Forums » Suggestions & Development Discussion » Buying extra gallery slots

I'm not sure if this has ever been suggested, or if it'd even be appropriate but I was wondering if- like how you can purchase extra character slots and pages for your characters, would there perhaps be a market for selling extra gallery slots? Perhaps there could be a bulk buy of fifteen extra slots for all your characters, for a certain price. Not sure if this would take away from people buying epic memberships, but I know that I personally would love more gallery spaces for Meem especially, but still don't quite have the funds to keep renewing an epic membership.

Just a suggestion God I feel so nervous posting this haha

No need to be nervous!! This is a neat suggestion, I like it personally.

Epic accounts are more profitable for RPR in the long run because they're repeat funds to maintain the perks. Buying features on their own means they're permanent additions and you never have to pay for them again. So yes, technically it would take away from the epicness. BUT! We already have features that were only for epic accounts as separate upgrades.

You can get extra character slots forever for a one-time fee of 15 dollars. You can get extra pages for a one-time fee of 1.50 or 7.50, depending on the number of pages. I don't see why purchasing extra gallery slots can't fit in there. Epic accounts still have more features all together like creating your own character templates, prettyfying your profile and no ads, and that makes epic accounts valuable on their own even if these features are sold separately.

Now this turned out to be a really long post. To the point: I'd like to see this too!

I've been wondering the same thing about custom CSS, because the ability to make character profiles super pretty is by far my favourite part about Epic. I would love to be able to gift the ability to use CSS to my friends so I could make profiles for them. I was going to make a thread about, but didn't for the same reason - because I figured it would probably take away the specialness of Epic memberships.

Because at the moment -

Epic gives 10 character slots and 2 extra pages:

2 * 14.99 + 2 * 1.50= 32.98

So for just $32.98, you can get the exact same features of Epic permanently. This costs less than a whole year of Epic. I guessed there had to be a reason to pick Epic over permanent upgrades, and that'd be the other features like CSS and galleries which you couldn't buy otherwise.

Claine, you are absolutely right. Epic accounts do help cover the cost of the servers. RPR has grown so much in the last year that we really need the kind of hosting we have now and as the site continues to develop, it's going to get more and more demanding.

Every bit helps of course, I just don't think breaking up what Epic accounts have to offer too much is a good idea.

Sorry Claine! CSS and the removal of ads will never be broken out of Epic accounts. I consistently hear that those are the main attractions of epic accounts, and epic accounts are truly the bread and butter of the RPR. Since they are purely cosmetic upgrades, it's hard to see an argument under which they'd be required to get the full benefit of us. Darth is right that our server costs are creeping up, and that process is never likely to stop so long as the site is successful by any measurement.

But back to the original question, I might consider permanent extra gallery slots, although I'm much less inclined toward it. There's a few reasons:

1. Pages and character slots take up a relatively small amount of space on the server, and are safe and cost effective to offer. By comparison, images are ginormous. Multiplied by the thousands of you using the site, images account for a huge portion of our storage needs. How much data we need to carry with us will really limit our server options in the future, and if we are going to require larger server machines and more storage, I'd like to charge accordingly.
2. People who have more than 20 images are typically demonstrating one of the following:
   • They do have the money to spend on commissions;
   • They are stealing a whole lot of references off of Google or Deviantart without permission and are exponentially more likely to have complaints made against them requiring me to spend a lot of time untangling ownership and taking appropriate actions, which they should pay for monthly by God, I would so much rather be programming;
   • They are an artist themself, and could probably get 3 months (or a year if they are very good) of Epicness by drawing a character for someone.
3. The base image limit has already been doubled for everyone, as a welcome to our new server gift from the last time we moved! So in effect everyone has the number of images an epic account originally permitted you to have.

I hope that helps to frame the debate. There's no need to be nervous about politely suggesting something! The worst thing that can happen is I'll say no, and no one will ever get angry with you for it.

I might try to eat the suggestion but I usually get the waterbottle and the newspaper for that...

Thank you for considering it Kim You'd think that being an artist would mean you'd be able to make the money for an epic account but... I think people have an aversion to my art Haha, but back to the point- If I could buy an epic membership, I really would, but I can't, and all I really want is more gallery space. However, if you feel that there'd be a significant drop in epic sales, then don't worry about it at all!

And

"I might try to eat the suggestion but I usually get the waterbottle and the newspaper for that..."

?