An honest update about the future of RPLS.com

Folks,

I've started and deleted this post more times than I'd like to admit, because there's no easy way to say it. So I'm going to be straight with you, the way I'd want someone to be straight with me.

I've been running this community for 16 years. It started as BeerLeg back in the summer of 2010, became SurveyorConnect a couple of months later when corporate firewalls didn't care for the word "beer," and today it carries the RPLS.com name, continuing the legacy Mark Deal started back in 1996. Through every name change, software rebuild, and server move, one thing never changed: this has been a labor of love. I was a surveyor myself from 1986 to 2009, and building a place where our profession could talk shop, swap war stories, argue boundary law, and lean on one another has been one of the great honors of my working life.

But I owe you the truth about where things stand. For most of those 16 years, I've run this just to break even, and plenty of years I didn't even manage that. We had some wonderful advertisers for a while, but Covid wiped them out and they never came back. I dropped ad rates to almost nothing to bring in the smaller shops, and it has barely moved the needle. The membership plans help, and I'm grateful beyond words to everyone on them, but the honest fact is it isn't nearly enough to justify the hours this takes. I've reached the point where I can't keep pouring myself into something that isn't sustainable. Something has to change.

So here's what I've decided — and I wanted to give you a real heads-up well before anything actually changes. I'm going to find out, once and for all, whether this community can stand on its own two feet. This August, I'm planning to move the forums to a membership model. Here's the gist of how it would work:

• The active, recent discussions would be for members.
• Visitors who aren't logged in, and members who haven't subscribed, would see topic titles and a short preview of each discussion.
• Our older archive would stay open to everyone, so the years of discussions you've come to rely on — and the threads people find through Google — won't disappear behind a wall.

The idea is simple: if this place has real value to the people who use it, then it's worth a small amount to keep it alive. And if it turns out folks aren't willing to support it, then I'll have my answer, and I can make my peace with that.

A few things I want to be clear about up front, because I know they'll be on your mind:

• If you already support RPLS.com — whether you're on a monthly plan or you've sent the occasional donation over the years — you'll be grandfathered in, automatically. You won't have to do a thing or pay a penny more. You've already had my back, and I'm not about to ask you to do it twice.
• It will be affordable. I'm not doing this to price working surveyors out. It'll be a modest annual amount — a rounding error next to what we all spend on equipment and software, and easily worth it if this place saves you a single headache a year. I'll share the exact pricing when the system goes live.
• Early members will be rewarded. The folks who step up first will get a special founding rate, locked in for good. More on that when we launch.

Nothing changes today. The membership system goes live in early August, and I'll post all the details — pricing, the founding offer, and how to join — the moment it's ready.

Let me also be straight about the bigger picture, because you've earned it. There are really only three possible ways this goes from here:

1. If enough of you join that the community sustains itself, then RPLS.com keeps going strong for years to come. That's what I'm hoping for with everything I've got.
2. If it doesn't bring in enough to be viable, then I look to hand it off to someone respectable in our industry with the resources to do right by it.
3. If neither of those pans out, I have to shut it down for good.

But here's why I'm posting this now, weeks ahead of any change: I genuinely want your honest take before I build this. If you think a membership model is the right move, tell me. If you think I'm making a mistake, tell me that too. If there's something about how I'm planning to do it that worries you, I'd rather hear it now than after I've flipped the switch. This community was built by surveyors, for surveyors, and I'd be a fool not to ask its members what they think before I act.

Whatever happens next — thank you. Truly. Getting to know so many of you over this time has meant more to me than this ever made in dollars.

— Wendell