Popular Post Albert Posted September 20, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted September 20, 2019 This message is to give advance notice that I've decided to put advertising on AtariAge. It's not an easy decision, and I've always been against putting ads on AtariAge, but this policy is slowly putting me in the hole due to the increasing costs of hosting the site and it's time for me to turn that around. Anyone using the internet is no stranger to advertisements on just about any website that gets a reasonable amount of traffic (and many that get very little traffic at all). AtariAge has grown a fair bit since its early days in 2001 when the site initially launched. Back then, the site ran on a single server, and the costs were relatively benign. Fast forward to today and AtariAge now runs on three dedicated servers, one for the web server, one for the database server, and a third development server that also provides free hosting for a number of classic gaming sites (such as atariprotos.com, ataricollector.com, atarimac.com, videogamevariations.com, xegs8bit.com, and more.) Hosting alone for AtariAge is over $600 a month. There are various recurring software costs as well, such as for the Invision forum software (about $300 a year), store software, plugins and themes used for the forums, third-party services such as Cloudflare and CleanTalk.org (spam filtering service). And this doesn't even begin to speak to the huge amount of time I spend running the servers, making sure they are kept up to date, upgrading software, answering emails and PMs, and so forth. Initially the AtariAge Store was conceived as a means to help pay for the hosting. But the store is basically a job in its own right. It's very time consuming to build and ship games, and releasing batches of new games requires a large chunk of cash up front (I'm spending a small fortune at the moment preparing to release 10+ new games for PRGE). Given the time I spend working on building and shipping games, I'm certainly making a very low hourly rate. I feel the prices for games in the AtariAge Store is pretty reasonable given the quality of the games and printed materials and the time that goes into their production. I could always raise the price of games in the store, but I don't want to drive people away from homebrew games. I also spend a good amount of money and time preparing for any shows I attend, most notably the Portland Retro Gaming Expo. Even though there's a nice surge of sales due to release of new games at PRGE, I'd likely have those same sales in the online store without having to attend the show. But it's nice to get out there and introduce more people to AtariAge and the large homebrew scene across various consoles. And to see all the AtariAge members who attend the show and visit the booth. This is something I'd prefer to continue doing, even though it is a drain in resources (time and money). So, back to ads. I'm leaving a good chunk of change on the table by not having ads on the site. Forum subscriptions help a small amount, and I greatly appreciate everyone who's signed up for a subscription. But it's not a significant amount overall, especially relative to the hosting costs. Also, I spent roughly $3,000 total on the recent forum upgrade and server move, and this is outside the normal hosting costs. A good portion of that was having a fourth dedicated parallel server I was using for working on the forum/site upgrade, and it's that new server that became the current web server you're using to visit AtariAge (the old server was retired after the switch). But other costs included paying professional designers/developers to create the custom AtariAge theme for the forum, as well as various custom plugins to replace modifications I made to the previous version of the software (such as the ability to indefinitely edit posts in certain forums). Ads will be placed on the main website and the forums. I'm not going to place ads in the store, since it seems a bit overboard to have ads in a store where you're selling items (I'm looking at you, eBay!) Ads will appear below the header, mixed a few times with content on the page, and at the bottom of the page. More ads will be shown to guests than to those logged in. Subscribers will not see ads on the forum, but you'll still see them on the main site (there's no login associated with the main site, so no real way to filter those out). There will be no obnoxious pop-up ads, no ads that cover a good portion of your screen, no video ads, and no ads that autoplay audio. I will use revenue from the ads to help make AtariAge better in several ways. One of the first things I'd like to do is hire professional developers to revamp and expand the main games database. This is something I've wanted to do for some time, as that area of the site is woefully out of date and very much in need of updates. But I simply have not had the time to do so. I also want to upgrade the store to completely new software, and as part of that upgrade, allow digital purchases of homebrew games for authors that want to offer that as an option. I'd be able to hire developers to make improvements to the forum software beyond what's already done. This could also help finance projects such as getting new cartridge shells made for the 2600 and other systems. And this may allow me to setup an AtariAge booth at more shows across the country, versus just one or two shows a year as I've been doing for a while now. I wanted to give everyone a heads up that this was coming, rather than the appearance of ads being a surprise. I welcome any feedback on this issue and look forward to your thoughts. Thank you, ..Al 51 14 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+sramirez2008 Posted September 21, 2019 Share Posted September 21, 2019 I don’t consider ads much of an issue anymore, as they really are all over the internet today. It’s certainly not fair to expect you to continue to leave $$ on the table, when low hanging fruit, such as ads, can lead to a fair amount of revenue, while reducing some of the burden that’s placed on you. Having said this, I do appreciate and applaud your efforts to refrain from putting ads on the site, for all of this time. I certainly don’t want to see AA go away, so if ads can help in anyway, I’m all for it.? 9 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+atari2600land Posted September 21, 2019 Share Posted September 21, 2019 Does anyone even click on them? 