and applications for people to sign up for and use. I like being paid for it. They should be paid for it, too. It’s why I don’t pirate software anymore, even from large companies like Adobe (I just boycott their products on my personal machine). More often than not, I pay for music, movies, and TV.
I still download the shows I could get over the air for free anyway(I don’t have a television set). I really should just start watching them on Hulu. The occasional commercial isn’t so bad, and it assures me that the people who are working very hard on something I enjoy are getting compensated, and that I’ve invested in a little bit of karma for when I want to earn good money from the things that I produce.
