[Barbara V]

Im

SDC Rewards - What is it, and why are you doing it? Get the full scoop here!​

Dear Members

We’ve had a couple of questions about our SDC Rewards program lately, so I wanted to clear a couple of things up (and open the floor to comments). This will be a bit of a long read, but please bear with me.

The first—and most important thing—is that everything that is currently free will remain free. We’re not going to start charging you to use our discount directory, play trivia, read our news articles, or receive the daily newsletters! If you don’t have the means to join SDC Rewards (or just don’t think we’re worth the money), don’t worry because nothing will change. You’ll continue to have access to all the things you already have access to.

Secondly, I’d like to explain why we’ve launched SDC Rewards. As you can probably imagine, a lot of time, effort, and money goes into running the SDC. Writing the newsletters and articles, building new games, giving out prizes for our competitions, etc… Just the costs of hosting the website alone costs us thousands of dollars per month.

Up until now, we’ve paid for 100% of this out of advertising revenues. These come in a couple of forms, and you’ll see them dotted around the website and newsletter. However, the simple fact is that advertising revenues alone aren’t sufficient for us to pay the bills anymore. The online advertising market is highly volatile, and reflects the wider economy. A lot of businesses are tightening their belts at the moment, and, simply put, that means less of them are willing to pay for ads.

To be frank, we also find some of the ads that appear on our site to be a little annoying or obnoxious - also not to mention, occasionally ‘scammy’. We use an external ad agency to source advertisers for us (we don’t have the resources to do this in-house), but we’ve manually blocked or blacklisted quite a few of them because we don’t like the products they’re selling or they give us a ‘dodgy’ feeling.

Getting a portion of our revenue from member subscriptions will allow us to largely move away from the advertising model. Currently, SDC Rewards members see about 95% less ads on the site, which makes for a much more pleasurable browsing experience.

Having reliable subscriber revenue will also allow us to continue improving the SDC in other ways. Here are just a few of the things we have planned:

• Paid product testing (where we pay members for the products they test as well as their time)
• Health tips / Q&A from a GP or other health professional every month
• Discounts on travel related activities and products (cruises, travel insurance, etc.)
• Brand new brain training games, like crosswords, code crackers, word searches, etc.
• Video courses on IT skills, like removing malware, avoiding scams, purchasing things online safely, etc.
• Discounts on prepaid gift cards for popular retailers like Coles, Woolies, etc.
• An app/downloadable version of our discount directory that you can use on your phone/tablet
• Ad-free versions of OzWord, Sudoku, Trivia, etc. that you can use on your phone/tablet

Most of these will be open to SDC Rewards members only (at least for the foreseeable future), simply because we’re depending on the revenue they bring in as a way to fund these developments.

Finally, I’d like to mention that we’re hugely thankful for having you all as members, whether you join SDC Rewards or not. We’ve tried to price our offering so that nobody is excluded (our monthly plan works out to 20 cents per day, and our annual plan works out to 14 cents per day), but we know a lot of people are doing it tough out there and if you’re not in a position to be able to support us financially, we’re still eternally grateful to have you as free members, and there are plenty of ways to help us that involve no monetary cost, like telling your friends about us and engaging in conversations on the forum.

If you have any questions, comments, or requests, please let us know either by posting here, or emailing me privately if you prefer.

Cheers

Jonathan and the SDC Team.

I'm find SDC getting a liitle annoying too much repetition ,news already heard day before.It isn't as much fun as it was when I first joined, don't think paying for it will help content,also I'm sure people Google answers to riddles ect? Think I may opt out

 

[Jo Piper3]

Im

I'm find SDC getting a liitle annoying too much repetition ,news already heard day before.It isn't as much fun as it was when I first joined, don't think paying for it will help content,also I'm sure people Google answers to riddles ect? Think I may opt out

I am always honest and never google answers to riddles - maybe that's why I don't get many correct. Could not live with myself if I was cheating.

 

[MaggieAmalia]

Thank you all for the replies so far

@MaggieAmalia we're not sponsored by Kmart, Aldi, etc... We're just fans of the stores, so we tend to write about them more than some other businesses. If we ever write a sponsored article, we make sure to disclose that very clearly

Thank you so much for your clarification.. i appreciate that greatly.

 

[Ezzy]

And what a great job you all do. We appreciate all the effort you put into SDC.