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted September 21, 2019 Author Share Posted September 21, 2019 7 minutes ago, atari2600land said: Does anyone even click on them? Apparently! 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0078265317 Posted September 21, 2019 Share Posted September 21, 2019 $600 dollars? There is no cheaper hosting? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted September 21, 2019 Author Share Posted September 21, 2019 4 minutes ago, 0078265317 said: $600 dollars? There is no cheaper hosting? For three dedicated servers, two of which have pretty good specs (especially the new web server)? That's actually not too bad, and I pay for multiple months at a time, which helps bring the cost down a bit lower. I don't think you'd be able to find comparable servers for significantly less that it would make it worthwhile to switch to another company. But it's not just the cost of the servers and software and other costs, it's also the amount of time required on my part to manage everything, which is considerable. ..Al 4 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0078265317 Posted September 21, 2019 Share Posted September 21, 2019 3 minutes ago, Albert said: For three dedicated servers, two of which have pretty good specs (especially the new web server)? That's actually not too bad, and I pay for multiple months at a time, which helps bring the cost down a bit lower. I don't think you'd be able to find comparable servers for significantly less that it would make it worthwhile to switch to another company. But it's not just the cost of the servers and software and other costs, it's also the amount of time required on my part to manage everything, which is considerable. ..Al I am just surprised it takes 3 servers. I always used to use shared not dedicated. But then again it was slow at times. And it was not that many users before I shutdown. But still 3 is a lot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted September 21, 2019 Author Share Posted September 21, 2019 4 minutes ago, 0078265317 said: I am just surprised it takes 3 servers. I always used to use shared not dedicated. But then again it was slow at times. And it was not that many users before I shutdown. But still 3 is a lot. Only two of the three are directly used to run AtariAge. One is the web server, the other is the database server. Even with the old forum software, it would bog down sometimes due to the database server and web server being on the same box--if the database server started using many resources, it would greatly effect responsiveness of the web server. It was also more difficult to backup the database while the forum was online. Getting the standalone server for the database made a big difference. The third server I use for development (so I can setup a copy of the forum for development purposes, as you cannot put the live forum into "development" mode) and also use it to host several other sites (mostly classic gaming related, and mostly for free). That third server is only $40 a month. The bulk of the cost is with the web and database servers. ..Al 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMR Posted September 21, 2019 Share Posted September 21, 2019 Do you need me to turn off ad blocker? 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+cmart604 Posted September 21, 2019 Share Posted September 21, 2019 Sounds good to me Al although maybe this might encourage more folks to subscribe. It's a steal at twice the price and I think most of us can afford the small amount each year to support our favourite forum. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted September 21, 2019 Author Share Posted September 21, 2019 1 hour ago, CMR said: Do you need me to turn off ad blocker? There are no ads yet, so it wouldn't make any difference at the moment. What you do after they are turned on is up to you. ..Al 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted September 21, 2019 Share Posted September 21, 2019 (edited) It's a good thing. It will get AA some needed cash and it will alert me to new products in whatever field-of-interest I might happen to be shopping in. Click on some electronics stuff from electronics oriented sites and you get ads that match that topic. Ads for 'scopes and meters and parts.. And for the ones that are boring, just ignore or block them them. Someday I may subscribe, but not just yet. Edited September 21, 2019 by Keatah 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted September 21, 2019 Author Share Posted September 21, 2019 7 minutes ago, cmart604 said: Sounds good to me Al although maybe this might encourage more folks to subscribe. It's a steal at twice the price and I think most of us can afford the small amount each year to support our favourite forum. I'd be fine with that. One of the listed benefits when I added forum subscriptions years ago was that ads would not be displayed to subscribers. ..Al 9 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted September 21, 2019 Share Posted September 21, 2019 There is a site where the owner said outright he watched the users' behavior over a period of like a year and slowly increased the amount of advertising till he pissed them off by making the site too difficult and slow. With an attitude like that I put it on my DoNotSubscribeTo list. That doesn't appear to be the case here however. