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Thread: Advertising on PL?

  1. #21
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Location
    Crawley (UK)
    Posts
    449

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    I tried to contact admin about how to donate (other than PayPal), but no answer was received.

    Quote Originally Posted by -bart- View Post
    It's a sour grape that the admin is having a hard time finding funds for this forum while offering others free advertisement.

  2. #22
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Posts
    1,725

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    The ads are a test. The test has three possible outcomes:

    1) Failure: Does not purchase enough bleach to get the dirty off.

    2) Success: Next LEM is on the moon.

    3) HOLYCRAP: Free transportation to the above mentioned LEM.

    My money is on 1.

    I can not, will not and do not request that links are clicked. Its against the terms of service for them. Fraudulent clicks are a bad idea. Inconveniently enough I can not discuss the specifics of the campaign either, also a part of the TOS.

    They are positioned on the board in a default layout as generated by the vbulletin dev team who I imagine put some thought into "optimal positioning" and I Imagine they are supposed to be "annoying" "right where they shouldn't be" for a reason.

    That being said: Running firefox? You really should be running adblock plus. Seriously. Do it. I don't even see the ads here, and neither should you.

    You think the top and bottom ads are bad... The unregistered users who browse the site get a big nasty one below the first post.

    With regards to setting up vendor advertisements, no. 2.1 reasons:

    1) Their money should be placed in development and not "telling people what they already know". Everyone knows the respective vendors here and short of being able to offer a "deal" a banner ad is the equivalent of a bedpost notch.

    2) With google adsense I can nuke the "campaign" within 30 seconds. Just wipe it off the board completely. The same can not be said for long standing banner ads of "in pocket" advertisers.

    2.1) In pocket advertisers might feel obligated to request posts and threads on the board be removed if it conflicts with their business. "Seller Review" and "Product Review" become points of contention where people do not feel like they can post what they think without having to wonder if the banner-ad holder will "gently request under penalty of non-payment" to have the thread wiped.

    I have a couple other ideas floating around, any of which would hopefully revoke the ad usage entirely.

  3. #23
    Join Date
    Jul 2006
    Location
    Connecticut, USA
    Posts
    2,478

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    admin-

    a few things-

    and i am also going to post this in the lounge section.

    1) what is the "Average" monthly cost of this forum? (if you dont mind me asking?)

    2) i will publically say right now that there is absolutely no reason what so ever that you should be paying a nickel out of your own poscket for this site.

    3) i hate the ads idea. i think our community here is too valuable to stare at ads.

    i pose this idea...

    i know for my company, alot of my business is becasue of this site. a lot of my exposure is because of this site. so therefor i should definitely be financially supporting this site. this is why i would like to know the monthly costs. (you can PM me if you would like and i will not disclose it publically).

    i think that CT Lasers, LaserShow Parts, Pangolin, KVANT, LaserWave, Lasever, DT (or DZ i guess) and whoever else, each month ban together and foot the bill for this site. "admin" has supported it enough i think financially. let him worry about the technical end of it. let the distributors here who are benefiting financially to pay it back!

    there is absolutely no reason in my opinion why we cant between us all throw together a few hundred dollars minimum to keep this place going ad free.

    i will commit to a *MINIMUM* of $100/ month to keep this place going ad free.

    other distributors? Admin- let me/us know costs. (privately if need be).

    Questions, comments welcome...

    -Marc
    http://www.laserist.org/images/ildalogos/ILDA-logo_colored-beams_Corporate_150w.jpg

    ILDA- U.S. Laser Regulatory Committee

    Authorized Dealer for:

    • Pangolin Laser Software and Hardware
    • KVANT Laser Modules & Laser Systems
    • X-Laser USA
    • CNI Lasers
    • Cambridge Technology & Eye Magic Professional Scanning Systems

    FDA/CDRH Certified Professional LuminanceRGB Laser Light Show Systems


  4. #24
    Join Date
    Oct 2005
    Location
    Melbourne, Australia
    Posts
    678

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    i think you'll find most of us already pay donations to PL for that exact reason though..

    as dave already asked, is the donation based system not working for us ?
    Now proudly stocking and offering the best deals on laser-wave

    www.lasershowparts.com
    http://stores.ebay.com.au/Lasershow-Parts

  5. #25
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Location
    Bucharest - ROMANIA
    Posts
    80

    Default ads

    As long as clicking will open new window I agree with the ads.
    I also prefer the ads to be displayed only for not logged viewers.
    In fact, I prefer not see the ads when logged in.

