Advertising Experiment - Your Thoughts?

[gav240z]

Hi Everyone,

In an attempt to earn more revenue from Advertising and help with our hosting costs I am thinking about placing ads in other parts of the forum.

 

Those of you familiar with other forums will know what I'm talking about, but I am considering the following:

 

• Placing ads between user posts
  
• Placing ads at the bottom of the forum
  

 

Or a combination of the 2. I may also experiment with other advertising ideas.

 

Why am I considering this?

 

1. Donations are great, but they are not consistent month on month. Donations + current advertising doesn't cover hosting costs.

 

2. Done right, we may be able to drop the plea for donations completely (as in hosting costs would be covered).

 

I am anticipating some of you won't like this, so I wanted to get your feedback before trying any of this out. What may interest some of you is that we generate far more advertising revenue from the casual visitor to auszcar.com than existing members.

 

So please let me know if you have any concerns, objections or general feedback on the idea.

[herrods]

at one of the silvia forums, you get ads if you are a guest and LESS ads if you are a registered user..

 

we wouldnt have quite as much guest traffic as a silvia forum, but if you changed it to ads for non contributing, and LESS ads for the contributers, that would give you a small revenue boost in the advertising space, but then a secondary boost from epople signing up as a "paying" or contributing member to lessen the number of ads.

 

just a thought

[luvemfast]

Is it going to affect my PC at all?

As long as there is no spyware or anything sinister that can be attached to the adds I don't see a problem.

I like Herrods idea of donating members getting less adds too if possible, gives an incentive to join up fully.

[gav240z]

at one of the silvia forums, you get ads if you are a guest and LESS ads if you are a registered user..

 

we wouldnt have quite as much guest traffic as a silvia forum, but if you changed it to ads for non contributing, and LESS ads for the contributers, that would give you a small revenue boost in the advertising space, but then a secondary boost from epople signing up as a "paying" or contributing member to lessen the number of ads.

 

just a thought

 

Yes I've seen that also, I think its a good idea and good incentive for people to become paying members. I will definitely look into it and see if its possible with the current software.

 

Is it going to affect my PC at all?

As long as there is no spyware or anything sinister that can be attached to the adds I don't see a problem.

I like Herrods idea of donating members getting less adds too if possible, gives an incentive to join up fully.

 

Good question and no I'd never place advertising on the site that uses pop's up, creates spoof system warnings or introduces spyware etc..

 

I'm using Google Adsense which has a strict policy on this kind of thing. So you should be safe from anything like that.

[FuzzyDropbear]

I rekon it's a good idea Gav. If it helps fund the site then I don't think it'll be a problem. The ads I've seen on other forums aren't really that intrusive and don't seem to be annoying. 

[Zedman240®]

I'm well behind in my contributions so I think anything that makes it easier on your wallet should be fine with the rest of us. Unless you setup auto deductions from our accounts I say go for it!