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They are disabled/hidden for Gold Members and Sponsors. We haven't come to any final determination about Basic Members yet. My preference would be to have them but to better optimize the layout to make it more compact.
As for IMO clearly yours is different than mine. Reduce your signature to the same 90 pixels as my ad and it might go some way toward persuading me to drop them. Seeing as real estate is abundant my 90 px ad represents only a very small fraction of the total and is therefore hardly unreasonable.
This is on a 1280 x 1024 screen, which is a pretty reasonable & standard resolution for LCDs. As you can see, there is not much usable content without scrolling down a few lines. I have circled areas of advertising. The first couple of lines which you can see are stickies.
So, most people will automatically scroll down, and ignore the bulk of your advertising ? The possible exceptions are people viewing the site via PDA or phone who have to laboriously scroll through this stuff.
On a 1024 x 768 notebook, this situation is exacerbated.
Over the course of the day, I have clicked on a number of these advertising links. Some of the URL texts held promise. None of the links that I clicked took me to anything of value. As an example I clicked on a S2000 link - this popped me into an Ebay search for keyword 'S2000' - pretty pointless. Another example, I clicked on an exhaust line - the site took me to an exhaust manufacturer - great except they didn't have any HONDA products.
So basically:
- the advertising slows down browsing / checking the forum,
- it's possible to scroll around provided you're on a largish screen with a HID device that supports a scrolling function. Try browsing this site on a phone or using a keyboard,
- The advertising seems mainly pointless / badly targeted,
- there's a lot of whitespace that appears to be wasted at present,
- this move seems to be alienating a number of UK members - don't forget, a lot of these guys have voluntarily subsidised the site for a number of years,
- Most people didn't mind the Google ads at the bottom of the page
- It seems somewhat unfair to force advertising upon standard members when they're partially through their membership - there appears no way to get around the intrusive advertising other than installed ad-blocker ad-ins. Surely you don't want people using ad-blockers on your site ?
Originally Posted by cthree' date='Feb 16 2005, 12:52 PM
Reduce your signature to the same 90 pixels as my ad and it might go some way toward persuading me to drop them.
How bout you take the Google ads off the top of every thread and put them back where they were, and then I (your paying customer) will consider reducing my sig?
As I see it, I pay for the right to have the signature of my choosing -- not to have ads at the top of every thread I read. My sig is not the largest, nor (admittedly) is it the smallest. But it saves me alot of time from answering questions about what mods I have on my car, and serves as an easy reference list for myself when I need it.
Don't get me wrong Erik. I respect what you do and have done for this site. I also respect your right to advertise. I'm only asking that you revert to the status quo (ads on the bottom), or at least allow "basic" members the same courtesy as "gold" members and the sponsors.
As I see it, I pay for the right to have the signature of my choosing -- not to have ads at the top of every thread I read. My sig is not the largest, nor (admittedly) is it the smallest. But it saves me alot of time from answering questions about what mods I have on my car, and serves as an easy reference list for myself when I need it.
I understand your viewpoint. However, never were the option of a "signature of your choosing" nor the right "not to have ads at the top of every thread" ever actually conveyed. Can you point out to me where I said that either of these things were ever part of the deal? Don't mean to be a stickler but what you are saying is the for $20 you can do as you please without any restriction and that I cannot do what I think needs to be done to meet operational necessities if you decide you disagree (on the need or the means).
With all respect, your view is entirely self-motivated would you not agree? I don't see anywhere in your view where bills actually get paid. Memberships don't actually pay the bills, they help but they only cover a portion of basic operational expenses. The rest is made up from sponsorship and advertising revenues. I know it seems like the $2000 per month or so that the site raises from memberships is a lot but it only covers just the internet access bill with a ream of paper left over. What's not included is the phone bill, cell bill, portion of utilities, portion of office rent and upkeep, insurance, server hardware upgrades. additions, replacements, software license and support fees, nor last but not least anything for me to eat at the end of a 10 hour day.
The cost to run this operation is in the $3000-$4000 per month range NOT INCLUDING LABOR. I get whatever is left over that I don't give back to the community in the form of cash sponsorships for events (about $5000 last year, probably double that this year), paying for banners and signs for meets or other crap people ask for. Yeah, yeah, that's crazy and you could do a better job but you aren't. If a button needs to be changed I need to open photoshop and spend an hour fighting with it to change it or pay a graphics person $25-$35 per hour to do it for me. If a server crashes at 2AM I get the call. SDGE walked into the office on Monday to tell me I owed them $320 for an electricity bill that I never paid. I had to pay them on the spot or have the power cut off. Do the math on that, $320 is 16 memberships not including the PayPal fee of 2.5% or the $2 for the membership card. In reality a $20 membership is actually $17 since that's the only part of it I actually see. $320 is more like 20 memberships, poof, spent.
Basic memberships make up the bulk of the memberships people have chosen the support us with and I don't complain in the least, I'm very grateful for the help you are providing which makes something like s2ki possible especially with such a comparatively small potential audience. But it still doesn't alleviate the need for additional sources of funding.
Either the number of members doubles or half of you switch to gold or we do better on advertising. One, two or all three need to happen.
