As you’re probably aware from the advertisements we’ve dotted around the sites and in NMM we offer a Premium Membership service to users who would like to support the sites and get a little something back in return. I regularly get asked if we have a donation button on the sites. I regularly respond that we don’t take donations at the moment because we consider Premium Membership to be the perfect donation as it allows you to get something back for your financial support; so if you do want to donate to the sites then Premium Membership is the way to go. Premium Memberships are really important to us, as noted in that blog post I keep linking, because we rely more on you guys to keep us going than we do on the ads on the site. I think that’s how it should be and that’s how I like it. It means you guys are more important to us than advertisers.

In recent weeks we’ve added 2 more Premium-only file servers (servers only Premium Members can download from) to bring the total to 4 and last month we changed Supporter membership so that Supporters no longer see adverts on the sites. If you become a Premium Member you are automatically moved into the Supporter group for life when your Premium time expires. Supporter membership costs £1 (around $1.60) and 1 month of Premium Membership costs £2.49 (around $3.99).

We’ve always only offered Pay Pal as a payment method for Premium Membership which has become a point of contention for some people who would like to support these sites but don’t like Pay Pal, don’t want to use Pay Pal or can’t use Pay Pal for whatever reason. I promised that if that ever changed and we offered more payment methods I would let you guys know in the site news so here I am to let you know that we’ve (finally!) got some more payment processors for Premium Membership.

We’ve now added 2Checkout, a popular and well known payment processor to our list of payment processors which you can now use in place of Pay Pal for 1 month, 3 month, 6 month and 12 month memberships. Unfortunately 2Checkout weren’t big fans of the idea of a “Lifetime” membership for some reason so unfortunately we can’t offer 2Checkout as a payment method for that package. To pay via 2Checkout all you need to do is pick a package from the Premium Store and select “2Checkout” from the payment drop-down box. You’ll be redirected to 2Checkout for payment and then your membership should be applied within 10 minutes of payment being received.

Similarly we’re also trialing a different payment processor called Fortumo who provide the ability to pay for 1 month of Premium Membership via SMS/text message from your mobile phone. We’re currently trialing this in a number of European countries including the UK, France and Germany as well as Australia. In total we can currently support 21 countries via this payment method. First of all let me apologise if your country isn’t currently accepted (including those of you in the US and Canada). Every country has different rules, regulations and max amounts that can be paid via phone and the countries we’re trialing are the ones that were easiest to conform with in our system or who actually allow you to pay enough to cover the cost of the membership. We’ve setup a special package in the Premium Store to pay via SMS which you can find here. If this is something that you would like to use but can’t because it’s not currently accepted in your country please let me know as it will help me in deciding whether I want to expand on this payment processor or not.

I’ll finish by simply thanking, once again, those people who have helped to keep these sites running by becoming Premium Members. I really do mean it when I say these sites most definitely wouldn’t still be here without your support.