We value real, honest feedback from community members like you.  Our visionary team is very excited about continuing to make PhotographyConnect.com a place where you feel welcome and appreciated.  That being said, sometimes we get ahead of ourselves (admit it, it’s happened to you too!).

You may have seen a recent post about our future ideas for membership.  Well, it was still an idea in progress.  We admit that a blog post probably wasn’t  the best venue for sharing our future aspirations.  And we apologize for the confusion that our “announcement” may have caused. Thankfully our community responded with truthful feedback — overwhelming supportive of the idea — but at a later point in time.

We took this to heart.  As we continue to make PhotographyConnect.com a place for professional photographers to share, network, and learn — we promise to keep listening to your input.  Our “membership” concept will be left to age and mature while we mold PhotographyConnect.com into your dream community.  When the time comes, don’t worry — we will poll our members, we will ask for input on the direction you want your community to follow.

So, what now?

We will continue to offer free access to the forum (remember, all active professional photographers are encouraged to join!). We will continue to offer webinars, are creating a blogozine with member submitted content.

Online Learning – Webinars, webinars and more webinars. We’ve got some great speakers lined up and can’t wait to add more!

On the Forum – Discuss webinars in more detail, share, and learn.  Don’t forget to discuss with Michael Imus as his final days as Featured Photographer wind down.  Be ready for Suzy Roberts to take the reins and rock our Featured Photographer section for the month of March!

Blogozine – We’re going to search and add contributors to our little slice of the web: reviews, tips + tricks, etc.  If you have an unpublished article you’d like to share with the photographic community, feel free to submit it for consideration!

We have many more great ideas, but we don’t want to overload you right now.  Rest assured your feedback is the driving force behind the PhotographyConnect.com community.   We will keep you posted on new ideas before their official launch.  I can’t tell you all how valued your input is, we want to hear your thoughts (we prefer constructive  criticism, though, so we know where to improve).  Be honest, be blunt.  Our community is set to grow, but we do depend on you to help make it happen!

ORIGINAL BLOG POST – PRESERVED HERE FOR HISTORICAL PURPOSES

[originally published February 20th, 2009]

Well, we’ve added “Membership” and a Members section to PhotographyConnect.

First, NO, you don’t have to pay anything to access the forum or the community.

Second, Yes, there will be sections of the forum that are or will be in the “Members” section only. What are they, how many? I don’t have an exact answer for that right now. For now it will only be the few new sections I have added into the “Members” section. We’ll work on the transition for the other sections in the coming weeks and months.

The forum will be two sections in a sense, the “Community” section is where all members (paying or not) will be able to talk, share and socialize. This includes making more active use of Profiles, Groups, Albums, etc. Along with sections of the forum that will remain open to everyone.

The new “Members” section will be the place premium content will be and include an expansion of the offerings we will have standard in the “Community”.

Doing all this opens up options and gives us the ability to devote more time to the forum, hire programmers to make some of the cool ideas we have for the community as a whole a reality and of course keep the whole thing running. We didn’t start this project to be just another place or just another plain forum.

So what’s it going to cost?

Membership will be just $75 for one year until June 1st 2009 when it goes to the standard $99.

So what’s included with “Membership”?

Membership includes:

• Access to the Members only section
• Discounted webinar pricing of just $10 per class
• Access to recorded webinars
• Ability to customize your profile
• Larger album storage
• Larger display size of images in albums
• Additional private message storage

Membership benefits will only increase as we add more interactive aspects to the website. We’re beyond excited to move the entire site into this new stage and can’t wait to being building upon it.

Offering membership not only helps us offer a lower cost to you for the webinars and increases the number of people who can attend them. It also helps cover some of the costs to keep the site going that were small and now are starting to grow quickly!