I have found in life you can't please everyone

And with that it's a huge thank you from me

View attachment 27152

Well stated Suzanne rose. I couldn't have said this better myself. Thankyou.

 

[Tamaya]

@ToniaKisliakov thank you so much for your concern! We are 'shopping around' as they say! Unfortunately, with the technology we require to run this forum, the newsletter, and the app we do need a fair few hosting platforms! But not to worry, we are figuring it out and are trying our best to bargain our way down. I mean we aren't called the Seniors Discount Club for nothing

I came across a fabulous honest and great YouTuber whom I follow religiously. He is a specialist in the field. Shall I contact him or give your details to do so? Anything to assist SDC

 

[ToniaKisliakov]

I can’t believe you are paying thousands of dollars each month for hosting your website! Who are you with? Sounds like you are being conned! Plenty of hosting companies in australia who don’t charge thousands per month at all!
All modern day websites are easily seen on apps! Why do you need an app anyways!
Advertising with google are annoying too and haven’t not noticed anything less
If you really want to offer something to save SDC members to save $$ and earn SDC good commissions I am already able to do this but I don’t think you are ready for this though Or want to really

 

[Suzanne rose]

I can’t believe you are paying thousands of dollars each month for hosting your website! Who are you with? Sounds like you are being conned! Plenty of hosting companies in australia who don’t charge thousands per month at all!
All modern day websites are easily seen on apps! Why do you need an app anyways!
Advertising with google are annoying too and haven’t not noticed anything less
If you really want to offer something to save SDC members to save $$ and earn SDC good commissions I am already able to do this but I don’t think you are ready for this though Or want to really

I'm pretty sure they know what they are doing !!

 

[peteloo]

SDC Rewards - What is it, and why are you doing it? Get the full scoop here!​

Dear Members

We’ve had a couple of questions about our SDC Rewards program lately, so I wanted to clear a couple of things up (and open the floor to comments). This will be a bit of a long read, but please bear with me.

The first—and most important thing—is that everything that is currently free will remain free. We’re not going to start charging you to use our discount directory, play trivia, read our news articles, or receive the daily newsletters! If you don’t have the means to join SDC Rewards (or just don’t think we’re worth the money), don’t worry because nothing will change. You’ll continue to have access to all the things you already have access to.

Secondly, I’d like to explain why we’ve launched SDC Rewards. As you can probably imagine, a lot of time, effort, and money goes into running the SDC. Writing the newsletters and articles, building new games, giving out prizes for our competitions, etc… Just the costs of hosting the website alone costs us thousands of dollars per month.

Up until now, we’ve paid for 100% of this out of advertising revenues. These come in a couple of forms, and you’ll see them dotted around the website and newsletter. However, the simple fact is that advertising revenues alone aren’t sufficient for us to pay the bills anymore. The online advertising market is highly volatile, and reflects the wider economy. A lot of businesses are tightening their belts at the moment, and, simply put, that means less of them are willing to pay for ads.

To be frank, we also find some of the ads that appear on our site to be a little annoying or obnoxious - also not to mention, occasionally ‘scammy’. We use an external ad agency to source advertisers for us (we don’t have the resources to do this in-house), but we’ve manually blocked or blacklisted quite a few of them because we don’t like the products they’re selling or they give us a ‘dodgy’ feeling.

Getting a portion of our revenue from member subscriptions will allow us to largely move away from the advertising model. Currently, SDC Rewards members see about 95% less ads on the site, which makes for a much more pleasurable browsing experience.

Having reliable subscriber revenue will also allow us to continue improving the SDC in other ways. Here are just a few of the things we have planned:

• Paid product testing (where we pay members for the products they test as well as their time)
• Health tips / Q&A from a GP or other health professional every month
• Discounts on travel related activities and products (cruises, travel insurance, etc.)
• Brand new brain training games, like crosswords, code crackers, word searches, etc.
• Video courses on IT skills, like removing malware, avoiding scams, purchasing things online safely, etc.
• Discounts on prepaid gift cards for popular retailers like Coles, Woolies, etc.
• An app/downloadable version of our discount directory that you can use on your phone/tablet
• Ad-free versions of OzWord, Sudoku, Trivia, etc. that you can use on your phone/tablet

Most of these will be open to SDC Rewards members only (at least for the foreseeable future), simply because we’re depending on the revenue they bring in as a way to fund these developments.