  6. #26
    Join Date
    Dec 2008
    Location
    swansea, UK
    Posts
    198

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    Quote Originally Posted by bridge View Post
    if most of you not like the random ad by google, if all of you not against, laserwave would like contribute to PL and do Ad banner .
    Admin,we waiting your voice, .
    Best regards!
    Bridge
    Bridge i totally agree with you there, how many posts from newer members do we see asking 'where can i buy dichros from? where can i get the pangolin FB3 from? blah blah'

    If there were small ads(maybe text only hyperlinks) that said something like 'buy laserwave dichros here etc, then it would save people time searching, not to mention the generation of a small bit of dollar for the running of the forum.

    you wont find a much 'purer' target audience than that of a laser forum, as we're all laser-a-holics

  7. #27
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Posts
    1,725

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    Test results have been confirmed by a double blind study: The ad's are ineffective and I suspect a Adsense banhammer will be dropped on me because of the fraudulent clicks. Can't discuss the terms but hey, no ads. Ever.

    Bleach it is.

    Look, heres the problem. Specifically. PL doesn't cost all that much to run excluding the human element. This is currently about $150 a month and it varies with usage. The reason why the $150 variable has stayed pretty static is specifically due to the fact that I refuse up the ante any further because then I will be paying "More than Colo" and getting "Way less than colo". You may have noticed Mr.HOLYCRAP:500'D! showing up more? Well thats why. Computer applications are like bacteria: They will fill whatever container you give them. Vbulletin is a fat bloated pig.

    Heres what happens if/when I go the colo route. To duplicate the current load out here with the worthless VPS I have to build 2 mean and stable servers. One for the front end stuff like the php parser/forum engine and one for the back end stuff like MySQL and mail. The two VPS's here are named BitBurner and BitFreezer for esoteric reasons related to how the bits flow and where they stop. A dual server configuration is far more stable and secure which I found out the hard way.

    Thats a bare minimum of 2U assuming I don't bother to make a "decent" raid array. If I was to do this correctly I would need 4U over 2 servers with 6 drives per server. 4 in raid 10, 1 "backup to be physically changed out monthly" and one hot-swap in the event something freaking explodes. Which it will inevitably do if I don't take the "Data stability first" route.

    Why raid 10? Well, have you ever see the IOP curve on SATA drives? Fucking abysmal. *But* the cost of SAS coupled with the smaller sizes makes it way way way more expensive.

    Bandwidth is another one of those "fuzzy" variables. Depends on what is download where as to whether I get an adequate usage graph. This is currently being expressed mathematically as "A bucket"

    Processor time is very important *as evident* by the recent string of issues related to this host I have been a client of since 2003. They are still a great host and I sighed in relief when they finally opened up their VPS options but now PL is at the point where I am running into host limitations, especially if I want to enable all the crap I have disabled and worked on through the years. I had to disable the stats engine in the background because it would vomit blood and take out the VPS when it started tabulating the log files. Interesting snippet for those who bothered to read this far into the post; I personally payed a stupid amount of money for a couple coders to build an online ILD frame creator that never freaking worked no matter how much talent and money I threw at it. Obviously my fault for taking the advice of "experts" who recommended these people. Ohh well. Its just money, right? *cries*

    It's just another one of those can't win for losing and I'll be damned if I am going to give up things. Which brings me to the next point in a very round-about fashion.

    I have received half a dozen buy out offers over the years, last one was a month ago and this guy was serious. Problem was he saw absurd profit potential with as he said "such a specialized niche market" and basically wanted to turn PL into a whorehouse. Think of another "popular" laser forum thats not the respectable laserfreak. One of his other terms involved the "buyout" being a silent transaction so he could continue the operations under the "Admin" moniker. That screamed dirty. In short: It's marginally more complicated than this, but I refused the offers even though I need the money for reasons I will explain later in this post. Furthermore; No I will not discuss specific values nor hint at who the empty suit is and if he happens to be reading this, I hope you get hit by a bus.

