> Assuming 10% of the uniques are registered users

MeFi has way fewer than 600k active registered users. There are a little over 200k user IDs, but those are allocated at the beginning of the signup process and a lot of people bail out before paying the $5.

I took a quick random sample of 100 userids, and only 30 of them had completed the signup process. Of those, 7 were visibly active (posting, commenting or marking something as "favorite") in the last 12 months.

So the number of registered unique visitors is at most about 60,000, and probably closer to 10,000.

EDIT: This comment is superfluous since matthaughey chimed in while I was posting, but I'm a bit pleased that my estimate was so close.

This is rough back of the envelope calculations, but we only have 62k paid users, only about 12k come back every day, so subscriptions would need something like 25%-50% of the daily userbase paying, not just 2%.

Thanks Matt. As someone not very familiar with your site, I have some observations about the user experience of the site:

I just tried signing up for the site. My first hurdle was finding the sign up button. It's nearly impossible.

After finding the "New user" link and clicking on it, I'm presented with your community guidelines, which I understand make MeFi what it is. But, that page could still do with a sign up button, instead of the link buried at the bottom.

Anyway, I clicked on the "Go ahead and sign up for an account here" link, filled in my details and then I was presented with the "pay $5 to complete your signup" message. I didn't know it was going to cost me $5! I went back to the guidelines page, and I noticed you did mention the $5 there, but I didn't read it.

I expect this is the most common user experience of new visitors to your site interested in joining.

I don't know if improving these things will move the needle at all for you, but there seem to be a few simple things you could try to increase signups.

This is a feature.

Lurking on Metafilter doesn't require an account; you need one only if you want to post or comment. The $5 threshold (and the wall of text "guidelines" page where it's mentioned a couple of times) serves as an incredible gatekeeper. That is probably the single most effective thing that is responsible for the high quality of Metafilter's posts and comments. The exceptionally well-done moderation is a very close second.

Most mefites actually did read the guidelines page, because by the time they've decided to become a member, they know that text on that page is probably important, and (much like the rest of Metafilter) is probably worth reading in full.

Because what usually happens is a user will read Metafilter for days or weeks, slowly realizing how special it is, and then finally hit a topic that they're passionate about -- the kind of thing where they just have to post, because they know they can contribute to the community... so they spend the $5 and sign up.

The catch is, they've been a member of the community for a bit already, albeit a mute one, and they've probably picked up on some of those guidelines already. That's the point. Optimizing the site so a first-time-visitor is more likely to become a (paid) user would inherently be deprioritizing community quality.

It's that community that makes MetaFilter what it is.

I agree with "Most mefites actually did read the guidelines page, because by the time they've decided to become a member, they know that text on that page is probably important".

But just wanted to say that I love MeFi but the interface leaves a lot to be desired. Really :(

Some would say that the difficulty in signing up is a feature—Metafilter wants dedicated people who've really thought about it to sign up.

I suspect that a major reason for the demise of Metafilter is it's just so rude that people have started leaving and not returning. I used to love it and spent a lot of time hanging out there, until it started to get so incredibly snarky that I felt uncomfortable commenting. The last straw was when some veteran accused me of trivialising the holocaust just because of an innocent quote. Nobody needs that stuff.

That's the reason I stopped visiting. I once asked a tech-support type question and was told to "man up and grow a pair", and tell my users they would just have to live with the problem (no attempt to answer the actual question). Unfortunately, answers like that tend to get lots of favorites since they sound so emphatic, and people on MeFi seem to like emphatic answers, in the same way reddit likes funny answers.

Man, I am sympathetic if you got an obnoxious answer like that, but for what it's worth as one of the folks who moderates it that as stated is a comment I'd delete from an Ask Metafilter thread in a heartbeat and would expect other users to have flagged a bunch as well. The system isn't perfect but "man up and grow a pair" is really precisely deletable as a crap non-answer in our moderation rubric.

Thanks for that :) It's a great community but some of its flaws grew a bit tiring. I genuinely hope it can come through its current crisis and keep right on going.

Your caricature of what MF is like is so grotesquely at odds with my experience that I would suspect that you are exaggerating or making it up. Metafilter, by and large, has an informed, intelligent and very helpful community. There are always jerks or people having a bad day but the mods deal with that promptly. That said, people who are just asinine, like perhaps those making unfair generalizations, are often dealt with by gentle ridicule. I have never seen anyone unfairly snarked, ever.

Showing ads to only non-paying users makes those remaining ad impressions considerably less valuable. Google won't care, but it basically rules out more lucrative direct sales of ads. No one is going to pay top dollar to reach only the cheapest and least engaged segment of your audience.

To add to that, for comparison, they'd need $6 CPM worth of ads on all their pageviews to make the same amount just from ads.