On-line Communities - Ads or no Ads? 92
numacra asks: "There comes a time in the life of every growing on-line community where ads start looking like a good way to support it. What does the Slashdot community think about ads on open source and security community websites? Does it bring down the quality of the website/community? Should we start putting ads up on our wargame pages? We receive around 10,000 unique hits a month and are debating whether or not ads will improve our community or ruin it." Ads and donations seem to be the easiest way to drum up money for grassroots websites, however are there other alternatives which could cover the costs?
Re:Simple Answer (Score:2)
Re:Simple Answer (Score:2)
This is another example of obsession with steadily increasing profits vs. creating a product that sells well and consistently produces a good income. Wall Street has ruined many good companies with this mindless obsession.
it'll be fine (Score:4, Insightful)
Just don't use that godawful IntelliTXT shit or full-page Flash ads or whatnot. Respect your users.
Re:it'll be fine (Score:1)
"...your users likely won't mind a few tasteful ads one bit."
I think that's where the key is, especially with a young family. There are quite a few sites that were a good read, but have since had to go elsewhere because of the racy ads they started to run on the site. It was really dissapointing because I wouldn't have thought that those kind of ads really reflected the content of the actual website. Too bad for them.
Re:it'll be fine (Score:3, Funny)
Re:it'll be fine (Score:4, Interesting)
Out of interest, how did you combat this?
I'm currently in a similar position. I'm getting (Adsense) click through rates of 40% and around 200 page views per day. I'm 90% certain that this is just friends and others clicking to support me, and I'm worried that Google will pull my account because of it. I just find it highly suspicious, considering my site (blockavoid.co.uk) isn't even complete!
Any suggestions?
Re:it'll be fine (Score:1)
Re:it'll be fine (Score:2)
Google Adsense is a tad scary, actually, in that a group of angry ex-users (we've had banned users occasionally threaten suicide and the like) could easily make it look like you're defrauding Google and get your account shut down.
Re:it'll be fine (Score:2)
They added our site to several Traffic Exchange programs. This generated significant increases in traffic. Google has a clause in their ToS that they don't like this kind of traffic (clicks on the ads or not) and my AdSense account
Re:it'll be fine (Score:2)
Google has become pretty much indeferrent to what or who they will market and promote in the drive for greater profits and that kind of marketing is not really appropriate for community web sites. Clicking is currently the only way to drive bad adds off a we
Re:it'll be fine (Score:2)
Whether it was my note that did it, or simply the fact that it was the end of the month, I don't know. I do know that my account was disabled about 2 hours ago.
I am going to email them, and I hope that my note of concern will stand me in good stead if it was just end of month checks. My account only had $43, so I wouldn't have seen anything this mo
Re:it'll be fine (Score:2)
Re:it'll be fine (Score:2)
I think a solution here is to be unethical.
OTOH, (most) people are stupid. It could be likely that many are more interested in the ads than your website.
Google Adsense (Score:4, Insightful)
You can always do what "User Friendly" did too. Offer something for "premium" membership. Might be more content. Might be a t-shirt.
If you have people that sign up for that, make sure that your message boards indicate that they're contributors to the site. It's a little thing, but it's nice to recognize the people that are actually supporting the site.
Good luck.
First off... (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, flash ads ruin websites. Especially flash ads that stretch out over text. Floating DIV ads that block your content ruin websites. Noisy ads ruin websites. Ads that cause seizures ruin websites. Sites with more ads on the screen than content have been ruined by ads.
Re:First off... (Score:2, Funny)
Then I will finish by contradicting that statement in every way I possibly can.
Re:Better yet (Score:2)
I am contradicting my sentence because "insert" is a verb.
Re:First off... (Score:1)
You're right! Whining does ruin websites!
Seriously though, I agree.
Re:First off... (Score:2)
See? Says pretty much the same thing but doesn't sound nearly so self contradictory, and it avoids sneering at those members of your community who might disagree as to where the threshold of annoyanc
Re:First off... (Score:1)
Re:First off... (Score:2)
In general, rain doesn't make things wet.However rain can make things wet if they're left outside, and rain can make things wet if the rain water get carried inside, and ..."
All I'm saying is that you could make (what I take to be your) point more clearly if you said
in general, rain makes things wet. However, that doesn't have to happen if you bring a thing inside, or make sure it's under cover.
That way you need fewer special cases, and your general case i
Adblock (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Adblock (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Adblock (Score:2)
I don't think that was a false positive, but we're still crunching the numbers.
Re:Adblock (Score:2)
Oh, and (I suspect you already know this and were joking) people have to actually click the ads in order for you to make money off them.
So, yeah, relevent text ads are the name of the game.
Perhaps it would be a good idea to go so far as to offer incentives to users who click the ads on a regular basis (IE: You click 10 ads and get one
Re:Adblock (Score:1)
Great idea. "Help me commit click fraud and get my account banned and I'll give you one page view ad-free!!" You'll get far with that.
