Dear members,
Our last post has created quite a stir in the community so let us explain a bit more what BurdaStyle is, what it offers, and what the changes entail:
BURDASTYLE
BurdaStyle set out to be a community for people that love to sew or would like to learn.
We believe that supplying access for everyone to a platform where we all share our inspirations, creations and knowledge is the best way to improve your skills, get help when you’re stuck and earn reward and recognition for your hard work.
We want this community to be open to anyone and to continue to offer easy and cost-free access to all areas of the site that involve inspiration, recognition and especially exchange of knowledge.
PATTERN CHARGE
We do want to apologize if you may have felt upset by our recent changes.
We at BurdaStyle have always acted with our community in mind, which was also the case while making the decision to charge for all patterns, and feel that this is the point to give you insight into the larger picture:
Clearly our reason behind charging for ALL patterns is to create revenue, in order to produce new patterns, new content and new features and to keep the current site intact. Only charging for new patterns is not able to cover the cost for maintaining the entire content on the site.
BurdaStyle would love to offer you all patterns always for free. And clearly you, our community, feels very strong about our patterns and the resource of free patterns.
So why not join forces and work together.
Our plan has been all along to find partners that are interested in working together with us on a variety of activities such as contests, how tos, features and sponsored pattern downloads at times. If a partner chooses to sponsor a pattern we would be able to cover the cost and waive the fee for a certain amount of downloads.
We are in the talk with a fair amount of companies that showed interest in working with us.
Seeing your immense response we were thinking, what about joining forces with our most important asset, our community. What about YOU helping us find partners that are interested in engaging in activities for example sponsoring free downloads for the community
Anyone successfully creating a partnership would be rewarded with the thankful response from the community and a percentage of the partnership fee.
FEATURED MEMBER PROJECTS
Being floored by your talent and efforts creating patterns and creations we felt that you need to be included in our weekly project upload on the homepage.
From now on we will accept submissions of creations with instructions and/or patterns from which the best ones will be included in our editorial calendar and featured for one week on the most prominent spot of our homepage. Additionally these projects will have a mention in our newsletter.
Send submissions to team@BurdaStyle.com with the subject line: “Featured Project”.
MEMBER’S PATTERNS SALE
Starting with the new site members will be able to sell their own patterns.
We hope that you are looking forward to new challenges and opportunities with us.
We are looking forward to the year 2009 and many years to follow with our community!
Jan 9, 2009, 12.13 AMby Julietta
Some, hopefully constructive, ideas to not completely change the nature of BS but earn some income. I agree with Polychromatin and all the other members that mentioned it that a donate button like at wikipedia could be helpful. You could also offer different types of memberships like a basic and premium membership like at xing. Basic membership should still be free of charge and allows to download one pattern a month or so, premium members on the other hand pay a monthly fee and are allowed to download 5, 10 … patterns for free. You could also look for members that sponsor the costs of development for one pattern, which is then named after the sponsor. This pattern could then be offered for free to the other members. I hope there were some ideas in here that you can use :-)
Jan 9, 2009, 02.08 AMby kittybaroque
Hi Burda Style,
It is indeed a challenge with any community to introduce any change.
I have managed online groups for some time and there is a point at which the community become incredibly invested in the site and take ownership to a degree.
Giving members the option to voice their opinion on how best to support the site and retain the membership that has enabled BurdaStyle to grow/flourish would have been preferable – one needs to be incredibly careful not to bite the hand that feeds you. You may have found a lot of support in the community and innovative ideas/offers of help rather than the aggressive response from individuals and I fear that you may have lost much of that support.
I have no great ideas to offer however perhaps a tiered membership structure then Burdastyle seeking sponsorship in addition themselves would work better (and initially bring in lots more revenue). You may find that most members have downloaded the patterns they needed already and so charging for individual patterns may not bring much in for a while.
If you can empower some to sell their own patterns and then take a portion of that (or have that right built into a higher end membership) that could be a compromise.
I would feel incredibly annoyed if I were a member who had assisted in building & promoting the site to find that I were now being charged for business I had helped to promote.
I wish Burda Style nothing but well on its journey, however, please listen to your members or this space and its integrity could be lost.
