As you might have noticed, we are having some difficulties with finding the right bussiness model for BRIBBLE. In the past BRIBBLE was an open source product, but because no real input was contributed from the community, we decided to “close” the source and continue developping BRIBBLE ourselves. During several years of finetuning, adding features and building a solid customer group, BRIBBLE was offered as free service (the small chatboxes were free).
Because of the high demand of support and the low revenue, we decided to stop the offer of free chat boxes in January 2008. This resulted in a boost of our revenue as several users of the free chatboxes decided to switch to a payed account.
Currently, BRIBBLE is making some good money, but there is no growth in the revenue and because we think BRIBBLE should be know and used by more people (at least 100.000 logins a day!), we are considering to offer BRIBBLE chatboxes for free again. As you can imagine we have spent a lot of time and money on BRIBBLE, so we are currently searching for the right business-plan to cover the current expenses, but still make BRIBBLE free.
share your thoughts please 
its better to be free
I think you are right about that. But the problem is, how are we going to cover the costs. Offering bribble for free will not cover our expenses (hosting, support, maintenance).
Dutch:
Mijn engels is niet zo goed, vandaar een vertaling via google. Ik zat meer aan een idee te denken als de flash chatbox uit te breiden met een blokje Google-adds, of een andere advertentie aanbieder. Wanneer je dit gaat refreshen e.d. komt er toch meer geld binnen. Wanneer je deze buiten de flash chat houdt gaan mensen de popup versmallen zodat je de reclame niet ziet. En wanneer de popup kleiner word dan de flash-applicatie word er een scrollbalk getoond. Hierdoor zou je het een beetje kunnen tegen houden.
Het andere idee dat ik had, was het systeem gewoon simpelweg open source te zetten zodat geïnteresseerden het pakket kunnen downloaden en draaien op hun eigen server. Dit scheelt een hoop kosten, maar ook een hoop inkomsten denk ik!
Veel succes ermee!:)
Translated with translate.google.nl
My english is not so good, then a translation through google. It was more of an idea about the flash chatbox to include a block with Google-ads or another ad provider. If you place the ads outside the flash chat, people will resize the window so you do not see advertising. And when the popup is smaller than the flash it will show a scroll bar. By placing the ads inside the flash nobody can hide the ads.
The other idea I had was just simply open source system to the package so that those interested can download and run on their own server. This saves a lot of costs, but also a lot of revenue, I think!
Good luck with it!:)
@bas, we have tried working with ads in the past, but we think BRIBBLE is popular becasue of the clean interface. Adding ads to that interface will clutter it.
open-sourcing the software (as we have done in the past) does not cut any costs becasue a lot of people will expect some kind of support. As bribble is run on a java-server most people have difficulties installing the server-side of BRIBBLE.
Making BRIBBLE free would be great. Or you could at least make it open source.
Bribble is by far my favorite chat program. I was really bummed to find that they were closing the free ones a few years ago. I remember going to tons of fan sites and all you would see was Bribble embedded on each and everyone. Now since Bribble closed their free one, everyone uses Xat, which is a similar chat box program.
I personally think Bribble would do better if they opened up their free ones. Then eventually those who are using the free ones, will want to upgrade, or users of the free ones may want their own, and eventually upgrade.
You defiantly have my word, that if you guys make it free again, I’ll defiantly be getting one. But until then, I’m using Xat.
-Dalton
Great idea to bring bribble back to the free point!
But..
You have currently a very populair system where people are paying for, why not wait a bit longer? People closed are there websites because bribble decieded to close there free chats in Januari 2008. I think it’s too early to start over again: for the people who closed down there sites and make some money and work on your system. Why not trying the open-source project again? (Bribble Lite version?) Other people can create and make host for bribble than.
Saves you alot of money!
Erik.
ps: No ads, never!
What you could do, is make upgrades, like a temp ad on BRIBBLE’s homepage or something.
Yes it should be free but have less features then the costly one of course.
I mean 5 dollars a month for a chat is cheep. You can get real hosting for the same price which has more.
Bribble back to being free?
Excellent idea.
Covering the cost’s?
Maybe, this may be stupid, but donations from users etc.
We have considered that option. But to cover our monthly costs we will need some kind of steady income. Donations will most probably not cover that kind of steadiness.
You could put ads on the free bribble sites for money
Can you at least make Bribble open source?
Programmers (like I myself) can handle installing it on our server.
Thanks
@Brandon: We have tried offering BRIBBLE as open-source package, but it resulted in even more costs due to high demond on our support-staff without participation from the community.
Offer Bribble as open source without support.. just give an install guide and let everyone else deal with problems.
If they can’t run it well then they could buy a bribble unless you decide to offer for free.. but in all matters, I’d love to run Bribble on my site.
Thanks
we have tried that option several years ago and it didn’t work (see the reasons above). Even writing and updating a manual can take quite some time
Please make it free for 2 days
We now create a 7-day free trial account for each customer subscribing through paypal. That may be a good method for someone to try out BRIBBLE before actually paying for it.
I think you should maybe put up a few adverts around the site and encourage people to click them, you can also put up a donation button on the website for people who would want to donate.
I really miss Bribble being a free service though!
Oh by the way, why doesn’t this have forums anymore? I miss them too!
The forums have been closed several years ago, due to a very high amount of spam messages we received.
Adverts are not creating any siginificant income. We already tried that with adwords, which resulted in $120 in four months. Considering we spend several hundreds of dollars monthly on hardware-maintenance and hosting-costs alone, you can imagine we don’t really see the benefits of adverts (in this case: google adwords).
Hi,
Following old messages, make bribble open source and free and don’t offer any support… but maybe a simple how to install bribble guide in the open source code.
Only offer support to users who choose to buy bribble at bribble.com
-
Brandon
Well Menno u can make bribble for free, after ur gonna decide what to do .You never know what is gonna happen
Nice job using wordpress, it is really good.
Why don’t you make a free service, wich should not have all the features, and a premium version, who has it all?
I always thought of Bribble as the best in Chat software, b’cause it’s easy and it’s good! It was a real pity when it went paid for me.
that is very helpfull for alot of person to speak each other therefor bribble’s staf motivats me to improve my language .
i am wih Mr. Halkawt i want to be free, its better to be free
Hi everyone, I Hope Bribble Chat Be Free Because Some People are in Iraq And Somal and They Want To Make Bribble Chat But They Cant Because There Have no Credit Card I Hope It Will Be Free For Everyone now im in Iraq I want to open a chat but i canot because i have no credit cart i wish it will be just like xat no xat chat is free for every one
The basics are:
To increase revenue, advertise, or raise rates. To increase sales lower the price (may not be applicable).
As you can see internet consumers don’t pay. I suggest you market to business or industry. Those users are willing to pay and they don’t ask as many stupid questions.
Give this away for free and you’re not going to make money unless you can put advertising on it, or build the user base up high enough to sell.