First, as I have said here and elsewhere before, I love blipfoto.

It is a very simple but beautifully done photoblog, or photo diary. You can only post 1 image a day (but no pressure to do it every day). The community is friendly, encouraging, and creative. If you are looking for a way to encourage yourself to take more pictures more regularly, you really owe it to yourself to check blip out. It certainly did that for me, to incredible degrees at times. I lost it over December but fully expecting to go back.

The site has been free for 2 years. But like every site out there, they have costs, and need to start covering those costs.

They are not adding ads, they are adding premium memberships, with improved features and additional bonuses (I suspect these will be special discounts, perhaps also ways to show/export your blog but probably a lot of premium information, courses etc. But I am just guessing). But they are doing something else that is very much in the spirit of the community created around the site: they are creating special supporting founder memberships:

(from the blog
you’re going to have a never-to-be-repeated opportunity to show your appreciation for everything Blipfoto has done so far, give us a kick-start for 2009 and stake your place in history with an exclusive Blipfoto Founding Membership.

For £40, you’ll receive:

- 18 months full membership, starting when we introduce our membership option
- an exclusive founding member’s icon, which will stay with you forever
- a specially produced founding member’s enamel badge
- 10% discount on all future Blipfoto purchases, including membership fees

As if that wasn’t enough, when you take out your Founding Membership, you’ll have an opportunity to pay a little extra and lay your hands on a set of 200 personalised Founding Member Blipcards. Again, this is an exclusive, one-off print run which will never be available again.

Why do I think this is so clever? Note that apart from a few token trinkets, you have no idea what the membership features will be. They are not selling the premium features, they will have plenty of time to do this later. No, they are appealing to their core users, the ones who love the service and would pay for it as it is (even though the service as it is will always remain free). They are saying “if you like us, trust us, and fund the time we are spending creating the next level”. I think this is an extremely open and modern way to fund an application, and a very courageous approach.

It works for me.

Even though I have no income at the moment I will become a founding member of blipfoto, because I have received real value from the site and want to support its team to do more of the same. I am not doing it for the badge or pin, I am doing it to support the site. I want to see what it can become, and am willing to chip in to make sure it gets the chance to get there (note that this is the same reason I paid for lwa, 72photos, aviary and others, and I would do the same for a site like bookmooch or friendfeed).