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Ads Coming to AtariAge


Albert

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Hi Al,

 

I'll also add (pun not intended... but I'll take it) my agreement that ads will be fine. I am extremely happy that you won't do video ads, though. Those irritate me to no end! I've all but stopped visiting the MLB website due to all the ads, video ads, auto-paying videos... No point in annoying visitors. But yeah, if ads will help keep this wonderful site afloat, add 'em. :)

 

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About time you started putting ads on here. You should have done this years ago. One quick question for me though, and my apologies if this has already been answered elsewhere: Do you have any plans to support Brave Rewards from those who use the Brave web browser?

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1 minute ago, Albert said:

I currently know nothing about this, so I will have to look that up.

 

 ..Al

 

I'll make it easy for you.

 

About Brave Rewards

 

For Content Creators

 

In short: Those who use the Brave web browser can enable Brave Rewards in order to earn BAT (Basic Attention Token) by having Brave replace a site's ads with their own ads. Users earn tokens each month just by browsing sites, and can set a specific amount of tokens to be paid automatically to site owners and content creators. 

 

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1.  I love posts like this that attract people from across AA to one spot.  There are people here with thousands of posts that I don't know that I have ever seen.  It kind of reinforces my idea that I'm not the only one that sticks to my own little favorite corners of the site.

 

B.  I fully support Al's decision to place ads on the site and trust that he will do so wisely.

 

III.  I am not a subscriber, though I have had it in the cart a few times.  Money is tight right now and I just can't justify it.  Sorry, Al.  But, I was able to go to PRGE last year and bought a game (Draconian) directly from Al, so there's that...

 

Four.  I don't have ad block.  And will click on ads if it helps.  =)

 

 

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My two cents, unsolicited of course, but you know what they say about opinions... ?

 

The first post seemed really long with a lot of explanation.  Not necessary IMO, it should not be a surprise to anyone that a site like this costs a good deal of time and money to run.

 

As for a subscription, I never got one and the reason is kind of trivial, but I did not want the joystick counter under my name to automatically jump to the max just because I am a subscriber.  Like somehow being a subscriber makes a person a better contributor to the forums or is some sort of elite status.  I like seeing at what point I get another joystick.  It seems stupid, and I don't really like gamifacation of websites, but there it is.  If I lose my joystick ranking when I buy a subscription, then I won't buy one.

 

Also, I never looked at the subscription costs, so I just took a peek.  Very strange levels.  $30/yr, but $5 for one month...  Usually buying year of something over the monthly cost should save you a month or two, but in this case it would be double to pay by the month.  Begs the question as to why anyone would subscribe by the month, or only for a few months at all?  Also, breaking down the year cost is $2.50/mo.  Kind of low IMO.  I would pay 2x or 4x that much before thinking twice about it.  $10/mo ($120/yr) is an easy decision for something like this, but I don't have the option to buy at that level.  And offering a 2-year subscription is committing you for a long time and adds risk you might not want to have.

 

I think you are leaving a lot of money on the table for people who can and will pay more (and if you register as a non-profit, people can write-off the contribution).  Instead of having three oddly priced subscriptions that favor the 1yr subscription, why not just offer 1yr only with different levels of cost?  Something like $120/yr, $60/yr, and $30/yr, and let the user decide what it is worth to them.  Bill annually on the subscription date so you have constant cash flow every day.

 

Anyway, just some thoughts reading through this thread and finally looking at the actual subscription cost.  If you offer the higher annual subscription and don't blow away my post-rank meter, I'll put my money where my mouth is.

 

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Hi Matthew,

 

Thanks for your thoughts regarding subscriptions, I appreciate it.  You're right about higher price of the monthly subscription versus the $2.50/month if you pay for a year all at once.  I did that to encourage people to buy the yearly subscription, and discounted it for two years to entice people to buy two years at $50 (which works out to just over $2 a month).  I'm sure some people would be willing to pay more, but I didn't want the cost to be excessive.  I don't feel subscriptions will bring in nearly the revenue that ads will, but I really won't know until the ads have been running on the site a few months to see what happens. 

 

The initial thought of subscriptions was to give people an optional way to help contribute monetarily to the site.  And if ads should appear at some point, that subscribers would not have to see them (at least in the forums), so I've had that listed as a benefit ever since they were a thing (years ago).  Creating multiple one-year subscription levels at different price levels is an interesting idea, and no idea how many would bite for a higher cost for the same amount of time.  I'd prefer to encourage more people to buy the $30 subscription and get more people doing that, as opposed to higher prices that might result in less subscriptions.  Once the ads are in place, I'll do a bit more to promote subscriptions as an alternative to seeing ads, so that will probably help drive some sales of subscriptions. This thread alone has done that.

