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Pillar Of The Community
United States
2055 Posts |
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Perhaps prices have dropped due to the ability of the internet to present selling opportunities to every hobbyist 24/7. Perhaps people do not need APS or Linns paper to satisfy their weekly appetite for philatelic information anymore. I think this rings true. 30 years ago, if you wanted to participate in the hobby at a "serious" level, you really almost needed to be a member of the APS. An APS membership allowed you to bid at auction - now you just give them your credit card number. If you wanted to get information on some obscure philatelic area, the APRL might have been the only place you could find it. Today, you can post a question here and have an answer, for free, usually in a matter of hours, from collectors who might be located half a world away. That is, if you didn't already find your answer instantly by using Google. When I joined the APS just a few months back, it was more out of a sense that I should support the hobby somehow and that, since I consider myself a quote-unquote "serious" collector, I should join. I didn't join out of a sense that I could get something I wanted through the APS that I couldn't get elsewhere (and probably for free). Bottom line is, there are too many other ways to get what the APS is selling. To survive they're going to need to find more and new ways to provide value to their members. For better or worse, the younger generation that the APS needs to attract is going to expect the APS to provide more services, instantly and on demand. I see nothing wrong with a fee-based service for things like access to a digitized APRL, or access to a forum staffed by experts, etc. Speaking for myself, I am perfectly willing to pay for content if I think it's worth it. |
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Valued Member
United States
364 Posts |
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Scott, thanks for taking the time to respond to this thread and reach out to the community. |
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Pillar Of The Community
United States
845 Posts |
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Quote:
I do not feel that the cost of software is significant. I also do not think that the cost of server(s)/routers/bandwidth should have been an obstacle. The cost of a good IT human resource would have been the largest cost. Ideally, APS would have begun investing in IT resources a decade ago. The first money should have been spent on a good IT professional who would have been the internal champion for their technology vision. Without a champion and a person who is held responsible for progress, it would have failed.
In my opinion APS vision should have brought under one online umbrella everything they could. Not simply a forum, or on-demand videos, or a kick-butt web site, but also hosting for regional chapters. The name of the game would have been to drive traffic to their site, become the 'go to' place for philatelic information. By having other regional web sites under the same umbrella they would be in great position to add additional value with things like an in-house search engine. They also would be in a great position to absorb content if needed and to tackle other, larger group projects.
None of the above was out of reach for an organization like APS. The salary of the IT person would have been the largest cost, perhaps $75k. The initial cost of the software and hardware would have had an NRE cost of <$60k the first year and then drop off to less than a $2k per year after that. In terms of additional help, I would think that APS would want to tap into volunteers to do things like moderate a forum, contribute educational videos, writing fresh and interesting content.
If APS had made this investment 10 years ago (which would have been a bit late) they would now be in a great position for the future. But I doubt that the budget was the biggest issue. The bigger challenge was finding the courage to change the legacy 'build walls around philatelic information' profit centers. As difficult as change is for a single person it is even harder for organizations. I doubt anyone was willing to recommend that APS rip up their existing income structure and embrace new ways to make money and build membership. The far safer approach was to 'stay the course' and do what they have done in the past.
Time will be the final judge if APS has followed the right path. If they can turn around the declining membership numbers and grow their online value, perhaps they can pull through. They need some real, tangible changes to turn this big ship around so that membership value increases in the face of online competition. My fear is that if they do not do this soon, the value of an APS membership will continue to be diluted.
Don Spot on Don. Maybe APS can continue to exist on endowments and rent from its facility as membership numbers dwindle, and doesn't need to worry about new member acquisition. That is risky to me. When those endowments dry up and existing members pass on, no one will care about the zombie APS in Bellefonte PA if they go down that path. So that's two options. Do very little to acquire new members or go all-in with a comprehensive online strategy. The third and more likely option is continuing down the path of spending resources on strategies that bear little fruit. Better to "go all in" now with 31K members than 5 years from now at 25K. (As we already know, it should have been done 10 years ago.) |
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Valued Member
United States
285 Posts |
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All --
This conversation has been very interesting and I appreciate everyone who has weighed in on the topic. I think if you look at the plan, you see that increasing our presence online is embedded in the work we do under all sections of the plan from greater presence on social and other online media, to increased on-demand video courses, to active engagement of members and non-members.