Wishing you all the best to keep this creative space going,
Kindest,
KittyB
Jan 9, 2009, 02.52 AMby CarotteSauvage
Yes once you get over the free patterns no longer be free is a bit of shock for 10 minutes, but hey! people can always copy basics from the clothes they already possess. It is going to be an exciting, maybe a less ‘passive’ (in the sense that you guys always have been compiled to suprise us every week with a new super pattern) community!
Jan 9, 2009, 02.55 AMby jd98
I really like the idea to give free patterns to members who offer their own pattern. (sorry I don’t remember who posted it). This could be an incentive to keep a few free patterns for the community (because let’s face it, if now members have the opportunity to charge for their own patterns, free patterns are going to be rare)…
Another thing, would it be possible to have some of the new patterns free for a while (24-48h maybe?) so that the members who visit the site regulary and contribute (and therefore “run” the site in a way) could have the opportunity to download it for free.
Also it would be nice to have free downloads as prizes, for example for members taking part in contests etc
Jan 9, 2009, 08.00 AMby Meseide
I have to agree with Polychromatin: The main attraction on this site were the free patterns! But now with a bunch of left free patterns, less members will sew with the Burda patterns, less members will upload their creations, less members will be online here, less members will click on the ads That´s what I worry about as well. But probably you´ve allready considered that and decided to hazard the potential consequences..
I still think that it was a wrong decision to charge for the formerly free patterns (or at least without warning), because you upset so many of your loyal members. But with this post you made it quite clear that you aren´t going to reconsider this decision. I noticed that you removed the price of some of the patterns which can be downloaded for free at the german webside of burda mode anyway. I think it´s a good thing and maybe you should have announced it to cool down the row. But, if that was the reason for your decision: There are still other free patterns for which you are now charging.
And what about Polychromatins proposal of making donation possible? I think she´s right when she says that you could earn money this way and the donating members would feel good about paying instead of how they feel now…
Jan 9, 2009, 08.28 AMby ghariella
I understand the need to generate money. While it is nearly free to surf the web, running a web site is quite expensive.
For me, the thing that distinguishes this site from other ones, is that it is very assessable to new comers and people just learning to sew. I feel the changes will raise the bar and beginners will not have a place. If you have to submit everything and pay for everything it might become intimidating for people who just want some general feedback on their new hobby and craft.The one question I have is about creations. Will there be a place to upload your creations? Or will this be by submission as well?
Jan 9, 2009, 08.46 AMby barbara.agatha
Thank you for the explanation.
BUT I have to agree with IsisKali that said:
“It sounds like you guys needed to announce a beta period about 4 months ago to work out all the kinks before you start asking for cash.”
In addition, I find it a little unethical to start charging for old patterns…the decision should apply to all new ones, not be retroactive. I mean, you’re charging for the Alice slipper pattern???!
This said, I honestly don’t mind paying $4 or $5 for a pattern but I seem to be unable to purchase them, giving that I am living in Italy. The least you could do is allow international members to buy them.
Solutions?
Jan 9, 2009, 11.55 AMby LauraTS
An explanation actually requires that you listen to the criticisms and issues that others have pointed out, and then respond to their comments in some way. As far as I can tell you haven’t done that, and in fact the whole history of this site is littered with the apparent ignoring of members’ comments. This post reads like a statement of “this is what we decided to do and that’s all there is.” That attitude is what most posters are disappointed with, I think.
The BurdaStyle member forum is full of unanswered questions and spam, none of which seem to be addressed by your staff. Based on other members’ comments, there are serious problems with the payment and download process and yet there’s no evidence that your staff is trying to mitigate those problems. All we get is “oh, we’re trying to fix that,” or “wait for the new site, which will be any day now,” said for months or years.
I think all of us understand the need to charge for patterns in some way in order to have a self-sustaining business in the long term. However, the sewing community is still not 100% happy with having to print and assemble patterns themselves. I seriously doubt that many of the people who were willing to assemble a free pattern will be willing to do so for a pay pattern, especially when we can buy a Burda envelope pattern for a few dollars more (already printed on tissue and with better instructions!), or the Burda magazine with 30+ patterns per issue. If you had asked for suggestions on ways to keep your business going, members would have likely supported you and put up with the growing pains of the technical process. Instead you’ve presented the changing of so many patterns from free to pay as a fait accompli and essentially change the terms of the site that got you so many members and positive comments on blogs and forums in the first place.