Be realistic. SPAM works. If it didn't work nobody would bother. You complain about me posting an ad in exchange for the countless hours and sleepless nights I put into making this resource available 24/7/365 but what about all those part whores you support that do screw all? You don't come down on the "JoJo Speed Shop is a great business" topics that are posted all over the site nor do you protest the many unsanctioned ads people litter their signatures with. Instead you buy parts from them. You don't say "Buy your tires from Tire Rack, they support this community I love and have invested so much in." You say "Talk to Joe at FooFoo Tires and he'll hook you up tell him I sent you." Click the advertiser list link at the top of the page. Those are the only people who contribute jack squat beside the members. Notice how few there are. The others either didn't pay their bills, walked away in disgust when members jumped all over their asses or went out of business. With no incentive other than integrity, businesses will continue to use the resource that you pay for to profit from without giving back even a phone call in most cases. They argue that they don't need to pay for what's free and since free advertising works why pay. It does work. It undermines one of the few revenue sources available to us work with and offers no incentive for anyone to bother. I guarantee that most of the those parts you have in your list were not only not purchased from sponsors but were probably advertised here without sanction and at your expense.
I on the other hand have a toll free phone number on which I field calls from members and guests alike. I help when they have login problems or can't view images or when they have questions about their car and they don't know how to use the interweb (or are too lazy) to look up. Members call, I answer or call them back. I do this whenever I'm in the office working on the site or community which is usually 7 days a week. I also publish my IM addresses and I'm on there pretty much all the time, in the office or otherwise. Again answering whatever issues you have and fixing your technical issues. I also respond to your emails, PMs and posts like this one. All of which takes time and effort. HondaGal answers the mass of "help I can't login" emails we get as well as all the other support questions people have. If you want to know what we do for $20 then just look in this forum. All of these topics and posts are all either complaints, questions or suggestions which I need to deal with.
If you don't want ads then make them unnecessary. Right now they are very necessary because without them I couldn't do this, at all. I wanted to have an option that everyone could afford but basic membership is not carte blanche. If you want that you'll need to do a lot better like giving me your credit card so I can charge that new storage server we need to. There is only 5GB of space left to store photos. If it doesn't get paid for with your credit card or home equity line then I guess that means it will need to go on mine. See what I'm talking about? Probably not but I put it out there in case you do.
The costs and the effort required to run a community like this is staggering. Your basic membership is required badly IN ADDITION to advertising revenue to make it happen. Gold Membership is available if you want to be a member and don't want to see ads. The extra membership contribution almost makes up for lost advertising revenue, enough so that I'll eat the difference (I do that a lot). If you become a gold member or take some other positive action towards making advertising something unnecessary then hopefully someday it will be.
Your individual efforts, just like your individual membership contribution, can't make a big difference on it's own but this is a community and if everyone got together and decided to change things then things would change. I am a creature trapped in my own reality. Until that reality changes I must cope with the way it is. Change the reality. Make advertising obsolete and redundant. I'm cool with that. I don't run ads cause I think they are pretty.
The most important thing you get for your $20 is not having to decide how to spend it. I do that, it's my job here. You don't have to deal with internet bills, phone bills, utilities, technical problems, support emails, punk ass kids, spammers, haters, jack asses or any other day to day realities of running a community of 30000 people in 24 time zones. You don't have to stay up all night figuring out why search doesn't work nor do you have to deal with failed equipment, upgrades, configuration issues, corrupt databases, backups or even if there is enough power available to power a new server. You don't have to print, package or send out membership cards, answer questions you don't want to answer or respond to topics like this one if you choose not to.
You get something which I cannot have; you get to do nothing. If you don't want to read, post, visit or do anything else you don't feel like then that's your pleasure. I don't get that luxury because there is much to do and it's my sole responsibility to get it done regardless. If I don't do it, it doesn't get done, period. $20 allows me to take on that responsibility and you the security of knowing the site is there when you want it, that's it's clean, mature and enjoyable and that should you even have a problem accessing or using it there is someone available to resolve it by phone, fax, email, IM or PM. If it's not that way then you have the comfort of knowing that if you just wait a little bit that someone is actually working on it and it will be back to normal soon. No action is required on your part. Go for a drive or watch TV for an hour and like magic it will be like nothing happened.
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I find having to look at a full page of your sticky notes each time you post something to be a bit obnoxious. There are other less intrusive ways to accomplish this like posting that crap in a thread somewhere and including a link to it in your signature. Hell, you could have a whole discussion about your mods somewhere but seeing as you've made 3337 posts to date means you've also posted that list 3337 times around the site. That's a lot of spammage about something very few people care about. IMHO imposing a massive signature on people is poor form and it's something the moderators have asked you to resolve in the past. It's no less tasteless and inconsiderate than if I were to post the banners for every sponsor in mine. Or the site FAQ about why you possibly might have problems logging in. I don't because it's clutter and people don't want to see it all the time. My 90 pixels is so insignificant in comparison. I would hope that if you come and complain about me using up 90 pixels of your page you wouldn't have a 600 pixel high signature consuming all of mine.
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These are things which are as I see them. Obviously we have two differing and potentially conflicting views.
Chris, the banners you see in the UK forum are not S2KI banners, they are UK club banners. The only ads S2KI runs in the UK forum are the 90px ads located at the top of the topic list and above the first post of the topic view, the ones in question. AquilaEagle has total control of what goes there (much to the annoyance of the sponsors). We receive nothing from that space. We provide and maintain the software which controls it but the ads that run there, if any, are outside of my control. We receive no revenue or anything else from the communities in exchange for offering them a place to advertise local sponsors, events and meets. If you want them removed talk to AE.
02-15-2005, 10:43 PM