As for investing in the infrastructure to create an online forum, that is not a short-term objective. Budget considerations for that sort of investment are not there yet. Don't get me wrong, I was a leader in an organization with internal IT staff and a champion of good technology investment was one very important element. In four years, we significantly shifted the technological capabilities of the organization and it was transformative and disruptive (some good and some not).
Technology is not the end, but the means to an end. That end is embedded in the conversations I see here and elsewhere and that is greater exposure through the obvious means of technology and greater engagement of the philatelic community, whether they are members or not. Our plan calls for us to do just that - but in the current environment, ownership of the platform is less necessary than it would have been a decade ago.
If I can be candid, membership has been on the decline for 27 straight years and that is not resolved in one way or in one year. I would agree with the idea that the APS could have adapted to the current environment years ago, but for reasons unknown to most of us, did not. Regardless of what did not happen, it is not too late to identify ways to open the doors electronically to the collecting community.
Having said that, I would be interested to get a sense of what sort of value-added benefits that are not offered now would be an enticement to join or stay active in the APS. Any thoughts would be appreciated. |
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Rest in Peace
United States
4052 Posts |
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... I would be interested to get a sense of what sort of value-added benefits that are not offered now would be an enticement to join or stay active in the APS ... Well, as long as you ask, I think that the greatest asset of the APS-APRL is everything but the APS-APRL, eg, the affiliates. They bring a topical focus that a national umbrella organization can never emulate, while that national umbrella organization can bring them an exposure that they could never afford. Although I wrote that "I can see the APS seeing nothing but trouble from hosting small-club websites", that does not stop me from thinking that biggest & best thing the ASP could do for itself - and for the hobby - would be to bring all of those resources into one 'seamless' experience. But there is a parallel effort that can be started very quickly, and scaled very easily. If this were twenty years ago, I would suggest an APS Philatelic Reader's Digest, re-publishing a selection of articles from the affiliates' journals; since this is 2016, I would change that to a ~daily blog - written by someone who was writing for money - with selected abstracts of articles from the affiliates' journals, and links to the affiliates current website. I hope we are all beyond the need to explain the benefits to all concerned ;) Cheers, /s/ ikeyPikey |
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Pillar Of The Community
United States
2055 Posts |
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I'll preface this by saying that I don't know what kind of technical issues or costs would be involved, or what kind of copyright issues there would be. But what I'd like and would gladly pay extra for is easy online access (for a fee, if need be) to reference materials that I would need in my day to day collecting and buying. I'm not necessarily talking about Scott or Michel catalogs, but more specialized material for identification and authentication. Along the lines of what Ikey is saying, maybe the APS could work partnerships with various specialty groups to put some of their reference material online. I also belong to the Germany Philatelic Society (GPS) and have a copy of their forgery manuals on CD. Maybe the APS could swing a deal with them to allow APS members access to online versions of those files for a fee? I mention the GPS because I'm a member, but surely other societies have similar publications. The APS would split the fee with the other society. Now, there would surely be resistance from the GPS or other societies because right now they're selling that material and getting the full purchase price. Why should they give the APS a cut? But here's the key: if the data is in a SQL database, it can be sliced and diced any way you want it. Say a collector sees an auction on ebay for a German States issue and he's not sure if it's a forgery. In theory you could show him forgery reference materials on just that one stamp and charge a fee for it. The APS and affiliated societies could rack up a lot of micro-sales in this way. And of course you could sell or rent more full-featured access as well. Smaller societies probably wouldn't have the resources to do this, and of course they would still continue to sell their hard copies and CD's, so maybe they'd go along with it. I realize that the above may be totally unfeasible for any number of reasons, but that's a service that I would use regularly and would pay for without hesitation. |
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Pillar Of The Community
3859 Posts |
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Since the internet is all about information, I will gravitate towards the philatelic organizations that offer philatelic information for free first. Many stamp societies offer access to the older back issues of their journals online for free including the use of a search engine to help find things. |
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| Edited by jogil - 02/22/2016 10:07 pm |
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Pillar Of The Community
United States
845 Posts |
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Aside from the current benefits of the APS, I would pay/donate for:
1) Online forum where expertise of entire APS community is available
2) Specialized philatelic information and reference material (examples such as forgery and ID reference material as mentioned above by TheArtfulHinger)
3) Organization of the plethora of information that is scattered about on many different websites - that is, someone else keeps all my links in some organized fashion or better yet, unites it all under a single platform
4) Re-publication of classic articles - I like IkeyPikey's APS Philatelic Reader's Digest (preferring rich content over daily banter)
5) Online classes, but they would have to be pretty specialized to be of interest to me (and thus probably not of interest to many) - I'm thinking about subjects such as "identifying genuine overprints of <country> during <time period>" or "forged cancellations of <country> <issue> during <time period>"
Primarily what I would pay for can be summed as knowledge to assist in identification of genuine stamps/philatelic material in difficult areas. The amount I would be willing to pay would be commensurate with the size of the online community and volume of online reference material that APS pulls together.
