Title
More Layout Options for Paid Accounts

Short, concise description of the idea
As a benefit of becoming a paid account member, LJ users should have many more "paid account only" layouts available.

Full description of the idea
It is becoming increasingly difficult to justify the benefits of continuing to pay for a LiveJournal account, and many users are simply not going to go through (mostly inactive) LJ communities to customize their LiveJournal style. At present, many layouts are available, but very few in proportion are available only to paid account members.

• Potential for an increased number of individuals deciding to renew their paid accounts or sign up for a paid account.
• LJ users will be able to change their layout with a simple "click" instead of having to explore inactive communities where many layouts are unavailable and lack troubleshooting assistance.
• Tumblr has been extremely successful in offering a plethora of style options to members, and a surprising number of Tumblr users actually pay for layouts; however, if someone is already paying for a LiveJournal account, they should not have to pay extra for a customized layout.
• There are many established designers on LiveJournal who have either stopped making layouts because of the decline in LiveJournal's popularity or because it is very rare that LiveJournal announces new layouts. Talented users who have abandoned this site may be attracted back here if their layouts became part of the default layout system for paid users.
• Many of the active layout sites are in Russian/Cyrillic. This does not appeal to the English-speaking membership. If you truly want to make LiveJournal a global phenomenon again, this is a very small way to acknowledge those of us who have been here with multiple journals and priceless memories since the late 1990s.

• I assume that it will cost money to pay the LJ layout designers, but I also believe that the revenue coming in from featuring many paid-only layouts will offset this cost.
• It will require making LJ users aware of this new benefit. I almost did not renew my paid account this year, but I would have done so without question if more paid account only layouts were available; therefore, LJ will have to prominently feature these new paid layouts on the main page and in e-mail updates.
• One or two or even five new paid layouts a year is simply inefficient. This will have to be an ongoing process, with feedback from LJ users, and new layouts will take up more bandwidth.
• LiveJournal as a company does not seem to be invested in non-Cyrillic/Russian members, and even if gorgeous stylesheets are made available to LiveJournal users, many will still remain skeptical and may not purchase a paid account so they can have a theme that they truly love.

Title
Saving the style of your LJ

Short, concise description of the idea
It would be really great if the user could save some of his journal styles and then choose any of those which he likes.

Full description of the idea
I changed my journal style as I like and then wanted to make one more. But I don't want to loose the current skin. Because a lot of fields were changed, many colors and all that stuff. And if I want it back I gotta do everything again.
So.. I'm offering to save personal skins (like 3-5 of them) and user can choose one of them whenever he wants.

Thank you!

• 1. People can make styles of their journals by themselves and save them.
• 2. They can use their own styles whenever they want.
• 3. They can back the style which they like after any changes.

• If the user make his own style then want to change it he cannot take the first one back.

Title
Allow paid journals/communities to display most recently active entries first

Short, concise description of the idea
I'd like paid journals and communities to be able to specify "most recently active" as a method for displaying journal entries on the first page of the journal.

Full description of the idea
Similar to this older suggestions I'd like a way of displaying the most recently active entries in a community or journal. By recently active I mean that the entry with the newest comment is at the top of the list, the second newest comment is second on the list, and so on down the line. However, instead of just placing these in a sidebar of the journal I'd like to see this information used to create a custom ordering to the journal, so that when this option is selected the first page of the community or journal would display entries based on latest-comment time instead of post time. Subsequent pages of the journal (?skip=#) should order entries by post time as is normal (in order to reduce database load). Perhaps when this is selected the entries per page is capped at a lower number than usual.

• In communities this will draw attention to older entries that may be drawing new comments.
• New readers to a community will be able to find ongoing discussions in older threads.
• This kind of ordering is very common in bulletin boards and forums and will give communities more opportunities to structure as they like, as well as providing another paid community benefit.

• This is probably very database intensive, especially for very active communities, which is why I suggest limiting it to paid journals and communities.
• The switch from "organized by comment time" to "organize by post time" from page 1 to page 2 can be confusing. It's also possible that the switch could cause some entries to be missed if the viewer changes pages after the order has changed.

Title
Different Userheads for Paid/Permenant Memembers

Short, concise description of the idea
Different colored userheads for paying members.

Full description of the idea
I think it would be a nice touch if paying members had a different colored userhead. I am unsure about the colors but we could have one color for paid and one for permanent. It would be a nice touch and would spark some attention. Also, having the ability of wanting it or not. (A la ONTD userhead's)

• Might attract more paying members.
  A nice change from the norm.
  Ability to switch it on/off.

• Some people might not like the color of choice.

Title
Captcha for Paid users

Short, concise description of the idea
Captcha for comments over 5000+ should not be applied to paid users.

Full description of the idea
I understand the need to discourage over usage so that others can use LiveJournal for free, but I also believe that paid users should retain some freedom from simple and slightly annoying hassles. The fact that over 5000 comments automatically generates a captcha for every comment left after is a little absurd especially if the commenter is a paid user. We, paying customers, should be free from limitations on comments.

I understand that it is in order to reduce load on the database servers and ensure that the site is accessible to all users, but some of us pay to use your service. Wouldn't it be logical to give priority to those who actually pay for space on the servers?

• For those who pay for the service, this would just be another perk just as ad free usage is. There would be no limitation on how many comments one could make just as there is little to no limitation on how much space is available for journal usage.
• Frustrations for avid users will go down.

• This will increase server load, but only minutely.
• Most likely be difficult to code.

Title
Adsense for Communities

Short, concise description of the idea
Adsense should be enabled for paid communities.

Full description of the idea
Adsense should be enabled for paid communities. I can't imagine why it wouldn't be.

• Same as for a paid personal account.

• Same as for a paid personal account.

