You had Questions about our new Premium Membership

We knew there would be a lot of initial shock when we first announced that the Showcase and Collection Value would become a Premium Feature. We hear your frustration and would like to clearly address a few comments –

Why did you do this?

• Simply put, as a business, we need to make revenue to survive. Earlier this year, Funko told us that they could not afford paying for our pricing data anymore and that they would get price data from eBay instead – and that was our biggest contract. 

• We tried to compensate with ads and other initiatives, but nothing was able to make up for that loss. 

• You tell us about inflation, believe us, we know. Our costs have continued to rise including all of our suppliers for technical services (our biggest expense category – and what keeps the site online)

• On top of that, our entire team has not received a pay increase for the last three years. We are so passionate about what we are building, that we have made that sacrifice in order to continue doing what we love – which makes a lot of this negativity really discouraging.  

Why don’t you charge for new services instead of old ones?

When we launched HobbyDB Premium, that’s exactly what we did. We charged for – 

• No Ads

• No Selling Fees (compare that to other sites!)

• Collection Exports

• Gains and Losses Reports

• First Access to Exclusives

And guess what, we got less than 300 subscribers (that is 0.04%). This is not enough to help us survive.  We would need just 1% of our Members to come on board.

Why add more costs when everyone is struggling with inflation

• We are struggling with inflation too. All of our costs have gone up considerably and we need help in order to survive as a business.

• We specifically made subscriptions as affordable as possible. $2.50 a month is less than a cup of coffee these days and will certainly not get hobbyDB rich quick. 

What about our Volunteers

• They are excluded from this change

• If you want to actively help build the database reach out and become a volunteer

What about our Shareholders

• Shareholders get a 25% discount on Premium

• Think about it this way, if you own shares in Netflix, do you still have to pay to use their monthly service? 

What is OK and what is not

• You can use the free service or close your account

• Sending our team members an email that says 50x “Fuck you” is neither eloquent nor really acceptable (manners matter)

Lastly, thanks to the many people who send positive vibes or have become a Premium Member already.

Alex, Christian, and the rest of the team