Could use something like Cafepress, they produce and ship things like that for you as they're ordered. Means you'd see a lot less profit per item sold, but you wouldn't have to worry about making an order then spending years with a bunch of stuff you can't shift sat in your garage.

I believe you can get t-shirts printed up for really cheap.
At least that's what my spam tells me.

the nexus has an interesting system of premium users vs supporters where if you pay them you get a to be a premium user for a period specified and if you've ever payed them anything you get to be a supporter. premium users get way more benefits then supporters and I've payed them several times, I really like that sort of system.

Yea, I like a shirt/hat idea, but first I think we need to have a bigger community to make getting enough made up affordable.

But it is a pretty good idea.

I don't plan on having any part of the site under a pay wall. I thought about that, but there are a lot of people who use this site who might not be able to afford to give anything. And I want them to have as good of an experience as everyone else.

My main thought is to have membership be more of a thing people can say, "I have supported the site", have public recognition for it, and maybe a newsletter since that seems a pretty popular idea.

I like the shirts/hats idea. It's something that you wouldn't be "withholding" from non-members, as you would if you closed off certain areas of the site. And it's free advertising.

Didn't you mention at one point that there's a hidden portion of the site with the WIP preliminary order on it Travis? Maybe the VIP users could see that and use it in an early beta access kinda way?

please don't do that, then a lot of people wouldn't be able to access it. it would seriously take away from the functionality of the site if you had to pay to read the way you want.

why not put content added and comics moved in the newsletter, so people can know what's changed without having to check the site?

Perhaps once you get the other lists done then you could make it a members only feature to mix all the orders together

Also perhaps you could create an area on the main page for VIP favorite issues or suggestions. Or even automate it so that it will automatically choose the highest rated issue from the VIP members or the most favorited issue (or both)

If you decide to do a newsletter then maybe you could have a section that lists what members have contributed for that month (such as blurbs, reviews, letter pages, etc) as well as a list of monthly stats for users like most read/rated, etc. I know you already have these stats listed but it would be cool for the people that don't go searching for such things

I also like the contest idea if you are able to get sponsors to donate something or if you have enough revenue from membership fees to present people with online gift certificates or something (I know it gets pricey to ship stuff overseas)

Hell, if you had some shirts or hats made up with your logo and URL then that would be reason enough for some people to join. These would also be good prizes for contests. Then once you get into making apparel you could start an online store and sell such items for additional revenue (not the same designers as the members stuff so that there is more incentive to join the VIP program).

I would also prefer a yearly membership fee to a monthly one.

I would totally pay for this site... Just sayin.

Also like the idea of a monthly newsletter, maybe even feature some members or a member of the month or something.