Finally, I’d like to mention that we’re hugely thankful for having you all as members, whether you join SDC Rewards or not. We’ve tried to price our offering so that nobody is excluded (our monthly plan works out to 20 cents per day, and our annual plan works out to 14 cents per day), but we know a lot of people are doing it tough out there and if you’re not in a position to be able to support us financially, we’re still eternally grateful to have you as free members, and there are plenty of ways to help us that involve no monetary cost, like telling your friends about us and engaging in conversations on the forum.

If you have any questions, comments, or requests, please let us know either by posting here, or emailing me privately if you prefer.

Cheers

Jonathan and the SDC Team.

Thank you for your efforts.
I recently qualified to be in Victorian Senior and thought that this was a government supported organisation. Do you get government funding support?

 

[Kawi]

SDC Rewards - What is it, and why are you doing it? Get the full scoop here!​

Dear Members

We’ve had a couple of questions about our SDC Rewards program lately, so I wanted to clear a couple of things up (and open the floor to comments). This will be a bit of a long read, but please bear with me.

The first—and most important thing—is that everything that is currently free will remain free. We’re not going to start charging you to use our discount directory, play trivia, read our news articles, or receive the daily newsletters! If you don’t have the means to join SDC Rewards (or just don’t think we’re worth the money), don’t worry because nothing will change. You’ll continue to have access to all the things you already have access to.

Secondly, I’d like to explain why we’ve launched SDC Rewards. As you can probably imagine, a lot of time, effort, and money goes into running the SDC. Writing the newsletters and articles, building new games, giving out prizes for our competitions, etc… Just the costs of hosting the website alone costs us thousands of dollars per month.

Up until now, we’ve paid for 100% of this out of advertising revenues. These come in a couple of forms, and you’ll see them dotted around the website and newsletter. However, the simple fact is that advertising revenues alone aren’t sufficient for us to pay the bills anymore. The online advertising market is highly volatile, and reflects the wider economy. A lot of businesses are tightening their belts at the moment, and, simply put, that means less of them are willing to pay for ads.

To be frank, we also find some of the ads that appear on our site to be a little annoying or obnoxious - also not to mention, occasionally ‘scammy’. We use an external ad agency to source advertisers for us (we don’t have the resources to do this in-house), but we’ve manually blocked or blacklisted quite a few of them because we don’t like the products they’re selling or they give us a ‘dodgy’ feeling.

Getting a portion of our revenue from member subscriptions will allow us to largely move away from the advertising model. Currently, SDC Rewards members see about 95% less ads on the site, which makes for a much more pleasurable browsing experience.

Having reliable subscriber revenue will also allow us to continue improving the SDC in other ways. Here are just a few of the things we have planned:

• Paid product testing (where we pay members for the products they test as well as their time)
• Health tips / Q&A from a GP or other health professional every month
• Discounts on travel related activities and products (cruises, travel insurance, etc.)
• Brand new brain training games, like crosswords, code crackers, word searches, etc.
• Video courses on IT skills, like removing malware, avoiding scams, purchasing things online safely, etc.
• Discounts on prepaid gift cards for popular retailers like Coles, Woolies, etc.
• An app/downloadable version of our discount directory that you can use on your phone/tablet
• Ad-free versions of OzWord, Sudoku, Trivia, etc. that you can use on your phone/tablet

Most of these will be open to SDC Rewards members only (at least for the foreseeable future), simply because we’re depending on the revenue they bring in as a way to fund these developments.

Finally, I’d like to mention that we’re hugely thankful for having you all as members, whether you join SDC Rewards or not. We’ve tried to price our offering so that nobody is excluded (our monthly plan works out to 20 cents per day, and our annual plan works out to 14 cents per day), but we know a lot of people are doing it tough out there and if you’re not in a position to be able to support us financially, we’re still eternally grateful to have you as free members, and there are plenty of ways to help us that involve no monetary cost, like telling your friends about us and engaging in conversations on the forum.

If you have any questions, comments, or requests, please let us know either by posting here, or emailing me privately if you prefer.

Cheers

Jonathan and the SDC Team.

What percentage goes towards your wages?

 

[Bianca]

I am really happy to have a reason to get up each morning - living alone is lonely - so thankyou for keeping me company and my mind active, x

 

[Nana Zorak]

I had wondered whether this was connected to kmart as almost every article talking of a specific wonderful "hack" always is about a purchase supposedly made there and by a female who just got the most wonderful and unusual ideas and the solution and then when i read onwards then solved all the problems and they presented more like a commercial spiel for KMart and then occasionally Aldi seemed to be mentioned as well for other reasons... but never a comment on purchases made or fantastic ideas from products purchased from Target .. curious.