There are many other sewing communities online, most with better maintained and easier to use sites. Your patterns were your draw, and I’m afraid that making such a wholesale change without getting your user base on board first is going to do you more harm than good in the long run.
Jan 9, 2009, 01.39 PMby marcnahir
Hi, i love burdastyle. But I’d like to be in other languages (english, french), serious incredible! Greetings
Jan 9, 2009, 01.41 PMby marcnahir
Spanish i meant
Jan 10, 2009, 01.53 AMby MarmotaB
Dear BurdaStyle,
I’d like to say I learned a lot from the BurdaStyle community, and let me stress that, from the community. The main reason why this site attracts me is the fact that it attracts like-minded people. The community actually exists even outside BurdaStyle, on Flickr and blogs. And you should really bear in mind that the whole community now feels a bit deceived. I’m not going to say why, because others said it before me, so I wouldn’t say anything new.
That said, I also want to say that I definitely agree with the idea of introducing graded memberships. It works on other sites. I wouldn’t be able to pay for my membership now that I’m a student, and there are many like me, which is the reason why I think free membership should be kept as it is kept now. But I also think I would be willing to do pay a steady amount of money a year once I have a steady income. A bit like a subscription to a magazine; and it is me who decides what magazine to subscribe to, which is a good feeling. I also think there should be more grades of this subscription, for different amounts of money, starting low so that people with not so much free money on their hands could still subscribe. Oh, and an idea I take from DeviantART: the possibility to subscribe someone else as a gift. Many people do it on dA, so it a) brings money to the site and b) helps build the community as well.
I also like the idea of beta-testing patterns. I think it would be really good to allow the beta-testers to write a detailled review of the patterns for others to read. And to implement any variations into the final pattern.
I also agree – sorry, I don’t remember who wrote it – that charging the variations separately from the original patterns is quite a nonsense. Sorry for expressing it like that. And the same goes for charging the very, very basics like Alice slippers, Marcel sleep mask and such patterns. Frankly, nobody is going to pay for those. While, if you kept them free, it might actually encourage someone to buy the others.
Jan 10, 2009, 02.05 AMby MarmotaB
P.S. I also like the idea of having a possibility to simply donate to the site. Everyone feels better donating than being charged for something, even though the amount of money spent can be the same, or even more. ;-)
It seems to me the whole problem is mostly that the site grew much quicklier than you were prepared to… which explains while you don’t manage to catch up on things like bugs on the site (yes, there still are many) and spammers in forum, while trying to keep the established pace with the patterns and contests and such things. Why not simply slow down a bit? The faithful community would happily forgive you if you explained it, I’m sure of that. I, personally, don’t care for patterns every week that much, I’d be happy enough with every other week. ;-) I’m a slow sewer, and the room in my closets is limited anyway. But I’m afraid I’m saying this too late…
Jan 10, 2009, 09.13 AMby Kicchan
When I logged onto BS (for the first time of the year, a few days ago) to see patterns that used to be free were not anymore, I was very shocked. I had no idea what was going on, or why it happened.
Now that I’ve read through what you’ve said, I can do nothing but agree with you. $1-5 is a tiny fee to pay for beautiful patterns. It’s also a small price to pay to see this wonderful site keep running.
But I will be honest – I wish I had downloaded quite a few of the now non-free patterns before this change. Haha!
Jan 10, 2009, 09.39 AMby Polychromatin
It is really en vogue to make beta versions but: the whole beta-testing-thing is frankly speaking just a solution to save paid workers. Businesses are not able anoymore to produce a thing without flaws, so they put a beta-version online and let the user test it and ask for their support and improvement solutions, of course they do it for free, so you save employees. Nothing more.
Jan 10, 2009, 08.02 PMby karencilla
I just read most of the comments and it’s so nice to find there are a lot of very good ideas for the site and to solve the situation.
I still love Burdastyle and the best wishes for you Team, besides all the controversy and thing that happened one of the things we can’t deny is how hard you work. I’ll be looking forward the new things coming for the site and the community.
