It's a great time to be a Professional Appliantologist at Appliantology!

A lot has changed at Appliantology.org over the years! We've gone from being a site that focused on helping DIYers to a site focused on supporting the professional tech community.

In the past, one of the ways this site supported and funded itself was through parts sales to DIYers. But today, parts sales to DIYers isn't nearly as big a source of funding for this site as it once was.

Part of this change was a result of increased competition for parts sales online, especially with Amazon and eBay becoming major retailers in this area. So DIYers were coming here for help and then shopping around to buy the parts for a couple bucks cheaper elsewhere.

Concurrent with this trend was the opening of the Samurai Tech Academy last year where we offer first-rate, online, cost-effective training to professional and aspiring appliance technicians. With MasterSamuraiTech.com as our tech training site, it seemed natural to increase our focus on tech support at Appliantology.org.

Under the old paradigm where we catered to DIYers, it made sense to offer a complimentary membership upgrade to professional techs to encourage them to come in and help answer questions from DIYers. The idea was that instead of supporting the site with money, they would support the site with knowledge, which helped generate income in the form of DIYer parts sales. In return, they would have access to all the tech-only forums and resources, including the Downloads.

But with the changes in parts sales mentioned above, and Appliantology now primarily focused on supporting professional appliance techs, we've had to put some limits on the the complimentary membership program.

The complimentary membership upgrade ("Appliantologist") is still available and retains many of its original perks such as access to the chat room, use of the PM system, ability to edit their own posts, upload and download attachments, ability to reply to other people's topics (not just topics they start), and file privileges in the Downloads section (one download for every two posts).

However, the Appliantologist membership no longer includes access to the tech-only forums.

We needed to make these changes to adapt to the changing economic realities of running a site like Appliantology and to ensure it remains a viable and valuable resource for technicians. As a result, we need the support from professional tech subscription memberships. But in return, we're offering more!

Professional Appliantologist members enjoy the following perks:

- Access to all features of the site (chat room, PM system, post editing, etc.)

- Access to tech-only forums

- Unlimited file downloads in the Downloads section of the site

- Access to the Tech-only calendar where webinars are announced

- Free access to tech training webinars

- Free access to webinar recordings (in case you can't make the live event)

- And more perks are in the works!

We want Appliantology to be such an indispensable information tool in your appliance repair arsenal that you'll agree that it's a fantastic bargain even if it were at twice the price!

ADDENDUM:

Here's the recording of the webinar we had last night, March 29, 2015, discussing the member groups and currencies for dues payments here at Appliantology:

You can download the PDF of the presentation here: http://appliantology.org/files/file/2223-appliantology-member-groups-and-currencies-for-dues-payments/