This is a community by community decision (Score:1)
Macromedia Flash Player has stopped a potentially unsafe operation.
The following local application on your computer or network:
h
is trying to communicate with this Internet-enabled location:
img-cdn.mediaplex.com
I get this on a number of sites, but it just came up on arstechnica.
Re:This is a community by community decision (Score:1)
In case you haven't guessed, I don't like seeing ads. One site I frequent added a Google Adsense ad in a big box taking up 25% of the window height near the top the each page. Even these ads are annoying because I now how to scroll down to see the content. Put ads like this near the bottom of the page, not the top.
Re:This is a community by community decision (Score:2)
Even if the owner asks the community what they think it is still the owner of the website's decision.
Unless it is some kind of foundation that is running the site and paying the bills then it all comes down the the owner.
I find
Do it, but do it wisely. (Score:4, Informative)
That depends on the community, really. Would they be willing to pay a subscription fee? I can tell you I have. I pay $30 a year to a web community pertaining to my career. I do this for two reasons: 1.) That forum landed me 3 seperate jobs. I figure I owe them anyway. 2.) They'll host my on-line portfolio. Admittedly, though, I haven't taken advantage of this yet. Judging from the number of listed subscribers, I'd say they're probably doing okay for themselves.
The question is: Is your site worthy of subscription? Well, you're not asking about that, so I'm guessing probably not. (err I didn't mean that to sound rude. Sorry.) In your position, I'd look into Google's Text Ads. With any luck, you'll recoup most of the expenses regarding hosting. I'd also recommend setting up a Paypal Donate button. If you tell your users "This is how much I spend a month on hosting, and this is my donation goal", you'll probably do okay.
I know my opinion's not going to be too popular around here. But the truth of the matter is that it costs money to run a site. You may have the means to pay for it perpetually, but suppose that dries up? Worst case scenario: You gain a few extra $$$ to keep the site going through the rough times. You're providing a service for people. It's a small thing to ask of them.
Re:Do it, but do it wisely. (Score:1)
In my experience a "Paypal donate" button doesn't give you much revenue.
99% of users will ignore it, and the remaining 1% tends to make a one-off payment of $5. Useful? Yes. But I've not seen enough recurring donations to offset hosting costs.
I've had far more income from showing Google's adsense adverts, whilst annoying very few users I believe.
(Of course it is always a bit hard to tell, and the results probably depend a lot on the type of site you run as well)
One downside to using Paypal I found wa
Re:Do it, but do it wisely. (Score:4, Interesting)
Are we talking about just adding the butotn, or are we talking about providing a goal? I help run a site that used to do the 'donation goal' method, and actually it worked. "We need $189.23 by the end of July", and we'd consistently hit the goal. What I don't know, however, is whether or not our site was specialized enough to warrant it.
Re:Do it, but do it wisely. (Score:1)
In my case it was just a button along with some text which said "hosting + admin isn't free". I didn't put down targets, although a few times I did detail actual running costs.
I hadn't actually thought of putting down a monthly "total" but I guess that would be very simple to do and make it more obvious - especially if it were updated when new money came in.
Slow Ad Servers (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Slow Ad Servers (Score:2)
Re:Slow Ad Servers (Score:1)
Adds don't work (Score:4, Insightful)
Ditch the adds. They simply don't work.
Those who don't learn from history... (Score:1)
Re:Those who don't learn from history... (Score:2)
Among recent winners:
Yeah... the theory that "If no one acctually buy
Re:Those who don't learn from history... (Score:1)
Re:Adds don't work (Score:5, Funny)
I would mod this up if I could (Score:1)
Re:Adds don't work (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Adds don't work (Score:2)
Re:Adds don't work (Score:2)
Google made over $11 billion last year, selling ads. Just because one lonely slashdot dork doesn't see ads, doesn't mean they don't work.
Ads are good (Score:2, Insightful)
They should be relevant to the community. E.g. no "OMG CIALIS NOW" ads on a site that is not directly involved in ED and other medical topics, but a "OMG NEW MINI-ITX BOARDS" ad on a computer hardware community site would be fine, as would a "OMG NEW XYZ BRAND SOFTWARE" or similar.
The ads should not be placed in distracting places. Keep the ad banners up at the top of the page, on the right side of the content, or on the lef
Re:Ads are good (Score:2)
I did add ads, kinda. (Score:3, Informative)
I run a Debian community [debian-adm...ration.org] site and found that I was spending a reasonable amount of money on a dedicated host for it, (along with time too!), and so figured adding adverts was a reasonable thing to do.
But I know that people can be very vocal on the subject of advertising, especially on community sites where the revenue goes to the "owner" rather than the "community". So the way I tried to made it more bearable was to make it optional. Albeit enabled by default.
If you're an unregistered user you see one block of Google text adverts on each article. But if you're a registered user you can completely disable the adverts via a setting in your user options.
That means that anybody who wishes to support the site and view potentially useful adverts can do so. And anybody who gets annoyed by adverts can hide them.