Jan 10, 2009, 10.50 PMby youarethestars
Sincerely,
Y.Jan 11, 2009, 11.00 AMby queenvanilla
It is your free choice to do whatever you want with the patterns you produce. I totally understand the situation you’re in. And I think it’s right to set a price on more advanced garments. However, the one thing that have kept me fascinated in the month I have been a member, is basically grown by the free patterns. BurdaStyle’s strength is what their members make. You can go in to read about a pattern, and see what other people have done with it. I’m afraid most of it will go away if there’s a price to that. Fewer sew the pattern, fewer upload their pics and the spiral goes on.
As for the forum, which should be your biggest strength if you reduce the impact of the patterns: It need a lot of work to become an attraction. It’s either that or to produce more interesting articles on your own. You do need another attraction now when the patterns can’t be it. Very much is lost with the cost: especially the name of open source (which is part of a good advertising strategy). All alternatives must be very costly and time consuming choices. Can you make that on the money from the patterns?
As much as I would like to contribute somehow, I’m afraid I don’t have either the money or the skills. At least set up a poll with possible alternatives for a bigger overlook on user’s opinions?
Jan 12, 2009, 01.40 AMby nehmah
I am glad that someone else has pointed out the fact that some of these patterns are, to say the least, flawed. I have mentioned it to the Team but nothing was done as of late December. There is no way to check now as two of them are for-pay only. Will I tell you the patterns again? No, I told you folks before. You NEED to proof your patterns before up-loading.
From reading the current spin, it sounds mighty like BurdaStyle is heading for a “paid membership” setup. The early members have done the grunt work, passing on the address, encouraging friends to join, and contributing advice, patterns, and criticism. We are clearly past our sell-by date.
As a plus-size human, I am irked by the Team’s attitude regarding a fair number of patterns for us. Things like a Lydia, instead of pointing us toward menswear. The patterns, free and for-pay, were a bonus, helping out and getting advice was the big reason for coming here.
Lest you are sceptical about the patterns remark, not counting BurdaStyle, I have well over 150+ commercial patterns, in all sizes and styles, and designers. I have donated twice that many since I retired.
BurdaStyle, you need the members far more than you wish to admit. Nehmah
Jan 12, 2009, 06.26 AMby kallers
Well, this does it for me. I’ve slowly but surely been turned off by this site. The banner ads often take forever to load, and have included some offensive ads. But I put up with it because the patterns were free and I realized that y’all needed income. But now to pay for most patterns, and then have to print them and put them together (and presumably still have banner ads) isn’t worth it for me. Since I don’t sell my clothes, the issue with open-source/copyright free is moot. What’s next? Are you going to start charging for how-tos? I’m very disappointed.
Jan 12, 2009, 11.51 AMby catyblue
Looking at it coldly, BS can do whatever they want with their patterns, they make them and it’s up to us to buy it or not. Besides, noone works for free, do we? Of course I’m dissapointed coz I was always amazed of how we could find free patterns here and I thank BS a ton for that. I unfourtunatey wont be able to buy more than a couple of patterns, coz I’m a mosty-all-the-time-broken student. As many I still look forward to new exciting changes and keep thanking you for all you do for us.
Jan 12, 2009, 12.16 PMby Mirela
I have been here from the beginning with BurdaStyle and love it here…
but I did not download all your “free” patterns yet, just because I thought I had free access to them all the time. So could I please download for free everything you had on there before, just because others did it for free until now…? I think it is weird doing this without notice to your faithful users…:(
Otherwise I completely understand it, although the prices might be a bit high…I pay about 5Euros for BWOF which has at least 40 patterns in every issue…
A donate link would sound a lot nicer.
Jan 13, 2009, 01.15 AMby gayepaula
Considering the state of the ‘instructions’ which I downloaded before you started charging for the Laura dress, I would not waste my money on paying for one of your patterns! The dress is gorgeous, and the pattern seems to be well made, but I have had to bodge my way through putting it together, and I’ve definitely sewn more complex patterns before.
You have still not addressed the real cause of everyone’s upset: change happens, usually once people have got used to it, they feel it is a positive thing. HOWEVER, you do not introduce a change instantly! This only makes people feel resentful and angry, which is exactly where you went wrong. To introduce a change, you should announce it and give people time to react, discuss it and make suggestions. The issue is not what you have done, but the way you’ve gone about doing it.
