The New SMF Ads - Has Anybody Found Anything Interesting?

[salbev]

these little Google ads are by far the most unobtrusive, least tacky looking advertisements available to webmasters of to-day.

once again, i have to agree.

[Steve-o]

I don’t care whether the figure is seventy five dollars or seven thousand, I think that whomever runs this should not have to eat what is, after all, our bill.

I've got to figure the bill is a lot more than $75 a year, based on my experience. And while maybe I'd kick in $75-100 on something I really really was into and wanted to share with others, I would not expect anyone to eat the cost of a site this size.

OTOH, I would much rather support SMF with $15-30 every year than be subject to ads, however tastefully they are handled. I'm just tired of being mass-advertised to every single moment of every single day. It's worth a few bucks to me to not have to wade through even Google Ads.

[Lionhearted]

So, without getting into a discussion about the technical aspects, such as what bandwidth and hardware backbone is needed in supporting this forum, and further what the site’s owner is paying or spending to get it to run as smoothly as it does…what do you imply, that perhaps the owner should have to pickup the costs of running this thing?

I don’t care whether the figure is seventy five dollars or seven thousand, I think that whomever runs this should not have to eat what is, after all, our bill.

The way forums have always worked on the Internet is for the owner to pay all costs himself. Various forum owners have tried charging a fee to join or a monthly fee for membership but successes are extremely rare. Some beg for donations. I have no idea how well that works.

Free forums have been available for years with the catch that there are ads. Yahoo is the largest example offering free forums since 1999.

I know of only two out of the five million or so web forums that succeeded in charging subscribers although I'm sure there are many more. One discusses the options market and charges subscribers $100 a month. The other is a discussion group on the philosophy of capitalism that charges $36 a year as a matter of principle.

I've owned as many as three dozens forums simultaneously. I reduced my net activity in recent years but right now I own four of the free Yahoo forums, which by the way I think work better than the type used by shavemyface.com since they offer a mailing list option to subscribers. I think it's a nuisance to have to compose and read postings on the web rather than by e-mail. I have two forums that I pay for out of my own pocket and two more hosted free because the site owner is interested in the topics and is a frequent poster himself.

So, yes, absolutely I think that whoever runs a forum should pay all costs. A subscriber is doing the owner a favor by joining and posting. Without subscribers the owner of a forum has exactly nothing.

Richard

P.S. There may be some confusion over the term 'owner'. The owner of a forum is the one who administers it. The owner of the forum site is usually a commercial business selling computer time, bandwidth, technical expertise, etc., to their customers, the owners of forums. In the case of shavemyface.com, the one supplying the hardware and Internet connection, the site owner, is dreamhost.com. I have no idea what they charge for this particular forum but their basic fee is $5.95 per month for 5Tb monthly bandwidth and 500Gb storage. The forum owner is identified only by a P.O. box number in Vancouver, Washington.

[John 5]

So, yes, absolutely I think that whoever runs a forum should pay all costs. A subscriber is doing the owner a favor by joining and posting. Without subscribers the owner of a forum has exactly nothing.

Richard

P.S. There may be some confusion over the term 'owner'. The owner of a forum is the one who administers it. The owner of the forum site is usually a commercial business selling computer time, bandwidth, technical expertise, etc., to their customers, the owners of forums. In the case of shavemyface.com, the one supplying the hardware and Internet connection, the site owner, is dreamhost.com. I have no idea what they charge for this particular forum but their basic fee is $5.95 per month for 5Tb monthly bandwidth and 500Gb storage. The forum owner is identified only by a P.O. box number in Vancouver, Washington.

It’s a matter of semantics I didn’t feel the need to address, that of distinguishing from ‘site owner’ and ‘forum owner’, for I do not think that it touches upon the context of what we speak of here, namely, who covers the cost of running the forum. But I do agree with your premise of what makes these forums run. Members do generate the content, so, no users, and the forum lacks any worth.

However, I respectfully disagree that the owner (or admin, if you prefer) should have to pay out of pocket for us to use it. The resources necessitated by a forum of this size in no way demands the use of a more expensive dedicated server, but still, even if the administrator has the most ‘inexpensive’ plan from the host, its still $6 dollars per month paid ten years in advance. I don’t see an attempt to recover costs by the administrator to be wrong, not in an ethical sense for sure.

John

[Sando]

I don't mind the ads. I'll click into them to generate some money, however small the amount. Besides, I may find something of interest. Haven't yet but ...

...Ray

[Lionhearted]

However, I respectfully disagree that the owner (or admin, if you prefer) should have to pay out of pocket for us to use it. The resources necessitated by a forum of this size in no way demands the use of a more expensive dedicated server, but still, even if the administrator has the most ‘inexpensive’ plan from the host, its still $6 dollars per month paid ten years in advance. I don’t see an attempt to recover costs by the administrator to be wrong, not in an ethical sense for sure.

It's not that it's wrong or unethical — it's simply that it's not done. It's amateurish. It's newbieish. More importantly, it's rarely successful.

For this forum I think an ad or notice the same size as the Google ad giving a link to make a donation by PayPal even of a dollar or two would generate much more income than clicks on Google ads. Requesting donations is not that uncommon and to me is no more irritating than an ad. I ignore both.

Richard

[bleedingface]

Well, it's not quite that easy. I think that if you use AdBlock to block googlesyndication ads, it's an all-or-nothing approach. If someone can show me how to allow the googlesyndication ads on SMF, but not show them on all the other sites on the WWW, I'll gladly do it.

I occasionally suspend the blocking to see what ads are being targeted at us SMF users. The last one I got was a for a shave cream line called "Whish". It's for ladies' leg shaving. Another one was for laser hair removal. Not a bad try by Google, but not spot-on, either. Anyway, I'll certainly click when I remember, in order to support the site.

Click the ABP icon in the upper right hand corner and disable on www.shavemyface.com. This is using adblock plus.

[bleedingface]

At $100/yr operating costs, it would take a $2000 CD at 5% to generate an $100/yr coupon while retaining the principal.

What I would do it make a small donation part of some of the SMF projects that occur here (brush, bag, etc.), generate $2000 with it, then put it in a trust fund of sorts to pay for the cost of running the forum indefinitely. (Assuming hosting costs don't go up..)

Just my 2c.

[Lionhearted]

I'm sure most here have seen donation requests but for those who haven't here's what one looks like:



This particular website has been requesting donations since 2003. The number donating has gone up every year. In 2003 they received just five donations. In 2004 they had 40 donors some making multiple donations. So far this year, 93 persons have donated some more than once. I would assume a donation via PayPal is at least a dollar so this site is probably taking in enough to cover its site cost.

The ad size, wording, type size and font and images can be anything the forum owner wishes as long as there's a PayPal link. A request could be the same size as the current Google ads here.

Richard

[Pauldog]

The ads here are an experiment. (And no, I'm not the administrator, but I'm the moderator of the Razors forum, and the moderators are discussing the ads in the Moderators forum. The ads were the idea of the administrator.)

If they don't generate enough revenue to be worth it, they will almost certainly go away. We're finding a lot of completely irrelevant ads, and a fair number that are offensive to most of the moderators. Both kinds get blocked. Ads for most women's shaving products, laser hair removal, etc., aren't blocked, because we're assuming that someone here could be interested.

My purpose in starting this thread was to see if any real result comes from it - someone finds a new product or store that they find of interest.