Ads Coming to AtariAge

[Spriggy]

10 hours ago, CPUWIZ said:

 

EDIT:  Do you have any idea how many clicks tacos would get you? LOL

 

10 hours ago, Albert said:

I'll make sure only ads for Tacos are shown in the AtariBox thread.

 

 ..Al

 

For a second there ... I thought it was the Ashoebox thread!  The Boss always keeps us on track when we digress for too long.?

But I digress .... again.

 

Ads?  Pfft.  Couldn't give two sh#ts.  AA is way too valuable to lose.  What ever it takes Al!  Also, absolutely a Donate option on the site.  Plenty would be willing to help I'd like to think.

 

[VectorGamer]

Anyone reading this news and seeing a grim future for AtariAge? At least for the forums anyway? In the OP Al states that subscriptions weren't significant enough to offset hosting costs.

[Albert]

1 minute ago, VectorGamer said:

Anyone reading this news and seeing a grim future for AtariAge? At least for the forums anyway? In the OP Al states that subscriptions weren't significant enough to offset hosting costs.

The forums are the most valuable part of AtariAge in terms of knowledge and community.  They aren't going away.

 

 ..Al

[Albert]

59 minutes ago, overgrouth said:

If not for saving all the forum info I could get you a much cheaper option. The costs you are paying is outrageous. I used to run allfairgames.com and never never paying anything like that. None of my busness but I am sure lots of us are wondering how you been able to support this money sapping site.

The costs are not outrageous if you shop around for dedicated servers at a reliable host.  It depends a lot on how resource-intensive your site is.  The forum in particular is very resource intensive and has hundreds of people browsing simultaneously.  Yes, you can get servers for less, especially if you use virtual servers.  I will periodically shop around to see what the going rates are for servers.  For servers with similar specifications and software located in the US, what I'm paying is quite reasonable.

 

 ..Al

[Albert]

3 hours ago, frankodragon said:

I just hope AtariAge won't be one of those obnoxious sites that darkens the screen and gives you a message telling you to disable adblockers.  Some sites are even notorious that disable browsing until you allow ads to be shown.

I would take AtariAge down before ever going that route.

 

 ..Al

[RevEng]

I welcome the forthcoming adpocalypse, safe in my subscriber bunker.

 

The ads are actually long overdue, but I fear it isn't really going to cover the bills. A few thoughts on that...

 

1. I know this site is your baby and you're proud of it, but I'd rather the site be slower if it meant you weren't subsidising it, Al. Are you sure a vps or three couldn't do the job? linode has been very good to me, reasonable in cost, and stable - though I'm sure I don't have the traffic or DB footprint AA does.

2. more swag - the button shirts are cute, but we have a lot of amazing original art being generated for game covers that would kick ass on shirts. Make a deal with the artist to trade sales for months of AA subscription, or something like that. Partner with one of the swag companies, so you just get a (smaller) cut, but avoid increasing your workload.

3. maybe consider amazon affiliation, and hand pick some banners for certain retro-themed goods. e.g. Tim Lapetino's book, Curt's books, Flashbacks, etc. Properly curated, this is the kind of stuff people would be keen to actually follow-up on, I would think. You could even add a "product reviews" section, where people could write-up product reviews to help AA, and the links in that section get auto-affiliatized.

 

However you do it, I'm hoping that you figure out how to make the site less of a burden, or even a boon. I support whatever measures it takes, and fully trust you to do it in the most tasteful way.

 

 

[Albert]

5 hours ago, youki said:

Wouldn't be better to impose to be subscriber  after a number of given post?  let say for instance 500 posts.  All people after 500 posts could pay 10$ or 20$  a year for instance to continue to use the forums?

I don't ever want to force people to pay in order to participate in the forums.

Quote

Or could we have an option to pay and to not have the advertising?

You can purchase a forum subscription now, and one of the benefits that's always been listed is that subscribers will not see advertisements in the forum.

 

 ..Al

[Albert]

11 minutes ago, RevEng said:

1. I know this site is your baby and you're proud of it, but I'd rather the site be slower if it meant you weren't subsidising it, Al. Are you sure a vps or three couldn't do the job? linode has been very good to me, reasonable in cost, and stable - though I'm sure I don't have the traffic or DB footprint AA does.

A VPS is not going to cut it, unless it's the only VPS running on a machine and you have full access to all the resources (like RAM).  The database server alone has 64GB of RAM.

11 minutes ago, RevEng said:

2. more swag - the button shirts are cute, but we have a lot of amazing original art being generated for game covers that would kick ass on shirts. Make a deal with the artist to trade sales for months of AA subscription, or something like that. Partner with one of the swag companies, so you just get a (smaller) cut, but avoid increasing your workload.

Yes, I absolutely am going to generate more swag, and I'm sure many artists would be happy to see their wonderful creations used as you're describing.  But I want to do that because it's a fun thing to offer--swag is definitely not going to bring in very much revenue. I've had AtariAge t-shirts in the store on and off for the last 15 years and while they sell, it's a slow trickle.  If the ads work out, I'll get more swag that I'll give out free, and probably get more swag I can sell in the store as well (such as AtariAge pint glasses, of which I've given away a fair number).

11 minutes ago, RevEng said:

3. maybe consider amazon affiliation, and hand pick some banners for certain retro-themed goods. e.g. Tim Lapetino's book, Curt's books, Flashbacks, etc. Properly curated, this is the kind of stuff people would be keen to actually follow-up on, I would think. You could even add a "product reviews" section, where people could write-up product reviews to help AA, and the links in that section get auto-affiliatized.