These are my observations and my personal thoughts and which ive intended to express them from my observations and as the notion of a page for seniors had a appeal to me and as i see clearly from numerous comments we do have our full facilities and exercise them in the commentry section..And mostly are very interesting .. and then the org Coupon 65 is forever promoting products i confess i actually succumbed once and bought what i understood to be mobile flip phones by the blurb and photo but it was for wifi only that you could carry around instead of paying roaming fees and purported to be local call costs only... has a prepaid amount of SIM cards for the 5 items off $30 each credit which in fact i paid for in the purchase price. Then it turns out you need to top it up i felt excessively because it was meant to be the cost of local calls no matter where you traveled overseas The fact that i spent well over $300 Is on me for being so foolish and tech ignorant. So I've learnt my lesson and now i know better I'll do better

But the seniors page itself has a problem because numerous times posts i intend to respond to as i type them freeze and get locked and I'm unable to complete and send. Happens when I've deleted a word an start to go backwards with the key strokes and it freezes then.
That never happens when i use my phone for sending or receiving emails and messages or doing research. Nir no matter how many typos i adjust. Perhaps that is a glitch in the system of Seniors Discount page. Perhaps as a recent member I'm not fully aware of the setup or it's purpose .. perhaps it is to make us aware of amazing purchases but is it possible that its only set up to target seniors for KMart products and by KMart. If so if I've erred please clarify for me as i certainly dont intend to bad mouth any company.. and i would prefer a visit You the store then be a senior cit whose been foolish and made incorrect assumptions. Ty

No one in their right mind uses Target for anything that doesn't cost an arm & a leg as they are sooooooooooooo expensive, I never shop there because of this.

 

[Jonathan Leane]

We've definitely done some shopping around when it comes to web hosts Believe it or not, the SDC gets about 4 million pageviews per month! While we could definitely find somewhat 'cheaper' hosts, they tend to be a lot less reliable.

@Kawi At the moment, we don't plan to put any SDC Rewards revenue towards salary increases. For the time being, it's all going to go into continuing to enhance our offerings and maintain what we already have. To be perfectly honest, we'd like to pay ourselves more, but we don't have the means to do that while simultaneously launching all the extra stuff we've promised. I suspect the majority of any extra revenue we get from SDC Rewards will go into funding member submitted product reviews, like the one we just did here: https://seniorsdiscountclub.com.au/...ers-vicks-vs-anihana-vs-essential-oils.30198/

@peteloo We don't get any government support, unfortunately... We're not associated with any of the official state or territory programs, though we've got a link to them in the footer of every page of our site - we don't want people to think we're pretending to be something we're not.

 

[Vinylted]

I am happy to pay this small amount towards the upkeep of a great site.
Beats the heck out of social media silly stuff.
I do enjoy interacting with everyone and read the varying opinions offered.
Being a full time carer keeps me indoors a lot of my time. SDC is a happy diversion every day.

Yet the site is full of passed on "silly social media stuff" ??

 

[Chook03]

I must have missed something as I’m not aware of the cost of contributing to SDC? Please advise. Thanks.

 

[Jonathan Leane]

Hi @Chook03 - contributing is entirely optional We launched SDC Rewards a couple of weeks ago here: https://seniorsdiscountclub.com.au/account-upgrade

But please don't feel obligated to contribute financially if you're not currently in a position to do so (or don't think we're worth the money!).

 

[Macarj]

Do the advertisers pay the SDC

 

[Caroline257]

And what a great job you all do. We appreciate all the effort you put into SDC.

I have found in life you can't please everyone

And with that it's a huge thank you from me

View attachment 27152

And a huge big thank you from me too

 

[BillyB]

I would like to thank firstly Jonathan Leane and Maddison for the welcome notice.
I am happy to join the club as I enjoy the jokes the games and the trivia and everything else.

 

[Jonathan Leane]

Hi @Macarj - yes they do We work with a couple of ad networks, agencies, etc... so we generally don't get paid directly. Unfortunately there are usually quite a lot of middlemen involved before we get paid.

 

[Macarj]

Hi @Macarj - yes they do We work with a couple of ad networks, agencies, etc... so we generally don't get paid directly. Unfortunately there are usually quite a lot of middlemen involved before we get paid.

Thanks for the reply