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted September 21, 2019 Author Share Posted September 21, 2019 Just now, Keatah said: There is a site where the owner said outright he watched the users' behavior over a period of like a year and slowly increased the amount of advertising till he pissed them off by making the site too difficult and slow. With an attitude like that I put it on my DoNotSubscribeTo list. That doesn't appear to be the case here however. Probably that's happened many, many times. What kind of site was it? Did he back off on the ads after he got to the "pissing people off" stage? Was he doing it as an experiment to see how much he could get away with? Is the site still online? ..Al 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted September 21, 2019 Share Posted September 21, 2019 The site is a popular space-news and space science site written for the enthusiast. The site is still operational with the amount of adverts and annoyances seemingly holding steady. He did back off after many people complained and traffic decreased. Had to. There was another site that went overboard (same subject matter & style) and kicked itself out of top standings. They blindly "corporat-ized" themselves and outsourced all their web activities including customer care and solicitation for material. Personally I don't think ads are an issue, it's all the page rendering corruption and disorganization they cause. The site has to be human-readable in a pleasant manner or users simply will not visit. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+frankodragon Posted September 21, 2019 Share Posted September 21, 2019 It wouldn't of been the guy who made the Million Dollar Homepage, was it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Million_Dollar_Homepage 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted September 21, 2019 Share Posted September 21, 2019 Nope. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonGrafx-16 Posted September 21, 2019 Share Posted September 21, 2019 I always have ad blocker on because when I'm composing a track, random ads will mess up my sound card's clock rate, which messes up my audio playback. I like to browse the internet while composing. Sorry in advance, but I will keep it on. Also my other computer can barely handle one tab open, let alone a bunch of ads, so they are blocked as well. I've not once clicked on an ad, at least not on purpose. So don't feel like you are missing out on ad revenue from me. Now if this site would only have pure image ads and not a bunch of Flash or script crap, I'll unblock them here. (on my desktop PC but not my underpowered laptop that would scream at loading a bunch of images). 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TailChao Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 Will members be able to run paid advertisements? Something Awful's forums have done this for years and it's an elegant way to promote things for the community while supporting the site. 13 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inky Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 I know Albert will handle this with the utmost respect for the Atariage "citizens." I'm shocked it's been this long, to be honest. 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
godslabrat Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 I support your decision, Al. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 I fully understand the need to gain money. But ads are very critical IMO. They are usually coming from a network, where the website owner has little control over the content. That means, a website using ads has to be assumed unsafe, because criminals can (and do!) spread zero day exploits via advertising networks ("malvertizing"). That's the main reason why I am almost permanently using an ad blocker and (have to) ignore websites which counter ad blockers. There has to be a better way. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted September 23, 2019 Author Share Posted September 23, 2019 2 minutes ago, TailChao said: Will members be able to run paid advertisements? Something Awful's forums have done this for years and it's an elegant way to promote things for the community while supporting the site. That is interesting, I'd like to see some examples of that. But likely not, ads will be managed by a third-party company. There's nothing built into the forum to really do anything like that. I did see a modification that allows users to spend money to get their posts pinned for 'x' days (the length of time dependent on how much you want to spend). That's also interesting, but not something I'd want to do here. ..Al Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VectorGamer Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 If you want to place a for sale ad on Pinside, you have to pay them like $5 if your item sells on Pinside. You have these marketplace forums here on AtariAge, but are you making a dime from anything that sells? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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