Welcome to another year of Hardcore Fantasy Football coverage at Footballguys.com. We're fired up and we know you are too. Big changes are on the horizon but one thing that has not and will not change is the vision that we've had from the start: To provide our viewers the best tools and information that allow them to Dominate Their League.

Thanks to you, Footballguys.com has managed to do some good things:

- An email list with over 30,000 names.
- A message board with over 10,000 members in its first year.
- Server melting traffic (of 420 gigabytes served in August alone)

That's all well and good, but the financial reality is that this type of traffic costs significant amounts of money. To continue to operate at a loss is not a possible business strategy for the long-term. And Footballguys.com is in this hobby for the long-term. We have analyzed many different options (donations, teaming with bigger sites, selling the website, more ads, etc) and came up with the following:

- Our message boards (footballguystalk.com) will continue to be 100% Free all year around. This is the most expensive service we offer but we feel that keeping the boards free is imperative to keeping them the most active venue on the internet for late breaking news and discussion. We upgraded to a faster server last week to better handle the huge volume of traffic.

- The Footballguys.com site will remain 100% Free from May 1st through August 1st. All material created during this time will remain free for the entire season. This will include versions of nearly all of our most popular features.

- Customers will need to pay a subscription fee of $20 for the season to access material created after August 1st until season's end. This will include updated projections, rankings, VBD Excel app in the preseason and all of the popular in-season features.

- Footballguys.com mailing list will deliver 100% Free email updates from June 15th through September 8th. Updates after September 8th will only go to subscribers of the service.

In the end, it came down to making a decision. Footballguys.com could either continue to grow and get better. Or without money to support the site, it could fade away as many sites have recently. We choose to continue to grow and get better.

You guys know we're "Bottom Line" kind of guys so here it is: Between Cheatsheets.net and Footballguys.com, we've brought what we feel is the best Fantasy Football Information available to our readers completely free for over two years. In a perfect world, it would stay free forever. But reality says otherwise. And that reality is that we'll have to charge about one dollar a week during the season. If that's too much, enjoy the site as you always have and get everything free up to August 1st. If you think one dollar a week is fair, sign up and get access to everything we offer all year long.

We're excited about the upcoming season and are very much looking forward to providing for you the best site we've ever offered.

Regardless of whether you sign up or not, thanks for reading and thanks for being a part of the Footballguys.com site.

Why did you decide to make the free/pay cutoff date for the website August 1st?

This allows us to continue to show you what we are all about. Our interest has always been to promote the hobby of fantasy football. This includes education through tools, articles, etc. By August 1st we will likely have released everything for the preseason at least once. We feel by going to August 1st, we give solid information (two months better than most magazines) for free and have earned the right to compete for your subscription services.

Why don't you just accept donations?

We actually considered this for sometime, but in the end did not think that strategy would offset the large server costs. Donation strategies generally are unsuccessful as most people tend not to pay unless they really are required too.

Why not put more ads on Footballguys.com? Certainly with your traffic numbers you could cover your costs through ads.

It's possible that other strategies could cover the costs, but in the end we would rather create football content than work selling ads, selling T-shirts, soliciting donations, etc. Some websites running ads point to gambling sites and less than honorable contests. Even normal ads have become extremely annoying as they lock down your browser with multiple pop-ups. In the end, this just is not the site that we want to create.

Why $20? Why not $5 or $10?

We felt this price represented value to our customers and at the same time was enough money for us to afford our servers, pay our writers and successfully grow the company. We think less than a dollar a week is affordable to most people.

I will never pay.

OK.

I mean it. I'll never pay.

OK. Really, it's OK. There are some that will never pay. We understand that. Some won't think our site is worth the $20 yearly subscription. We disagree, but understand that too. If you are one of those guys, enjoy our site until August 1st. It's better than that $7 magazine, and it's free.

Are you going to pay your writers?

Yes we are. We understand that to get and retain premier talent in this industry, you have to pay the contributors.

Will Footballguys.com be better in 2002?

We believe by paying our help, we will have the best information available on the internet. This includes expanded efforts regarding defensive players, original articles, multiple projections, etc. In the end you are the judge to whether our material is of sufficient quantity and quality.

I want to sign up for the premium service. How do I pay?

Three easy methods:
Buy Online
Pay by check or money order
or call us Toll Free at 1-800-331-9382

What credit cards will you take?

The two services we are using (2Checkout.com and PayPal) accept Mastercard, VISA, American Express and Discover cards

With the message boards likely costing you the most money, why do they remain free?

We clearly understand that to charge for the message board would substantially ruin the dynamic that has been created there. The message boards serve a very important role to the hobby and we also fully understand this. They are indeed costly to run, but are vital to creating a fantasy football community. We are committed to keeping these free and making them as robust as possible for many years to come. Plus it does not seem right to charge our users for content created by the people themselves

When I enter my user name and password and hit submit, I am brought back to this page...What's up?

To test your login perform 1-5 below:

1. Go to http://footballguys.com/index2.cfm
2. Enter your email address and password into subscriber login box
3. Hit submit
4. Page will refresh.
5. Click on any feature with a dollar sign. If you see the content, it is working.

I forgot my password...Now what?

Enter your email address in the subscription login box and click on mail password.

I enter my info in but the system does not recognize it

We have had problems with PayPal and 2Checkout.com aborting orders prior to handing off with our site. This charges you the customer, but fails to get you into our system. If you believe this has happened to you, forward a copy of your receipt to [email protected]. We are working diligently to resolve all of these problems and apologize for the inconvenience.

Why do I have to keep logging on?

We chose an implementation strategy that involved session management and not cookies. But we now agree that cookies was a better approach. We expect to have this feature enabled by the third week in August. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Can I call the 1-800 number and talk football?

You can try I suppose, but the persons taking the orders know nothing about fantasy football, etc. Send VBD App, message board problems, etc to [email protected] In fact, these operators can not even resolve previous order problems. They can only process new orders. Send all login problems to [email protected]. Send other concerns to [email protected].

Joe Bryant and David Dodds