Flojomojo Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 39 minutes ago, Albert said: Cross-site tracking using cookies. .Al I hope you configure the site to respect "Do Not Track" requests. I'm going to continue to support AtariAge through subscriptions, and will also continue to block tracking like that whenever I can. I know "everyone is doing it," but my first reaction to reading that was ewww, gross, do not like. Are you considering adblock blockers or other shame-makers? Example: I'll keep my opinion about such tactics to myself, because I'll bet it's a deep mystery what I think about stuff like that. ? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VectorGamer Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 17 minutes ago, chue said: Throwing other ideas out there for increasing revenue: - charge a flat fee for listings in the buy / sell subforum - charge a percentage of the listing in the buy / sell subforum - free items are of course free to list - for a fee, allow a listing in the buy / sell subforum to be shown as a site advertisement I don't know what would be amenable to everyone, but these are just ideas... That's what I was getting at in my previous post that Albert ignored. Pinside charges a fee if your item sells via a Pinside marketplace ad (given that it's an honor system - I've listed pinball machines simultaneously on Pinside and Craigslist). Here on AtariAge you can sell and AA doesn't see a dime. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted September 23, 2019 Author Share Posted September 23, 2019 4 minutes ago, Flojomojo said: Are you considering adblock blockers or other shame-makers? Example: I'll keep my opinion about such tactics to myself, because I'll bet it's a deep mystery what I think about stuff like that. ? No, I really despise when sites do that. It bothers me less when sites still let you browse the site after displaying such a message, but some sites force you to re-enable an adblocker before you can continue. ..Al 1 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted September 23, 2019 Author Share Posted September 23, 2019 Just now, VectorGamer said: That's what I was getting at in my previous post that Albert ignored. Pinside charges a fee if your item sells via a Pinside marketplace ad (given that it's an honor system - I've listed pinball machines simultaneously on Pinside and Craigslist). Here on AtariAge you can sell and AA doesn't see a dime. The only way I could probably work that out is by installing a third-party marketplace application where you'd add items directly to the marketplace, and sales would go through the app. I haven't looked into that, but I doubt there's high enough volume of people selling items that a small cut of those sales would be a significant amount. I will take a look at that application at some point and see what it offers. Here are two such applications: https://invisioncommunity.com/files/file/8123-sd-sales-portal-pro-classifieds/ https://invisioncommunity.com/files/file/8311-classifieds-system/ ..Al Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+FujiSkunk Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 I don't want to see ads on AtariAge. Uh-uh. Nope. Forget it. So I'll keep subscribing. 6 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VectorGamer Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 8 minutes ago, Albert said: https://invisioncommunity.com/files/file/8311-classifieds-system/ ..Al That looks like it would work 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atari PAC-MAN Fan Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 I’ve never met anyone in my life who admitted to clicking on website ads, but I understand. “Gotta do whatcha gotta do.” Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted September 23, 2019 Author Share Posted September 23, 2019 14 minutes ago, Atari PAC-MAN Fan said: I’ve never met anyone in my life who admitted to clicking on website ads, but I understand. “Gotta do whatcha gotta do.” Someone's definitely clicking on them. It's rare that I click on ads, but I will if it's something I'm interested in. ..Al Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Serguei2 Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 The worst adds I saw are ad-videos pop-up and you can't close it until the videos finished playing. Not only these ads prevent you to read but they use data as well. I hardy stay using internet below 10 gigs these day because of these ads. I can't afford to pay extra data or I would pay above $100 per month. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+FujiSkunk Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 I was a bit flippant with my last answer, but in all seriousness, I think more people should consider subscribing, regardless of whether Albert decides to go with ads. This place provides invaluable services (more than one) to us retro gamers, and it's one of the few corners of the Internet that hasn't been overrun with negativity. Sure, there's grumpiness every now and then, but overall everyone's here to have fun. That's worth a few bucks. As for paying for marketplace privileges... I dunno. I like the swap-meet/trunk-sale vibe of the current marketplace, and I think charging for the marketplace, and requiring buyers and sellers to go through a more rigid inventory system, could kill that vibe. Maybe I'm wrong; eBay's doing just fine, after all. Either way, I'd hate to see that vibe die out, so please be careful. Also be aware some of us use the marketplace for charity sales. Maybe that shouldn't matter, maybe it should. I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader. 16 minutes ago, Atari PAC-MAN Fan said: I’ve never met anyone in my life who admitted to clicking on website ads, but I understand. I've clicked on ads from time to time. If they're not annoyingly intrusive and are actually advertising an interesting product, I'll give 'em a click. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhoenixMoonPatrol Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 Do what you have to do big Al. You've put all that time and money into this,you gotta protect your bottom line atleast a tiny bit so I'd do exactly the same. We appreciate this site and seeing ads each day isn't a big deal,there is no other classic retro forum quite like this one. Its a small price for such a quality forum and store. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted September 23, 2019 Author Share Posted September 23, 2019 1 minute ago, FujiSkunk said: As for paying for marketplace privileges... I dunno. I like the swap-meet/trunk-sale vibe of the current marketplace, and I think charging for the marketplace, and requiring buyers and sellers to go through a more rigid inventory system, could kill that vibe. Maybe I'm wrong; eBay's doing just fine, after all. Either way, I'd hate to see that vibe die out, so please be careful. Also be aware some of us use the marketplace for charity sales. Maybe that shouldn't matter, maybe it should. I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader. Yeah, I don't think it would be worth the hassle, and I don't want to make it unnecessarily complicated for people, either. It would be interesting to see just how much is actually bought and sold via the forum. It would have some advantages, in that you could easily see everything someone has for sale, you could easily leave feedback for transactions, payment processing would all be handled within the app, so less back and forth would be needed between the two parties, items in the "Marketplace" application could be featured elsewhere on the site (such as on the main forum index), and so forth. And items for sale would have a more consistent look and feel to them. It's not something I'm going to explore right now, but I will look at both of the apps I linked above to see if it might be worth doing down the road. I'd be less inclined to do anything like that, though, if ads are already running on the site. However, I'd be more for it if there were advantages to using such an application versus just using forums for buying/selling/trading. ..Al 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted September 23, 2019 Author Share Posted September 23, 2019 6 minutes ago, Serguei2 said: The worst adds I saw are ad-videos pop-up and you can't close it until the videos finished playing. Not only these ads prevent you to read but they use data as well. I hardy stay using internet below 10 gigs these day because of these ads. I can't afford to pay extra data or I would pay above $100 per month. Yeah, there won't be anything like that, that's pretty annoying. If I encounter something like that and the page won't let me close it, I just close the entire page and don't go back. ..Al 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TailChao Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 (edited) 1 hour ago, Albert said: That's all pretty interesting, thanks for sharing. I took a look at Something Awful and see they do have regular ads on the site. I'm amused at the random images they display next to ads in the forum. I didn't see the above type of banners, but I didn't look around very long. How much do they charge for these ads? I doubt it's a very significant form of revenue for them. I do like the idea of allowing users to buy ads at a reasonable cost and mixing them in with the other ads, but not sure how feasible that is. One thing to keep in mind with Something Awful is that it's a paid forum - it costs $10 to create an account. This drastically changes how the community works so much of what I'll describe below isn't 100% applicable over here, nor I wouldn't recommend this paradigm for AtariAge. If you don't have an account or aren't logged in a banner ad is shown on the top of the page and a portrait ad to the left of the content (both of these are through an ad service). Once you log in, only the banner ad on the top remains and the user submitted ads are shown on the bottom. I don't know if you can disable the user submitted ads, but they're usually things you want to see. There's two prices for ads : commercial ones are $29.95 and not-for-profits are $7.95, the latter can only contain links within the website or forum. So if you're advertising a product you'd use the former, but nudges to an interesting thread would use the latter. Both run for 30 days and are subject to approval to prevent a taco deluge. But basically you're just paying to show a gif with a link below the forum content for a month or more, which are separate from the normal ads. If you were to feature something similar here I'd recommend disabling normal ads for subscribers but allowing them to select whether to see user submitted ones. Edited September 23, 2019 by TailChao Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omega-TI Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 Will subscribers, even though they don't see ads, still have tracking cookies foisted on them? 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted September 23, 2019 Author Share Posted September 23, 2019 Just now, --- Ω --- said: Will subscribers, even though they don't see ads, still have tracking cookies foisted on them? I don't know at this time, but ads will still be visible on the main site since there's no login associated with that area of AtariAge, and thus, no way to disable ads for subscribers. I may be able to change that down the road. ..Al 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 Yikes! This banner sure got my attention. Is that how I came to this page? Maybe ads work on me after all. Uh oh. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted September 23, 2019 Author Share Posted September 23, 2019 1 minute ago, Flojomojo said: Yikes! This banner sure got my attention. Is that how I came to this page? Maybe ads work on me after all. Uh oh. Yes, I started this thread on Friday, but I wanted it to get more attention, so I added that announcement banner this morning. And it's worked!! ..Al 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 AMBER ALERT! ADS COMING TO ATARI AGE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted September 23, 2019 Author Share Posted September 23, 2019 Just now, Flojomojo said: AMBER ALERT! ADS COMING TO ATARI AGE I did not want ads to suddenly appear on the site without warning. ..Al Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 Yes, that would be a zillion times worse. Heads up in advance is good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Serguei2 Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 27 minutes ago, Albert said: Yeah, there won't be anything like that, that's pretty annoying. If I encounter something like that and the page won't let me close it, I just close the entire page and don't go back. ..Al Indeed. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Stephen Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 Been a subscriber for years, hopefully this will encourage some others to do the same. Thanks for keeping the site up & running Al - this place is by far my longest "online" hangout, coming up on 18 year anniversary soon. In all seriousness, there would be one hell of a void if the forum were to close up. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 My concern with third-party ads is the number of incidents of malware infection injected via these services. As a paid subscriber and a frequent patron of the AA store, not to mention an AA evangelist, I would be happy to toss in a little more dosh for an ad-free AA experience. It is unlikely I will see them, anyway. I have enough blockers between my browser add-ons, anti-virus, and the office UTM, I can barely get simple things to work properly. I often have to fire up Opera just to do things like refill prescriptions. I never click on ads so putting them in front of me is useless and I block them for the annoyance factor, but if AA makes money just by displaying ads I could do my best to make a white-list work. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 (edited) It's all fun and game until unmentionable ads and political ads start popping up... I am somewhat surprised at the hosting fees, is your data metered at all? So long as the adds aren't too graphics oriented it should be ok, are the ads delivered from their server instead of yours? Some of these ad companies have plugins that use your server to host and serve their ads, they have different names for it but you don't want your bandwidth eaten by such a thing. This was a problem year ago when people paid for a certain amount of bandwidth and got hit with surcharges for going over the limit... this goes both ways not only for the person running the server but also for cellular and packet services these days... Edited September 23, 2019 by _The Doctor__ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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