Title
Remove third-party advertising & implement community ads

Short, concise description of the idea
Remove third-party advertising networks from ads run on the site, and in their place implement advertising bought by LiveJournal members.

Full description of the idea
There was recently quite a bit of brouhaha over LiveJournal serving ads that may have directed people to malware, and there has been ongoing brouhaha over flash ads, interstitials, and other tactics that people don't really like.

I suggest that we do the two things listed below, with rationale for them after:

- get rid of the 3rd party ad networks; only show LJ-hosted and directly approved campaigns and community ads

- make "ad supporter" a public option and provide a carrot for it (a free vgift coupon every month or something)

The main reason behind removing 3rd-party ads is simple - they are often garbage. Loud, animated, flashing whirligigs going on about CENTIPEDES IN YOUR PC and the like -- ads that are infected with malware that attempts to exploit Flash player -- interstitials that annoy and stop users from enjoying the site ---- all of these things are from 3rd-party ad networks. Sure, the more annoying and intrusive the ad, the more LiveJournal gets paid for it (generally,) but if the ads get too obnoxious and annoying, people will stop using the site. Since it's apparently impossible to find a 3rd-party ad network that isn't scuzzy, I propose we get rid of them altogether.

To make up for the missing revenue, I propose the implementation of a community-based advertising system. Ads hosted by the system would be small (file-size wise) files, and would not have Flash or sound. GIFs, PNGs, or JPGs only.

To purchase an ad, you'd need a paid account, and there would be two price tiers - 1 (lower) to link the ad to a page on LJ that doesn't exist for commercial purposes (e.g., "Hey, check out my travel journal!" "Vote for frank for the Advisory Board!") and 2 (higher) to link the ad to a LiveJournal page with commercial intent. To prevent gaming the system, the entries that ads link to would be locked to prevent editing them while the ad campaign is running.

Community ads would clearly identify who purchased them in the ad footer (i.e. ADVERTISEMENT by gerg). This would enable action to be taken against users who, say, edit an image in their ad landing page to be goatse or something.

Additionally, before they went live, all community ads and the entries they link to would be reviewed by someone to make sure that they are safe for work, do not violate the ToS (e.g. aren't directly harassing,) etc.

So, that's community ads. After these have been in place for a while, I am confident that they will start raising significant revenue - I have been on several other sites that use this system and are profitable without any 3rd-party ads.

Additionally, many of the most active users on LiveJournal don't see or host ads right now, because they have permanent or paid accounts. This makes ad sales very hard (all of the 'good users' aren't included in your target market anymore.) The second prong of this suggestion is to make the "Ad Supporter" user level public. This enables paid/permanent accounts to opt-in to display ads on their journals to Basic, Plus, and logged-out users. In exchange for doing this, users who join the level could receive some small token to thank them (e.g., a vgift coupon or something monthly.)

If enough large journals opted in to this level, it would make it easier for LiveJournal to sell ads without having to worry about flash punch the donkey ads, and it would help users show some support to the community that we've built here. It would also help increase the value of (and thereby the price of) community ads, helping keep the site profitable longer.

• Substantially decreased security risks
• Happier users because of less annoying ads
• More income for the site in the long run
• More trust from users
• Increased uptake of Paid Accounts
• Increased use of LiveJournal as people discover new communities/posters/etc.

• Pricing of community ads may be prohibitive to meet current income
• LJI may be in contracts with 3rd-party providers
• May require an additional person to review community ads/manage ad sales (although I think we have a person to do this on staff)
• Users may be confused if they are viewing a Paid Ad Supporter journal and see ads on it
• May need some edits to the ToS to determine how to handle people purchasing accounts solely to run ads

Title
Incorrect Login Ads

Short, concise description of the idea
Remove pop-up ads from incorrect login pages.

Full description of the idea
For those of us who pay for our accounts it is frustrating to be exposed to ads when we mistakenly enter login information. Please remove them so that we may re-enter our information correctly without hindrance. Even hindrance as small as clicking to skip the ad is undesired since I pay for the benefit of not having to do so normally.

• Your Paid Members will be happier.

• I see very few major issues outside of routine work.

Title
Paid Account Themes

Short, concise description of the idea
We should be able to preview themes only availale for paid accounts.

Full description of the idea
I was going to preview some of the paid account themes to see which one I'd like and if I'd like it enough to upgrade to a paid account, but was not able to. Some of the themes seem neat, but it's hard to tell from the small frosted squares. If previewing were available, all features would be able to be explored.

• It's more likely someone will fall inlove with a theme, and upgrade to a Paid Account because of it.

• Mild annoyance to people who won't pay for an upgrade no matter how much they love the theme. Leaving the option to exclude themes not available to whichever level account should circumvent this.

Title
Tokens for communities

Short, concise description of the idea
If the maintainer of a community want to give the community a paid account or rename it, he/she has to pay the whole fee alone. The idea would be to give the option to all members to participate a little.

Full description of the idea
LJ users have the option of offering virtual gifts to individuals or communities. I think it would be great to also have the option of offering to communities a token for a one year paid account or for a renaming.

The token could be, I don't know, 0.99$ just as virtual gifts so that it's not a big cost for members and when the community has the necessary amount of tokens, the maintainer can exchange them for a paid account or for a new name.

I know that there are already gift certificates but the minimum amount for those is 5$ so I think cheap tokens would be a lot easier to handle for community members.

• - the charges would be shared between users of the community and not supported by the one person alone
• - would make members more involved in a community they like and give them the feeling to really belong
• - would incite more communities to get a paid account (by the way, paid communities really need new useful features)
• - would ease the decision to rename a community (maintainer can be reluctant because of the cost)
  

• - don't see any, it's not that different from virtual gifts