Perhaps some courses in customer service would not go amiss, as whether the community users pay for patterns or not, they are still your customers, and as such they can make or break your venture!
Jan 13, 2009, 04.14 AMby ThirtyDaysSeptember
I wasn’t upset when I read the previous bog – not thrilled about it, of course, but I understand that their are certainly costs associated with running this website. I hope the price will remain around the $1-$4 dollar range that is present now, and not become expensive.
I’d love to see some mobile apps on Burdastyle 3.0. Such as certain blogs, video shots of new patterns or a video how-to, or a sewing tip of of the week, etc. Not sure how it works exactly, but can you get sponsorship with phones or providers that way?
Jan 13, 2009, 05.02 AMby Laurie1962
Gayepaula has a very valid point. I have purchased 2 patterns prior to the “change” as I felt I owed it to Burda Style for all the freebies. One of these being “Cate” what a mess that pattern was; mislabeled pieces very bad instructions. I started this dress and just never bothered to even finish it. I can buy patterns at my local thrift shop for .49 (Canadian) each. These are uncut patterns from the big 4 and numerous other pattern makers, with great instructions and I didn’t have to expend all the extra cash and energy putting the thing together. I really don’t know why I would pay up to $5.00 US (with the exchange rate and cost of paper, ink, cello tape and my time, much more than $5 by the time we finish) for a pattern that I can’t really trust. And looking at the new pattern posted yesterday for $1.50 US, a MUFF, I found numerous sites all over the web with free tutorials for a MUFF including this site.
Jan 14, 2009, 03.10 AMby victorS
Maybe the change to ‘pay for’ was purposefully abrupt so as we all couldn’t download the patterns we liked for free. Like many others I would rather spend my £4.50 on WOF and have 30 or so patterns.
Jan 15, 2009, 09.40 PMby gedwoods
Am I just naive to think that the cost of maintaining and evolving a website like this one is considerable? Until the recent set of changes, we paid NOTHING for the use of the website, which connects us to each other. Sure we could go elsewhere, but there is currently no other site that provides the community that BurdaStyle site does.
Personally, I quite like the idea of seeking sponsors to support free or low cost pattern downloads – I think this is a creative answer to a difficult issue. Obviously, not everyone who is a member of the site will do this, but if some do, the results will benefit everyone. I think a lot of the initiatives proposed are interesting and useful. I do wish the BS type could have aired some of these issues earlier so we could collectively chew over them before it became necessary to institute charges for the patterns, but they’ve been in the “business” of providing a service for the community. It requires a bit of a change in culture to ask for help from the community one believes one should be there to serve.
Not all of us use the online patterns. I have yet to use a commercial pattern of any sort. I have developed the hope that we may be able to demystify the production and manipulation of patterns so that people need rely on pre-made patterns less, whether these be BurdaStyle patterns or anyone elses. Ultimately, a complete and accurate fit is best obtained by using a “pattern template” constructed from each person’s individual measurements, rather from multi-size premade patterns aimed for a general fit. The boundaries between commercial patterns, home-made patterns and computer-generated patterns are beginning to blur, and I can envision a day when most people may be able to manipulate personalized patterns. The exchange of methods and ideas on the BurdaStyle site, the competitions for constructing variations on patterns, and so on, all contribute to this change. The changes in organisation may actually accelerate this evolution.
I oppose the idea of graded membership – I would prefer access to the site to remain free and possible for all. There may be additional ideas than sponsoring patterns that could also be implemented to generate funds to support the site. There are some great ideas already in many of these comments.
Jan 16, 2009, 07.27 AMby coffeina
is this kind of commercial service open source?
what about the copyright of the patterns? can i offer them to other people if they had to pay for them, but they are copyright-free?
Jan 20, 2009, 03.20 AMby sokkenmonster
I was wondering: now most patterns are to be paid for, would it be possible to add a technical drawing of the pattern to the pictures? I used to download the work description to take a look at the technical drawing; it helps me to determine wether I really like the pattern, if I can imagine it in another fabric and so on.
A table of how much fabric is used would also be nice :).