i don't understand why you want make money, no one will pay, if you make poeples pay your site will be empty.

also ads between post SUCKS HARD. i will begin to look out for other forums similar to this one now!

We have enough crap ads TOP LEFT RIGHT now in the middle its completly to much

Anyway no one will click on it, if that append its an error, if you made thousand from this site in ADS its a lot to pay all stuffs related to the site.

Hi TheOne,
I just had a look at your homepage with your blogging
AmanatsuSpace Creator website,
where you also use huge advertisement and graphics banner ads...
Also I am allowing to have your banner over here for free...
So why do you complain then ?
Normally I would have to charge you to display your banner all
over here...but I don?t do it...(or should I )

Imagine me being able to pay you for writing test reports for OverUnity.com
or paying you for posting interesting things over here...
This all will only be possible, if we can get money via a membership
subscription.

Regards, Stefan.

only at the (top) or (top or right)  or (top and left)

not everywhere

I ask now all users,
who have graphics banners in their signature to
DISABLE them.

You can leave a text link to your homepage, but please
disable your banner, if you have one.

This will really fasten the site loading up and
if you post several times per page will not look
annoying.

I could also install a plugin for disabling it,
but currently I don?t have time for this.

Many thanks.

Regards, Stefan.

Stefan, this is quite a debatable subject, but here's my $0.02.

First, it sounds like more than just the advertising issue needs to be tackled here.

Second, I'm not so sure the "focus" can be divided as it seems you'd like.

So far this site has been an "open" one. By open I mean anyone can register and pretty much post whatever they wish, or not even post at all. "Guests" are allowed and always seem to make up the majority of folks using the forum. What are they contributing? Yet they benefit from the content. Granted the "content" is questionable at times, but that is the world of the "open" forum.

The issues as I see them:

1) Should there be advertising and if so how much?

2) Should folks have the option to pay a subscription that would remove ads?

3) Would these folks then be considered "members" and have more access to certain content?

4) Should members that contribute with "content" be rewarded somehow?

5) Should the "level" of forum content be more closely moderated in an effort to bring up the "professionalism"? This includes more strict control of false and erroneous claims of ou. If the professionalism needs to increase, to what level?

6) Should "guests" be allowed in the forum?

7) If "content" is rewarded, what determines if the content is worthy of a reward, and how much?

8] Will the forum function smoothly with a two-tier system of access, or should a decision be made to go one way or the other?

9) Is there a need for such a radical change in the first place vs. implementing a couple additional ads as has already been done recently?

10) How or why does the number of users affect how much revenue the site needs to generate? i.e. do the operating costs increase with the number of users?

11) Traditionally, folks come and contribute (or not) for free, and "take" for free. Is it time to change this arrangement?

As a start, I would encourage all to consider the above and post your thoughts. For me at least, a simple poll question doesn't address all the necessary issues brought up here. But maybe I'm just off-base.

Regards,
Darren

PS. Stefan, with all the added work and responsibility possibly created by your proposal, you might have less time for bench work than you do even now. Just something to think about, maybe I'm wrong. 

Stefan

The rise in clicks is probably due to errors in mouse coordination by users trying to steer through the threads with this new format. As soon as this becomes second nature, the click-thru rates should drop.

Reality has it that with the limited number of daily members on this forum, the total click rate will normally be low. trying to increase this with veteran members to the board will not work.

The ads are also breaking the normal flow of discussions and ideas. We already have members with their repeated slogans at the bottom of their post and some with ads or animated logos, etc. All are distracting especially some of the bigger or flashier ones like TheOne. Also if you balance the inconvenience ratio with that of expected click-thru revenue, I think you will find the former to be higher. The thread should be considered sacred ground. Sides of threads is open territory.

One other point. This forum is a medium for information exchange and should not be involved in financing OU work of particular members. This would only open up a pandoras box of finance meritus and should not be part of this forums raison d'?tre. If you want to raise funds, there are other means that can be used.

- Drawings - sell virtual tickets for a weekly or monthly drawing - prize. Like we'd do in Baseball tournments when I was involved in the directorship, we'd called it half/half. Half the money collected during a game goes to the winner, the other half to the baseball association. This is a great way to raise funds. You can have prices like $2 per ticket, 3 for 5$, 7 for 10$. People can pay by Paypal.

- Ask for donations. Create a donation page, explaining the focus of this forum and it's push for free energy. There are hundreds if not thousands of organisations looking to help those enveadours that have some worth in the OU field.

