OK I am now a long time poster of Geekzone and I think it is a fantastic site that helps a lot of people.

I like the idea of supporting Geekzone but have always found (currently using XE) around $75NZD on the high side for me to spend on supporting the site. I know there are people that can and do have the available money to pay the $50USD to subscribe however I think there are a lot of people that would like to help out and support Geekzone but cannot/will not stump up that kind of money.

I have a couple of suggestions that I believe would result in the number of people supporting Geekzone to increase dramatically.

First off and I have asked suggested this before. Change the payment system to NZD. It seems ridiculous that we are paying USD for a subscription service to a NZ site run by a NZ person/business. Being at the wim of the exchange rate is a good way to put people off doing it.

Also personally I hate paypal. Is it not possible to setup a straight credit card system? I am not sure on the costs of doing it that way but I know a lot of people would be put off by it being paypal.

Introduce tiers of subscriptions with corresponding pricing.
Simple really like so many things in this world have Gold, Silver and Bronze subscriptions levels each with benefits that reflect the level and stated subscription level in the persons user info in posts.

Something like
(all amounts in NZD)

Bronze
Cost $30 per year or $3.00 per month
Benefits
Bronze subscription tag on user details in posts and knowledge that you are supporting the site.

Silver
Cost $55 per year or $5.50 per month
Benefits
Silver subscription tag on user details in posts
# Personal Tag under your name in the forums;
# Automatic approval for your Geekzone Blog;
# 50 MB of disk space for image storage (automatically resized for best use in our forums or on your Geekzone Blog)

Gold
Cost $75 per year or $7.50 per month
Benefits
Gold subscription tag on user details in posts
# Access to private forums;
# Personal Tag under your name in the forums;
# Automatic approval for your Geekzone Blog;
# 100 MB of disk space for image storage (automatically resized for best use in our forums or on your Geekzone Blog);
# Image gallery for use in your Geekzone Blog "Random Picture" feature;
# Advertising free option for browsing Geekzone;
# Up to ten private forum, with invite-only access that you manage for each individual forum

I am sure that if a system like that described above was introduced the result would be more financial support for Geekzone and freitasm who makes Geekzone a possiblitiy.

Keep up the good work!!