craftgrrl | changes to the artisans exchange web site

So, I had been able to make one trade on ArtisansExchange.com over the past few months that I've been a member, and today I went to login to my account. I wasn't able to. In fact, it's telling me my account isn't even there anymore, even though my messages are still up there.

Then I go and see that as of July, the site administrator is charging people now, and I won't be able to view any of my private messages anymore.

I'm not sure if that's why I can't get into my account, but I'm not too happy about it.

I mean, one trade in a few months isn't spectacular results, and the administrator herself said that if everyone contributed a dollar it would cover the cost of running the site for six months. But instead, she's charging people $7 each. So why didn't she make membership a little cheaper?

I do understand that she wants to be compensated for her time, but you have to build the audience *first* to make it worth someone's while. Asking for a subscription fee now is only going to cut the number of people on the site already (it's less than 100 people).

It's waaaay better to take a loss of $80 for six months of site function *now* than to risk drastically cutting your future customer base too early. I used to work for a web site, I know how it works. You have to get the people there *first*, then prove to them that it actually works, and then ask for a nominal fee later...like, maybe $5 a year, or even less, so that you won't lose all of those people you worked so hard to attract.

I'm really disappointed. The site really did have a lot of potential.