The people who disable adverts make about 20% of the site membership. Suprisingly low I thought! (Although that could well be because people use adblocking software and have them hidden regardless of the settings?)
If you let people choose to hide or show the adverts I think they are happier about them. There are other sites where I've seen this approach and I'll always happily view them when given a choice (so long as they aren't flash. Ugh) just the fact that the site owners care enough to make it an option makes me more inclined to view them.
I guess it is just a nice change from having adverts appear everywhere on some sites with no ability to configure them apart from using extra software, or plugins.
Re:I did add ads, kinda. (Score:2)
My take on that depends on whether the community has consistently footed the bill in getting the server hosting and such. I know the site is worthless without the people that visit it, I don't see why a few ads is going to cause problems except for the whiners because hosting and bandwidth costs money, not to mention administration headaches
Re:I did add ads, kinda. (Score:1)
Seconded almost entirely.
In the communities that I'm involved with most are "run" by a single person who pays the server costs, etc, and they use adverts. I'm also part of a couple of coops where the running costs are split and in those sites there are either no adverts - or the revenue is shared amongst the people who pay the costs.
The only downside to running a co-op is that you need people to agree to pay before there actually is a community. Although you could invite new members to help join and sup
Ads are okay (Score:1)
If Slashdot has taught me anything... (Score:5, Funny)
1. Slashvertisments. Hidden ads disgused as original content! Two birds, one stone!
2. Obvious trolls posing as "news that you want to know." Flamewars never hurt anyone that really matters but it does drive up website hits!
3. Dupes. Make it look like you have more content each and every day!
4. User editable "tags" to postings. Make it look like you care about the public's opinion but, really, its your website. Trust me, no one is going to notice when you "edit" them.
Something Awful (Score:1, Interesting)
Recommend a book: by someone who has been there (Score:2)
Re:Recommend a book: by someone who has been there (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Recommend a book: by someone who has been there (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Recommend a book: by someone who has been there (Score:3, Insightful)
Bush vs. Schwarzenegger (Score:2)
CAN'T SLEEP! SCARY FLASH CLOWN WILL EAT ME! (Score:1)
The most appropriate death for them would be death by flashing eplieptic flash advertising which they have created.
People use the Internet to WORK. Advertising is distracting to many people.
Re:CAN'T SLEEP! SCARY FLASH CLOWN WILL EAT ME! (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you need flash to work? If not turn it off.
Re:CAN'T SLEEP! SCARY FLASH CLOWN WILL EAT ME! (Score:1)
Some sites (although i never approve of)
use Flash as a way to deliver their content.Its not unlike you can froce them to use text and demand Macromedia to stop distributing Flash because it
"Can be used for ads".
Everythign can eb used for ads.If you want to block something use AdBlock or hosts file.Blocking a ad-hosting agency is better then just relying on Flash being
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Google ad rates (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a trade-off. The Google text-only ads are not too distracting, and are relatively well targeted so they might actually be interesting. I've tried other advertising programmes, but those were best so far.
In many ways, like you, I'd rather not have ads at all. But it needs to cover its costs, I couldn't afford to run the Web site otherwise.
The people who say, ask the community, if it's community-run, are onto the right track. Of course, most of the people clicking on the ads will likely be visitors not part of the community, and the members will quickly learn to ignore the ads, as long as they are not too disruptive.
Google adsense is easier than having a shopping cart that accepts credit card payments for membership, and you don't have the trust issues. But if you already accept payments over SSL, you should consider "no ad" subscriptions. You could also consider saying that anyone who has been registered more than 3 months (say), or who has more than 6 gigapoints, or posts more than 30 times a day, or however you mark More Valued Contributors, doesn't need to see ads. They are busily making pages for you that will have ads on them and bring in revenue, so that's enough. And that way you encourage participation without charging anyone.
Ads - could they ruin everything? (Score:1)
Re:Ads - could they ruin everything? (Score:1)
I try and hang out at fantasybookspot.com when I have time.
They have affiliate links to amazon, B&N and whoever (as well as ads).
Adblock. (Score:1)
I don't see many ad's anymore (if at all) but I can imagine to some (who use different browsers or know not of AdBlock or similar plugins) it would affect them.
Re:Adblock. (Score:2)
It's wonderful.
Re:Adblock. (Score:1)
Donations (Score:2)
I've tried ads, Paypal donations, and Amazon donations. Amazon only gets people who object to Paypal. And Amazon isn't very reliable -- they're always up & running, but they don't have much of a system for passing data back and forth, or for confirming who pai
10,000 hits- what does that equate to in dollars? (Score:2)
Your community already supports your site (Score:1)
You should really try to look at it this way. You can probably categorize most people into 2 groups, the anonymous users, and your regulars. The anonymous users view your content, maybe gleam a little info from your forums, and you never hear from them. Your "Community" is what drives your site, and adds the content to the forums, and returns often. So really, your Community is already supporting your site by adding the content to draw i