NOTE: ADS ON THE FORUM (updated 26/10/21)

ICBM

digitalscream said:

Fantastic - thanks for letting me know. I can't believe they'd deliberately turn it off...that'd break half the Internet for their customers.

Although...it's not beyond the realms of possibility for a company like Apple. "The Internet doesn't work properly, so just install an app....".

It is possible it was my fault when I was setting it up… I’m not sure. Anyway, it all works now and the ads are fairly unobtrusive even without a third-party adblocker. They’re actually slightly more noticeable on the desktop version, but nowhere near bad enough to worry about trying to get rid of them.

Jaycee

I always view the forum on my desktop windows computer with Firefox, it was a surprise  to see the adds, but soon got used to it 

Supportact

I haven't had time to read this whole thing but my view is that generally when using free sites people understand there are going to be adverts. I don't mind them, but depends how they look (the ones I see currently are fine, I don't like the ones that pop up or encroach into what you're looking at). 

Also happy to chip in on the PayPal from time to time. If there was a yearly subscription I'd be ok with that as well. 

LastMantra

It's the end of an era.

bacchanalian

The ads are pretty unobtrusive.  I only noticed them because they were for my own gear on Reverb.
Ads would be not be very successful here unless you can click through, haggle the price down and find out the weight before committing. 

I can't help but think that a subs model would change the relationship to that of business owner and customer which may bring some additional unwanted hassles.

Would be happy to pay a sub myself though
 

Philly_Q

I'm on my work laptop today, rather than my PC, so no adblocker - and I'm not finding the ads very intrusive at all.

fastonebaz

Can we get a dashboard/chart showing ytd ad revenue?  And have a target on there and each quarter you can gee us all up to be more active to push the figures up past goal.   

Obvs not but it would be fun watching it,  I think we're all almost as excited as you to see what happens with it.  

digitalscream

fastonebaz said:

Can we get a dashboard/chart showing ytd ad revenue?  And have a target on there and each quarter you can gee us all up to be more active to push the figures up past goal.   

Obvs not but it would be fun watching it,  I think we're all almost as excited as you to see what happens with it.  

I don't think that's realistic - I'd spend more time fending off folk claiming to be able to do more with the money/complaining about how much/little it's making for the intrusion/etc/etc than I would actually doing useful work on the place.

What I might do is put up a plan for what I'm going to do to improve things round here, once it becomes a bit more clear how much funding there's going to be and how much time I can effectively buy from myself/my employer to do more development. I've got a fairly clear idea of where I want to go with it, but when there are inevitably features competing for my time then I'll basically do a Choose Your Own Adventure for you guys with it.

While there are some who reckon I ought to just pay myself for time served, I'd rather do it on the basis of things that actually change. Maintaining the status quo isn't an option any more.

On the bright side, I've already completed steps 1 and 2 - namely getting extensible image storage working, and creating a working server image for it (which actually involved upgrading the ancient Linux version on there through all the iterations up to the current version in an afternoon, which everybody "in the know" told me couldn't be done...that's saved me a hell of a lot of time). Step 3 will be integrating with Patreon, and then...switching over. I should be able to do it with minimal downtime, but I'm going to go at a weekend in the middle of the night just in case.

After that, barring any disasters, it'll be a case of building out the replacement software I started, which will get us to the point where adding features is much more realistic.

m_c

It's against Google ads T@C's to discuss publicly how much you generate from them, or to implement anything that directly encourages users to click on ads.

digitalscream

m_c said:

It's against Google ads T@C's to discuss publicly how much you generate from them, or to implement anything that directly encourages users to click on ads.

Yep, I know. That's why I've only mentioned projections/guesstimates for future revenue here (as opposed to the amount received), and there's nothing (from or the software) which encourages clicks

poopot

Will the subscription include the current “secret members area”? Or will that be on top?

digitalscream

poopot said:

Will the subscription include the current “secret members area”?

Not for you

Bridgehouse

poopot said:

Will the subscription include the current “secret members area”? Or will that be on top?

Which one? There are several....


You mean you can't access any of them??

poopot

Bridgehouse said:

poopot said:

Will the subscription include the current “secret members area”? Or will that be on top?

Which one? There are several....


You mean you can't access any of them??

At the moment I only see the “nude mods” thread…

sinbaadi

Not finding them at all intrusive or off-putting, but just wondering how much actual revenue they will yield?  Not expecting to hear the numbers, but "enough"?

Roland

It’s the other way around. If we can gauge how much then we can work out what improvements we can fund with it.

digitalscream

sinbaadi said:

Not finding them at all intrusive or off-putting, but just wondering how much actual revenue they will yield?  Not expecting to hear the numbers, but "enough"?

It's actually a breach of Google's AdSense policy to discuss the exact numbers. However, if it carries on the way it's going right now, then the answer to that is "Enough to fund the hosting, build up a good buffer in the bank and fund a decent amount of development".

Bridgehouse

@digitalscream - have you been tweaking the formula?

I clicked on a Flagged post just now and the banner ad at the top (which I've not seen before at all) was for Rentokil with the text splash: "Want help getting rid of pests?"

digitalscream

Just as a quick update on this...it's taking a bit longer than expected to get the Patreon account up and running, what with all the ID verification/AML stuff they need these days. Code's all ready, new server's ready...just need the corresponding stuff from Patreon and we're pretty much good to go. Not quite sure how I'm going to tie the forum account to the Patreon account yet, but that should shake out relatively easily, and I can't play around with that integration until I actually have the account sorted.