A) its currently unclear if paying 5 PED a month would get us to keep all the services that Premium members have come to expect , though that does seem to be the intention. In practice, its somewhat confusing atm, and this does need thrashing out.
The original "idea" with premium membership was to give access to the "advanced" features of the website. Originally those features were: Advanced live list, Uber checker, Forum signature, 15 mobs on "my page", loot size, analyze loot.
More features were included in the premium membership at later points in time. Like adding to the "globals lists" that you could only see +25 if you had premium membership, but if I strictly keep to the original "feature list" with premium membership - the before mentioned features should be the only things the premium membership gave access to.
B) Its not necessarily true that existing Premium Members have not contributed anything.
Some of us actually bought Lifetime Premium Membership in the early days of tracker, at a bargain price (100 PEd, was it?). When Starfinder changed to the Gift Credit system, we were awarded more than enough Gift Credits, in lieu of this, to last us into a ripe old age and beyond (if we can only figure out how to take it with us
)
The "lifetime premium membership did cost 50 PED during the lets call it "beta" period. Some people were promised "lifetime" and some people were promised "until we decide otherwise". There were no real clear timespan on that membership status as we had like 5 people "selling" the memberships to accommodate for different timezones and they were just given access to the admin part of the site and told how to upgrade people.
Now, I'm more than happy to add more to the bit I already paid, as the need for more income is clear and reasonable, but I can see that Starfinder has put himself in an awkward position here.
How the heck does he honour his previous offer, without being absurdly generous to those who never paid a bean? 
And thus forgoing any further income ? Both sets of people are maintaining Premium Membership on Gift Credits. The system as it is does not discriminate.
I thought of adding like ridiculously low priced "mini features".. like.. 5 PED to view X and 2 PED to view Y per month. Because people do not all want the same, and as i mentioned before in the thread some people thought that 20 PED / month were quite a lot to be able to view +25 globals.
So, my feelings is a little mixed on the matter. I can see how people who are running the tracker client to be able to get enough gift credits for the +25 globals per page would feel screwed if I changed it to the 5 PED/month subcription thingy. So, keeping the premium membership at the "original feature list", but also keeping the members who wanted free +25 globals happy. I made the "30 days player viewer" to be able to be purchased with gift credits. This way they could still see all their old globals, using gift credits. But some of the new "player information" features such as "largest globals" would not be covered with this feature, since this feature were purchable with gift credits - that the old premium members got, and I dident want old members to get access to "much more" than they got from their 50 PED purchase. Ofcourse, when people are used to getting a feature essentially for free then the outcry will be immense when I change it.
The reason for doing it like that is kinda straight forward. If you see something on the site, but havent got access to it in the first place. You dont "know what you are missing out on" and thus you will be less inclined to pay for it.
Its like a "teaser". This I can tell you - when I add new stuff from now on. I think I will write "this feature is only avalible for a limited time without purchase". It might be covered with the appropriate already existing feature - for instance any new features that attains to players will very likely be covered by the "player info" feature.
And the reason for wanting to provide it for free for a limited time period is that I can see that no one is paying for the "really cool features". Take the "30 days LA reports" for instance. I know this feature does not appeal to many besides LA owners, but so far no-one has bought it. This is by far the best feature on the site at the moment. It will tell you who your "participants" on your LA is. How your LA is performing against other LA's. Some of the features of this subscription will tell the LA owner (or anyone interrested):
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Turnover and unique hunters
Graph depicting how the turnover and unique hunters evolve over time
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Hunter retention
The hunter retention graph can also be viewed as an index of how happy the hunters are on the LandArea. If the retentionrate is high the hunters tend to stay at the LandArea - thus providing more income for the LandArea owner. The graph is benchmarked against the average value of all other landareas for the same timeperiode.
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Mob global index
The mob global index shows you, based on the last 60 days, how the globals on the Landarea is divided into the different mob types that are avalible on the landarea.
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Mob global location
This bar chart shows how big a percentage of a certain mob/maturity combo globals are happening on your LA. Can be viewed how popular your LA is for the given mob.
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Mob global index dataset
Table showing all mob/maturity combos on your LA, how many globals there has been in the last 60 days and how big the turnover has been on the specific mob/maturity combo.
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20 biggest loots in the last 60 days
Table. Pretty self explanatory.
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Uber rate for mobs
Table showing the uber rates on all mob/maturity combo's on the LA and benchmark it against the average uber rate on the specific mob/maturity combo. This way you can see if a specific mob/maturity combo has a higher tendency of ubering on this LA than abywhere else in EU.
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Most active hunters
Table. Self explanatory.
... and much more... My point being, no one has bought this feature as no one has had access to it. Thus they do not know what it can do, even despite there is a "picture" showing some of the page if you haven't got access.
This is why im using the model "Give for free now, but might be part of a feature later". The very basic stuff is for free - as it always have been. Besides that, you can download the globals as CSV or XML (per mindarks request). Some of the features are (because of the old premium membership for 50 PED) free in the sense that you can pay with gift credits. And a small portion of the site is "pay to use".
If you have any suggestions on how I can find a better model so I can pay 711 for the server. So he dosent have to keep paying the rather large amount he does each month. And perhaps, if im really lucky I could get a PED or two for the so far 52 weeks * 2 years * 15 hours (lets be conservative) =~1500 hours ive spent on the project. By all means, im listening.
Edit:
To sum up I think there will be 4 main features for "regular participants" on Entropia Tracker
1: Player Info (5 PED / month)
Will show all player related informations.
2: Gold hunter (10 PED / month)
Will show everything under hunting
3: Gold miner (10 PED / month)
Will show everything under mining
4: Gold crafter (10 PED / month)
Will show everything under crafting
Then there will be misc. features such as premium membership, LA reports, LA viewer, Advertiser, and so on which will be tailored to specific pages.
There might also be some "pay to use" features in the client if this evolves further with new usable features. As it is now everything in the client is free. This means: screenshots, death locations, combat log, team hunt log & the mapper.
It's a pity it only works for named LA's, but that's obviously beyond your control.