I do have an AtariAge affiliate for Amazon, and it would be nice to auto-affiliate links in the forum.  That would bring in a small amount of revenue, only if people click on the links and ultimately make a purchase while the affiliate referral is still hot (generally for 24 hours).  Not sure there's an easy way to do that without using something like VigLink (which I don't really want to do).

11 minutes ago, RevEng said:

However you do it, I'm hoping that you figure out how to make the site less of a burden, or even a boon. I support whatever measures it takes, and fully trust you to do it in the most tasteful way.

Thank you,

 

 ..Al

[Mr Robot]

NT

[deepthaw]

On 9/20/2019 at 7:12 PM, Albert said:

Apparently!

Ads on a site like this are the type I'd be most likely to click on, because I imagine it's such a specific audience that stuff is actually relevant to me.

[+OLD CS1]

One thing I know you used to get was return on eBay links.  I did not see them in use a whole lot, and they were fairly awkward to use because of how eBay "hides" the item number.  Since the upgrade I do not see a way to do them easily from the user side (or at all, really,) but maybe if the forum could recognize eBay links when posted and proxy them in a way which generates revenue for AA.

[VectorGamer]

23 minutes ago, Mr Robot said:

I'd agree, but people who don't subscribe, have more than 1000 posts, visit every day, rely on this place for socialising and information and run ad-blocking applications on this site... Those people are freeloaders.

 

Shots fired

 

Here we go

[Mr Robot]

33 minutes ago, Albert said:

I do have an AtariAge affiliate for Amazon, and it would be nice to auto-affiliate links in the forum.  That would bring in a small amount of revenue, only if people click on the links and ultimately make a purchase while the affiliate referral is still hot (generally for 24 hours).  Not sure there's an easy way to do that without using something like VigLink (which I don't really want to do).

You could have a page on the site with "AtariAge recommended products" and a forum topic where members can recommend stuff to add to the page.

[Mr Robot]

1 hour ago, Spriggy said:

Also, absolutely a Donate option on the site.  Plenty would be willing to help I'd like to think.

Agree!

[+OLD CS1]

1 hour ago, Spriggy said:

Also, absolutely a Donate option on the site.  Plenty would be willing to help I'd like to think.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

10 hours ago, TPR said:

I think what some people may not quite understand is that suggestion actually creates MORE WORK for Al.  Going with a 3rd party ad agency means that all you have to take care of as a webmaster is placing the code on your site. That's it! They take care of everything else, which is really the core of the work load. 

Which creates the missing transparency and is the root cause why ads are considered negative and dangerous. This is a global problem which affects advertising even on the most popular websites. No one can guarantee the visitor's safety anymore.

 

If Al would manage the ads himself, I would disable my ad blocker for this site. If the ads are provided from a third party, it will stay on for a good reason.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

15 hours ago, Andrew Davie said:

I will never see them, as I use insane amounts of ad-blocking technologies. I am against ads, but based on the replies... it seems I am an outlier.

We all are definitely outliers anyway.

Edited September 24, 2019 by Thomas Jentzsch

[Thomas Jentzsch]

14 hours ago, Albert said:

They certainly aren't going to throw up porn ads in that case. 

What is acceptable in one country might be completely non acceptable in other countries and vice versa. If you filter for all, there might be not that much left.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

14 hours ago, AAA177 said:

I just don't like to download too many things from the web, and when I play Atari games I usually go to an in-browser site. 

A website browser which allows playing Atari games for small money might work then. Probably original games would have to be free, but playing homebrews would require a little money each play (e.g. time based). And subscribers could get some free play time.

 

Might be at least worth a try, no?

[Mr Robot]

NT

[RevEng]

1 hour ago, Albert said:

A VPS is not going to cut it, unless it's the only VPS running on a machine and you have full access to all the resources (like RAM).  The database server alone has 64GB of RAM.

Well, RAM is dedicated at linode; not at the physical module level, but they carve you off a static amount of RAM. The CPUs don't seem over-provisioned. (you can get dedicated CPU, but at high levels of CPU and memory the pricing starts to resemble physical server pricing, for obvious reasons) I'm not saying AA would run the same, but it might be adequate. This may not be your first (or even fifth) choice, but I wouldn't discount it as an option out of hand, especially if someday you need to consider shuttering the site.

[DirtyHairy]

27 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Might be at least worth a try, no?

I would definitely be willing to assist with integrating Stellerator to play games for such an experiment. It would also be possible to extend the emulator and offer an API for ROMs save highscore on the server --- think of a list that records high scores played by paying users on AtariAge.

Edited September 24, 2019 by DirtyHairy

[Albert]

1 minute ago, DirtyHairy said:

I would definitely be willing to assist with integrating Stellerator to play games for such an experiment. It would also be possible to extend the emulator and offer an API for ROMs save highscore on the server --- think of a list that records high scores played by paying users on AtariAge.

I would like to do this on the main site with the games database.  I have wanted to do this for a while.  I don't need to make money from people playing games in a web-based emulator. 

 

I love the idea of the emulator keeping track of scores, that would be a ton of fun to integrate directly into the online database.

 

 ..Al

[Thomas Jentzsch]

4 minutes ago, Albert said:

I don't need to make money from people playing games in a web-based emulator. 

Why not? People are asking for paid digital downloads, this would be something similar. Or even almost identical if you can buy a flatrate for a certain game. You could also offer early plays for unreleased homebrews. I bet some people would like that and pay money for it.

And part of the money invested could be converted into store credit.

I can hardly estimate the results, but I feel not all alternative options to ads have been tested.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

31 minutes ago, Mr Robot said:

What IS an acceptable way for you to pay something toward the running of this site? What can Albert do (apart from managing his own Ad network) that would allow you to contribute?

There have been numerous alternatives discussed in this thread. Many of them have not been tried. IMO almost everything is better than ads.