    So now you know why the ad's popped up out of nowhere. I thought it could help pay my bills and pay down some debt I have been placed with due to trusting family to do the right thing. I do not joke when I say I lost sleep over the ads but at the same time I have to cover my ass so I can afford to lose sleep.

    Other forums out there go "Gimme yo' money and I give you more private messages and access to stuff!"(Tm). As an example of one shall not be named forum: The largest subscription category gets you a whopping 200 PM's and still no access to the embedded vbulletin gallery. They also charge for businesses to use the BST section, they also have banner ads. It's nickel and fucking dime all the way to the bank. Ohh yea, they are making a stupid profit. Having spent my time buried in the vbulletin code I know damn well when a forum installation is is being resource balanced across multiple boxen. Information is power, and apparently they have proven that limiting the access to said information is equally powerful. Don't even get me started on another ostensibly themed laser forum out here. The stats are fraudulently weighted to make the advertisers think they are getting more for their money when nothing could be further from the truth.

    Well, PL isn't them. I knew there was a problem when one of the forum members here said something to the equivalent of "PL was kind of elitist without ad's - everyone else is doing it". Well... PL is elitist: 2100 members, 500 of them are active, a substantial portion of which are here daily with a system wide average of 50 posts per user and thats counting the pile of users who never posted and only signed up to download content. Aside from the occasional drama all of this "works" without a single moderator... In that case: I'd rather PL stay this variety of elitist even if it means I get the distinct displeasure of having to deal with the occasional spat of drama instead of becoming a run of the mill money farm with an core group of administrative staff asleep at the wheel.

    Where was I headed with this... I think it started out as a simple "Ads are gone" rant and rapidly progressed into its own entity.

    In the newly christened live chat widget a few ideas have been tossed around regarding how to maintain the feel of PL without being terribly offensive. The one I idea I really liked was a subscription model with two classes one for personal users and one for corporate members. And I know this is going to cause a shit storm here but I have to eat and have a place to live. As it stands right now in my head in a wholly un-finalized stated: "Couple cups of coffee a month" for personal and "a few cups of coffee a week" for corporate. As far as features... Probably a User name color modification custom title/tag for personal and the same plus a top of board rotating banner at the top of every page. Maybe email addresses for personal assuming I can get the mailer-daemon back on a leash. Who knows what else, but I am really open to suggestions here that meet three qualifications; "Does not harm the community", "Does not serve to divide the community." and "Does not afford those paying the right to dictate content, specifically what people say".

    Look we're all adults here(most of the time). Money is tight for everyone. The economy coupled with some bad judgment calls related to trusting family with money have squarely hit me in the head with a brick. So I regret that it has come down to this but I need to do it if I stand a chance of "getting back on track" proverbially speaking without having to entertain the idea of selling PL to someone who will destroy the idea it stands on.

    With that being said; I am sorry.

    *puts on flack vest and hard hat*
    Last edited by Admin; 10-28-2009 at 02:59. Reason: I R Gud x-pert Spellars. Fix'd.

  8. #28
    Join Date
    Dec 2008
    Location
    Vezon, Belgium
    Posts
    1,017

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    you will get some support from everyone here

    this place is so valuable for the majority of us that they will gladly pay a subscription each month

    therefore, I feel that you don't want that and I think that for you, that means the death of PL as you built it, ie a free community, strictly based on mutual support and technical passion

    but now this is our part of the job of supporting YOU, and I know any of the 500 said active posters will be partcipating

    so what should be your means to make PL part of your subsistance, as long as it is fair and accessible, everyone will adhere

    if you need some help to maintain, work on, or anything, please tell, I'd be glad to help

  9. #29
    Join Date
    Jan 2008
    Location
    South Lincs, UK
    Posts
    2,625

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    I would be more than happy to pay a monthly/yearly subscription for the upkeep of the site.
    It's a necessary cause!
    --------------------
    My Brain urt's!

    Continuously in Awe! of (H)Al, the Photonlexicon Font of Complete Knowledge - The (H)Al'PL Database of complete puss that no one needs to know or ever trusts as he ain't really got a Scooby doo about now't!

  10. #30
    Join Date
    May 2006
    Location
    Native Floridian
    Posts
    3,127

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    No problem with a subscription service from me either. PL has been a valuable tool for many here, including myself. It is very reasonable that, in exchange, we help support the admin when he needs it most.

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