- Ask for 3, 6 or 12 months subscriptions with two or three levels of membership. This may be a little harder and wind up being non-productive for the quick passer by that may have pertinent, even ground breaking ideas but low funds.

- Create a dedicated sponsors page were sponsors can promote their best deals. You can charge them for the web space.

Sponsors must realize that this is an altruistic forum destined to help mankind and that their participation will only help in the overall scheme of things and it may be a good part of their publicity strategy to help here. But this is difficult to achieve with a Google based ad system.

Guys here put in enough time, money and effort in pushing the envelope that asking them to also be bombarded by these ads, well, this just does not feel right at all.

But, I do understand your position. I use adwords in one of my companies that does water filtration systems on the net. I also know very well that you are looking to secure the future financial stability for the forums good by develloping a good revenue model.

Why don't you ask SM to put in a few thousand from his millions. After all, 25% of the threads are under his topic. OK just jok'in. lol Or, capatalize on the fact that tis forum harbours the most extensive discussions on SM devices. Get access to over 10000 Posts on SM for only XX$.

When pondering a revenue model, you have to access the true value of the service you are rendering.

Now, if a newbie was looking to enter the OU research endevour, chances are, some threads in the forum will be useful to quickly bring him/her up to speed. How much is this worth - the bringing up to speed. The fact that our errors would save others future repetition on the same errors. Well in dollars it's like saving any major effort in the 1000s$ and time saving in the months or years. Alot of the repository information value in the forum has already occured, plus the new threads and continuous growth.

While I am writing this, it has dawned on me that one of the best forms of fund raising would be as follows. A one time membership fee of $25-$50 dollars. As now, people could visit the forum and read as they please, but if they wish to post or see images, they would have to pay a ONE TIME ONLY membership. This would help fund the site without ADS. Question. How much money would the forum make if I clicked on an ad. Maybe 1 cent. So $25 would equal me clicking on 2500 ads. How long do you think it would take me to eventually click on 2500 ads. A long time indeed. So even $10 may be a good membership fee.

What I am trying to say is if you give people the opportunity and an easy method to pay for memberhship, they will still come and be part of this effort. Even if they have no interest in doing their own research, they would still have the opportunity to be part of the effort by helping finance the site.

You could then introduce a FREE PASS, where anyone with some idea to put forth but does not have the money for membership can send the idea to the moderator, who can then access and provide a FREE PASS to the person to become a member. This FREE PASS system must remain confidential between the person applying and the moderator. Others here would not need to know who received a FREE PASS.

isn't it against the google terms to have more than 3 ads per page?
you can get your account terminated and then no ads. 

I think that you lot need to give Stefan a break... He has to fund this site somehow !. Plus it wont hurt anybody if a few adverts were posted in between every few post. What harm can it do ?, The only difference it is going to make to us is the bit where we would have to do a bit more scrolling. GEEEE WHIZZZ.

So Stefan... If you want to put ads on your site, you go right ahead. I wont think any less of you if you do.

hey hartiberlin,

I don't mind ads, as long as they are text ads that are color coded from regular forum discussions.

I use flash stoppers and adblock plus to stop 99.9% of all frame pic ads on pretty much all the sites i visit. since many users are using firefox and those extensions, those pic ads u post fall on def ears (or blind eyes if u will)

one way to decrease the cost of running this site is to:
1. get rid of as much bandwidth hungry graphics that are used on this site; we want a simple, clean yet useful and elegant interface.
2. avatars: get rid of them or set dimension limits. ex. 75x75 pixels. (these should be stored on 3rd party image hosters anyways, but your server still has to do work for this.)
3. use scripts that don't waste bandwidth.
4. i dont see a need for that recent posts section at the very bottom.
5. i dont see a need for all the member stats that show to the right of the screen (u can make a tab for this at the top menu for users who want to see this info; this stops the system from querying this data for every use that logs in or comes to the site).
6. try to minimize queries to the database by only showing what the users want, and not presenting info the user doesnt really need.(like all those user stats)
7. no real need to have all those features we see when making a thread or post.

I usually try to help out by not deleting my cache files on my browser .. this saves the website server some bandwidth.

edit: one more thing, get rid of the ability for users to put in a signature with images / animations.; if thats too harsh, then set limits to the dimensions of these sigs.

my half a cent.
devilzangel
..