Snapzu Update To Version 6.0
This long-awaited update introduces Snapzu Platinum, our new membership program that we hope can finally help pay the bills! Our blogging tools, AKA the Blog Enhancement Suite, is also live!
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Greetings everyone!
It's past 4am PST, and we're reallllly tired after a long day (and most of the night) so we want to keep this post short and sweet. Our apologies for not posting any updates for a while, we've been extremely busy trying to get this release launched sooner rather than later.
As you can imagine, Snapzu costs money to stay up and running. For several years now the Snapzu admin team (exactly seven of us) has been pooling our savings and covering the costs out-of-pocket for the most part, with the exception of some Paypal/Bitcoin donations from some of our amazing members (you know who you are, so thank you!).
It's fairly obvious that any real business needs to make money to stay afloat, and losing money month after month is clearly not a winning strategy and definitely not something that can last forever. That being said, we're extremely confident that this update includes the solutions we've been longing for where we can generate enough revenue to keep Snapzu going, all while keeping our original promise to stay away from third party advertising (adwords, adsense, popover ads, sponsored content, etc.)
As you may remember from a previous announcement, over the past nine or so months we've been rigorously working on our new premium membership called Snapzu Platinum, and the time has finally come to formally introduce and finally launch it! You can read about all the features here. To quickly summarize it, for a moderate monthly fee of $5/month, the Platinum membership will unlock several cool new features and perks here on Snapzu. Gifting ability is included so that members can gift other members platinum for whatever reason (being helpful, insightful, funny, witty, etc.) Our level 50 users, as promised, will receive free Snapzu Platinum (just another great reason to hit level 50!) So for you level 50's out there, you can expect your account to receive platinum from one of our admins very soon!
At $5/month, it will still require a large mass of paying Snapzu Platinum members just to get out of the red, which incidentally takes us to the next part of this post -- our newly released blogging tools called the Blog Enhancement Suite, which we believe will tie in wonderfully with the Snapzu community platform. It is with this innovative set of blogging tools that we expect will help cover the bulk of Snapzu's expenses and its continued expansion.
You may have previously noticed our blogging tools pre-launch page that we've been promoting over the last few months for our new (SaaS) service, the Blog Enhancement Suite. This pre-launch campaign was specifically designed to attract passer-by bloggers during development so we could grow our mailing list of interested bloggers during our prolonged development process.
We're excited to announce that The Blog Enhancement Suite is now also officially live. The accompanying blog is a little bare at the moment (hey it's launch day!) but if you want to take a quick look, you can see that it features the tribe widget (from the /t/BES tribe), the primary social blogging tool offered by this unique new service. Bloggers can now utilize the power of a community (their tribe), functionality that has existed on Snapzu for years, to help their blog in several ways as explained here. Of all the people out there, we've found that bloggers are among the most (if not the most) qualified to run tribes, because not only do they already show passion and/or have expertise in a specific topic or niche, they also have the dedication it takes, having already taken the necessary steps to set up and establish their blog and build an audience. The Snapzu community will receive a steady influx of new members, which will in turn post more content, engage in more discussions, and generally grow the entire community as a whole. We genuinely feel that this route is a win/win for bloggers and Snapzu users/readers alike.
Premium features of the Blog Enhancement Suite are available in three plans: the basic free Hobbyist plan, the Aspirant Plan which costs $39/month, and the Professional Plan which costs $79/month. With enough bloggers on board, we hope these fees can fully cover our operating and development costs.
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That being said, we want to assure everyone that we 100% wholeheartedly understand the meaning of a strong and united community. We took appropriate measures to ensure that any participating bloggers fully understand and follow the global community guidelines, rules, and etiquette that keeps this place orderly, friendly, and spam free. We urge all Snapzu members to be friendly and welcoming to any new bloggers who are here running their tribes (and blogs) and please give them an honest opportunity, as most of them have no ill-intentions and just want to build a community and utilize it on their blog. We (as always) will make sure the rules are followed, you can bet on that.
If you happen to know any bloggers, we would appreciate if you let them know about Snapzu, the Blog Enhancement Suite, and how it can help their blog.
And finally, as usual, if you spot any bugs or something not functioning correctly, please PM us at /u/drunkenninja or /u/teamsnapzu. We will try and fix any reported issues as soon as we possibly can.
Thanks for reading and enjoy the update! Now excuse us, we need to catch up on some sleep!
- Team Snapzu
Join the Discussion
Just wanted to say thanks for the update and more importantly for keeping this place going on your own dime. I'll try and contribute when I can.
I like the blogging idea. I'm not a blogger,but this could be very interesting and entertaining.
Thanks team snapzu. I really appreciate the work you guys do! LLS!
I clicked the link to read about the new features and it just took me to snapzu.com.
That was a typo, I have since fixed the link. Thanks for the heads up!
Was wondering what that blogging stuff was about. I don't personally run a blog but I know a couple friends that do and I'll let them know about the big launch.
Congratulations!
Looking good, will play around!
Great work!
Thanks for all the effort. It looks great, night mode is so nice on the eyes. :-) Got a nice present from the Snapzu-bossman and will try it out for a month. :-) On to level fifty!! :-)
We're a month further and the site is back to its' original layout/design (not in night-mode). All I can say is: get yourself that platinum! :-) Besides all the added gadgets, the design is awesome in night-mode. :-) Of course it also feels kinda rich while posting or reading. :-)
Blogger here, I'm going to have to check out the BES :)
If you have any questions, please be sure to get in touch!
Hey, I just integrated it with my site! I'm trying to figure out how to put it on the left side of the page, though- I can't figure out how to put widgets over there and my right side is reaaaally busy.
That's awesome! I PM'd you in regards the embed widget integration.
Can this integrate with any site? even custom? I ask because my blog will use Live Blog from Mandeeps.com. a module for the DNN CMS platform.
I'm just fixing to get my blog back up, so this could be a nice way to involve the community. Better than running ads and trying to spam-drive folks over to it.