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Rest in Peace
United States
4052 Posts |
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Pillar Of The Community
United States
2055 Posts |
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It looks like what most people are looking for is access to information of one kind or another. There is a vast amount of philatelic information out there, but it's fragmented all over the place. Some of it is on a society's or a collector's website. Some of it is in obscure philatelic journals or books published decades ago and out of print. Some of it is difficult or impossible to obtain and can be very expensive, if it can be found at all. Even if the APRL has it, you still have to wait for it to be sent and pay for shipping both ways. Given that so many collectors buy via 7-day online auctions, waiting for the material you need from the APRL may not be a good solution.
The difficulty and expense of finding philatelic reference material can be a serious impediment to one's enjoyment of the hobby. Again, I know it's not a simple thing to contemplate and there are a lot of potential legal, technical and financial issues. It would certainly take a long time to accomplish this and it may not be possible at all. But a single online portal that contains the sum of all philatelic knowledge (sort of like a Wikipedia for stamps) is my pipe dream.
Edited to add that this website I'm picturing does not need to be perfect, just useful. In practice it could never be complete and would be something that would build slowly over time. |
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| Edited by TheArtfulHinger - 02/23/2016 12:45 pm |
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Pillar Of The Community
3859 Posts |
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Stamp Community Forum is like an online virtual stamp club. |
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| Edited by jogil - 02/23/2016 12:47 pm |
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Pillar Of The Community
United States
2055 Posts |
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Stamp Community Forum is like an online virtual stamp club. Absolutely. I mentioned earlier that people could find answers here or on Google. And usually that is the case, but not always. And even if you get an answer (assuming it's the correct one), usually you can't actually see the reference material in question. In my opinion, a central repository of knowledge is still the preferred ideal. Being able to ask questions is great, but it's no substitute for browsing at your leisure. |
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Pillar Of The Community
United States
845 Posts |
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Even on this site we get continual questions about whether a stamp is a 596 or some other rarity. Searching for past threads referencing this is not hard, but is time consuming, and the original poster rarely thinks to do this. In all the 596-related threads, there is useful information, but not likely in the same thread. If we could point someone to a single site, "have you looked here first", that would be great. We sort-of do that, but I have a terrible memory, so I am always searching for those links. |
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Pillar Of The Community
United States
845 Posts |
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Here's another idea. I'll bet a lot of folks have a back log of stamps/philatelic material, maybe not in their core area of expertise, that is not completely identified. Maybe they are close and maybe the stamp is too inexpensive to warrant a cert or even a quick ID.
I know this is a long shot, but what if there was a subscription service, where I could get a quick ID on a certain volume of stamps for a yearly price. Or it could just be member access to a forum for identification by other members. This would not necessarily compete with the expertising service because I'm not likely to ever get these inexpensive stamps Identified and I'll still want a cert for expensive items, especially if I'm selling.
Probably not practical but I thought I'd mention it. [Edit: and I know we already ID things here at this site for free].
Besides education/knowledge, the other things I do all the time is check catalog prices, buy/sell/trade, and purchase supplies. Build a platform that does all three in the same place, provided you have the forum/knowledge-base to attract enough eyeballs. Again, far fetched...
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| Edited by HungaryForStamps - 02/23/2016 4:52 pm |
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Rest in Peace
United States
4052 Posts |
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Replies: 108 / Views: 14,228 |
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Posted 02/22/2016 1:40 pm
