I envision those who are most interested in the Gold Membership use it to access codes using a blackberry/iphone etc. while standing in front of a machine about to rent a movie. This is a potentially easy and painless way to keep track of codes. Yes, you could carry a piece of paper in your wallet to keep track, or try to remember, but that sometimes has problems and can add to the clutter in ones life. Since the membership is FREE many people will find it handy to use it instead.

If you don’t like the Gold Membership, then don’t signup for it. Just don’t worry about it. If you don’t like the way I am running this site, then why bother coming back?

I was actually looking back through the comment history the other day and actually saw nothing but praise from you (refreshen) for this site and the way I run it. I really haven’t changed much of anything, except try to make the site better and have less of the ads/offers that people don’t like. The way I am doing the Gold Membership now allows me to do just that.

And finally, just because I am allowing users to get the Gold Membership for free through TrialPay doesn’t mean it doesn’t have any value. The $19 value comes out to about $1.58 per month, which seems like a pretty reasonable value for the features I have made available and will continue to add to in the future. The fact that you can get it for no cost just makes it all that much better for everyone.

In any case, this is the last you will hear from me on this. If you want to use this site, you are more than welcome to, but lets all lay off on unnecessary attacks that get us nowhere.

Let me make some amazingly intelligent comments like yours for other products/services…

# An Address Book

Hmm… I am pretty sure I can write all of the phone numbers I need on various parts of my body without having any help

# A Calendar

If you can’t remember where you need to go and at what time, then you probably didn’t pay attention. If you need something to remind you, I would suggest just staying in bed all day…

# A Shopping List

I am pretty sure we can just see all the stuff we need when we goto the grocery store, so why waste time keeping a list?

# A Mailbox

Why would I need a mailbox? I can just go to the post office when I want to send a letter. Better yet, I can just go take the letter myself!

…

I could go on, but who has time to waste copying/pasting and making useless comments all day?

Oh, and my favorite part is that the Gold Membership DOESN’T ACTUALLY COST YOU ANY MONEY. It’s actually FREE. But, I guess while you have amazing copy/paste skills, your reading skills aren’t quite up to par. Good luck with that…

# Track promo codes you have used and which credit card you used them with

Hmm … I think most of us already can do that without having someone help us.

# Track movies you have watched and when you watched them

If you can’t remember if you watched a movie, then you probably didn’t pay attention. If you need someone to remind you, I would suggest sticking to comic books … they’re easier and more touchy-feely. The bags can be shiny in the light and grab your attention.

# Access the “Movie Queue” feature that allows you to keep a list of movies you want to see and rent them in just a few clicks

I think we can pretty much do that on the Redbox site. Plus, I kind of assume that would mean you couldn’t use a promo code for one …

# Setup you “favorite” locations and states to make reporting promo codes easier and faster

Sheesh … it’s not that hard to master the current menus and the code page and fill in a few words. How many codes are really going to be reported anyway? We’ve only got a couple of Monday codes coming this summer, and any other code is likely to be a one-use only one from a problem.

# See a personalized promo code list of those you haven’t tried/used yet

I’m betting most people only have a few of the retailers that Redbox have partnered with in their area. We’ve only got a Walmart here. And since I only have three cards to use, I got that down pat. I think most everyone else does too.

# Get instant notification of new promo codes as soon as they are available

I think I can probably get that on Google too …

If you think that’s worth $19 a year, more power to you … I’d rather spend the $19 get nineteen movies, myself.

I only rented from Redbox with the free codes.

For me it seems like a lot of trouble to go through just to get extra free codes when I can do a web search for redbox codes and find a bunch all over the place.

Lasty, even with the free weekly codes, I never rented from redbox every week. Some weeks they would have 4 or 5 movies I wanted to see and the next week have none.

Thanks for your comments.

Let me address some of your previous (and current) thoughts on the iPhone app situation…

First off, I knew exactly what I was doing, but couldn’t comment at the time. I was well aware of what would likely occur with the releasing of the iPhone app without approval from Redbox. The problem was, at the time, I had no luck in communicating with anyone at Redbox for the past few years. That has changed now, thanks in part to the iPhone app, as well as to the acquisition of Redbox by Coinstar. Everything is fine now, and my relationship with Redbox is better than it has ever been.

Some of your thoughts on monetization are good ones, and I have implemented pretty much everything you suggest at one time or another. Be aware that internet marketing is my expertise. I do not have a “full-time job” that I go to everyday. This is what I do, and have been doing it for 5 years. This is not my only site, but it does require much of my attention.

(BTW, I have experimented with “backing off” on this site before, and in each occurrence monthly revenues went way down.)

WordPress is working fine, and is not itself the problem. In some cases I have created some problems myself, and other cases just didn’t throw enough computing resources at site to handle the traffic spikes.

I actually ran this site on Hostgator once-upon-a-time, but they kicked me off a long time ago. They may offer unlimited bandwidth, but I was using far more of their resources then they allow. This site is now run on two dedicated servers, costing in excess of $300 per month. I am just about to add more RAM to the servers to help with the massive traffic spikes that occur when I send out a newsletter (to over 65000 email subscribers).

Thanks for coming to the site. It’s always good to have active community members who care. More great things are on the way, too!

Please go start your own blog and find out how hard it is to keep it maintained. It’s a lot of work. People are a-holes, retards and just plain stupid. They will not read before posting and just post wherever then you have to move the posts if you want any sort of organization.

Then there are the abusers, the people who can’t just respect your hard work and just want to mess things up, they bitch and complain, and piss everyone off. Oh, and don’t forget about the spammers, have fun keeping them from posting “bigger boner” ads on your blog 24/7.

And try to make a buck for all your time spent, have fun, it’s not easy.

http://wordpress.com/

On the other hand, Michael, here’s my 2 cents. I’m a little pissed that you didn’t pay attention when I suggested that you be very careful with your IPhone ap and not get Redbox pissed off. Timing is everything in business and you had a big chance to make some good money on that thing. Now it’s a up hill battle and Redbox knows it. So what were you thinking? It just didn’t make sense that Redbox would protect their stuff?

During the Monday code days you should have put up all sorts of affiliate ads all over this thing, you were getting a lot of hits. Affiliates are all over the web, go find some, it’s easy. A few text link ads would have worked nicely too. Stop this membership crap, it’s silly and just doesn’t work unless you are selling cam chat girls in real time.

The only reason people should sign up is to post. When they give a e-mail for signup they should expect that when a new “general use” code comes out and seems to be working, they should get a e-mail reminding them to visit the site. Never for ads, but you don’t have to send them the new code, so then you get some new ad views. If you plan that right you could get some new ads up just before you send that e-mail.

So you can be a control freak and edit everything, or back off and just let things ride. I see the second one work better in a lot of cases (and I think you lean more that way, at least so far you have).

And get rid of this wordpress crap, it makes the place look like it’s run by a newbie and it can’t handle the high traffic. Look at it, it’s falling apart and there’s stuff that you can’t seem to fix.

Oh, and hostgator is like $8 a month for unlimited bandwidth so stop acting like it costs a fortune to keep this thing up, if you are paying more than that, move it! It really comes down to your time, my suggestion is to just keep it a good fun place to visit and keep checking on what affiliate ads work or not.

And thanks for the site, it’s the only one that’s fun to keep coming back to.