There are three reasons that this website costs money.
Reason 1
On the old Christian Gays Connections website I gave a 7 Day Free Trial Period. Â Unfortunately that encouraged many "less than desirables" to register with us. Â Many were spammers. Â A lot were frauds. Â Some were sexually explicit with their profile content and pictures. Â All of this led to many, many hours of work on my part to keep the website "clean". Â
A PayPal Account assures us that the member is who they say they are, and by charging money, even as little as $2/mo, we will eliminate the frauds and scammers, and will get quality people who sincerely want to connect with our LGBTIQ Community.
Reason 2
I received a lot of comments that our old Connections site had a lot of "inactive profiles". Â This is true. Â Some people registered and never came back, but I didn't want to delete their profiles in case they wanted to come back some day. Â Some people changed their email addresses and didn't update on the website. Â
By charging people monthly, the website will only have people who are truly interested. Â Nobody is going to keep paying for something they are not using.
Reason 3
This website resides on a server. Â Servers cost money, and the bigger the server, the more money. Â By charging a minimum amount of money for memberships, it will help to offset the cost of the server and the software.