Gift from chess.com

Hi, Wouldnt be nice that in this times with the crazy Covid that many are staying at home, chess.com decidedto give premium mermberships for 1 month to all his users, I know they would lose some money but that advertising would be priceless and at the end the reward of reaching thousands of users from different pages could be more profitable than the cost of giving those memberships?

Let me first say that i understand what you are saying, but how does a month of free diamond membership help those without a job?  How does it help people that cant pay their bills, rent, house payments, car payments, buy groceries, medical, dental, etc.?  Comcast is upping bandwidth due to so many working from home.  Some companies are freezing credit card payments to help.  Those are things that make sense, and help people.  A free month of diamond membership, while thoughtful doesnt help during these times.

Let me put this in another perspective: making Premium free for a month means we also have to fire some people from our team because now we can't meet payroll. People imagine that companies have just endless money supplies, but we also have to carefully manage our revenue and expenses, and losing a month of revenue would mean we have to let some people go. 

What we ARE doing right now is Free Puzzle Battles for everyone for 2 weeks (maybe more... we will see). 

A reasonable an generous approach Eric 👍. Anecdotally, I am playing 2 people in daily games now who have just joined the site and started playing chess as a result of the lock down. I think it's a good distraction, in both these testing times and from the regular rigours of life actually. 

and also there are 33million members on chess.com

after seeing Erik's response, I will not be renewing my subscription!

I'm sorry if I upset you somehow! I was only just explaining why this isn't straightforward. 

Sure. I'm not sure it will help. People who start out with a particular agenda rarely change their minds. I'm sympathetic to what is going on in the world - we all are. At the same time, not only do we run very close to the line on profitability (and can't afford a month of no revenue), we are also facing HUGE new costs and having to hire more people due to a huge increase in players using the service (and not a compensating amount of people subscribing). I'm just sharing from our point of view. Sorry if that offends some people. 

Well, we all have different opinions, and that's what makes us unique individuals.   Bottom line is that in times of trouble and/or crisis, people need to help other people, that is, if they can.  I'm not suggesting Chess.com giving everyone a free membership for a month (but I like that you're thinking of possibilities Santiago), but just having everyone chat with each other during a Blitz-game or a Daily-Chess game is simple, and easy.   Human spirit of kindness is not a bad start.

Thanks for all your great efforts erik!

Erik, please allow me some math exercises (without ANY inside info):

30.000.000 members

15% paid, 85% free (totally rough guess)

Average 25 greenbacks/year each (totally rough guess)

Annual revenue = 112.500.000 US$ (could be seriously off) (+ advertising?)

Costs: Powerful servers (expensive) / Real Estate (hope is not Prime) / retainers (for GMs, IMs etc) on a variable basis / rights / wages (not over the board as infered from Customer Service, where you just cannot get an answer if you have a technical issue...) / marketing (doubt much is needed. is it?) / other.

Being "close to the line on profitability" with these sort of numbers is certainly worrysome (more so when there is excellent competition for free....)??

None of my business of course (wish I had the idea first...) and every buck of profit is well deserved for a reasonably well functioning product, but not being able to at least entertain Mr. Santiago's idea??...

By the way, Mr. Santiago work as coach comes highly recommended: no title (yet) but smart, knowledgeable, dedicated, energetic, fun and very nice person. Disclaimer: no financial interest on Mr. Santiago's matters.

Active members does not equal total members. Without knowing the active members, any math done is just guesswork.

Thanks for your post, @florissi ! Your numbers are SOOO far off that:

a) It almost made me cry because of how far away from that we are;

b) It reinforces this thesis that people tend to VASTLY over-estimate the success of business and services they use. 

Point being... it's not even CLOSE that that. I mean, if we were playing Pin the Tail on the donkey where you are blindfolded and try to put the tail on the donkey, you didn't even touch the poster. 

Of the 30,000,000+ registered users, only a few million are regularly active. And, 15% is also way, way off. It's more like this:

We can pay our bills. We are growing. We are all good. But we are nowhere near that. 

Not enough to dig into your own pockets and buy a membership I see...

There are many ways to support the site

So you claim.

You could prove it by buying me and @ratatouie 6 months diamond membership then I may consider believing you.

To be honest, it will just increase useless activities of many people. Chess.com already did a great by making create a club option to everyone. Puzzle battle is a different thing it is there choice.

Actually, you took it in the wrong way. I meant that spamming will increase by many members which is useless.

It is gifted membership though.