 

I had never thought about the joysticks as a reason someone might not want to purchase a subscription.  I don't really want people to feel that people who have subscriptions are somehow "better" than those who have not, and generally they are low-key.  You don't need a subscription to take full advantage of the forums, but they do give you some useful benefits (such as a larger PM inbox and a longer edit window).  And that's something I won't change. 

 

 ..Al

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1 hour ago, Eltigro said:

III.  I am not a subscriber, though I have had it in the cart a few times.  Money is tight right now and I just can't justify it.  Sorry, Al.  But, I was able to go to PRGE last year and bought a game (Draconian) directly from Al, so there's that...

No need to apologize at all.  Glad you were able to make it out to PRGE last year, and hope you're enjoying your copy of Draconian!

 

 ..Al

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5 minutes ago, Albert said:

Creating multiple one-year subscription levels at different price levels is an interesting idea, and no idea how many would bite for a higher cost for the same amount of time.  I'd prefer to encourage more people to buy the $30 subscription and get more people doing that, as opposed to higher prices that might result in less subscriptions.

Well, in the model I suggested you never have a 1yr subscription lower than the $30/yr you have right now.  If it is not complicated to add, what does it hurt to try the higher rates?

 

Still gotta do something about the joystick meter though. ;-)

 

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2 hours ago, Sauron said:

I'll make it easy for you.

 

About Brave Rewards

 

For Content Creators

 

In short: Those who use the Brave web browser can enable Brave Rewards in order to earn BAT (Basic Attention Token) by having Brave replace a site's ads with their own ads. Users earn tokens each month just by browsing sites, and can set a specific amount of tokens to be paid automatically to site owners and content creators.

That is interesting, thanks for the links.  I'll look at these in more detail later.

 

 ..Al

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Regarding ads, I'm mainly in the same mindset as Thomas.  I don't block ads because their ads, but because the way they work in practice is that they're a 3rd party security risk. I've seen several instances for instance where google ads were found to be serving up malicious content. Another website I use to frequent at one point found out their ad partner was serving up malicious ads (Without that ad partner noticing I believe) that didn't even need to be clicked on. As such it's extremely rare I make an exception for scripts and the like or let ads through. It has nothing to do with the site I'm on, it's just a matter of practical security.

 

I have considered subscriptions in the past, although various things limit me at different times. At times I just don't have the money to start a subscription. Other times I'm not sure entirely how they're billed. One thing I'd like clarified: If you go for a year subscription, is it auto-renewed or a one time thing. CAN it be a one time thing, if it isn't. I don't like auto-renewal services at all, but if necessary I can do a one time purchase and then just manually renew or add an extra year as needed when the current one is running out. Typically I refuse to use a credit card online - most of the time it's unnecessary, but I do occasionally buy a prepaid visa/mastercard giftcard to use online for one-time purchases. Those can't really be used for recurring charges most of the time since with most of them you can't add new funds after purchase. So if  subscriptions are set up so that they aren't renewed automatically, it'd be more liable to buy in.

 

Regarding issues towards digital purchases in the store, I'm all for that (price pending of course - not paying 50 bucks for a digital download. I typically don't pay that much for a modern game either.) but the pay-to-play model would be DOA for me.

 

Another possibility could be starting a patreon. Everyone does that these days don't they? :D  It hits up against my personal recurring fee idea so it wouldn't be for me, but it would be a potential way for others to donate. Could hook it up so that it helps both the site and developers releasing through atari age at the same time. Set it up so that there's 2 or more tiers.

 

Lowest Tier: The Thank you Tier - a couple of dollars donated per game released, maximum of one game per month to ensure people don't worry about a large charge in one month. Nothing is actually given in return. It's purely a donation. Well, perhaps the digital manual of a game being released like in the mid tier. If they want the game itself they'll have to pick it up from the store (physical or digital)

 

Mid Tier: Digital Tier - for the couple of dollars + royalties normally given to the developer, a digital copy of a game being released is given for free to people of the tier. Again would want to limit this to one per month to avoid larger charges in a short period of time. Digital copy of the manual would also be included. Al would just pass on the royalties received for that month's game to the appropriate developer of the month and the rest would be for the site.

 

A poll could be done to determine which game is being included via patreon if there's a batch of them releasing at once based also on whether or not the developer wants their game to be released that way since royalties would be constant between games or you might have people complaining about it costing more some times than others. :) 

 

Either way, a potential idea to consider.

 

 

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54 minutes ago, Mord said:

If you go for a year subscription, is it auto-renewed or a one time thing.

They do not currently auto-renew, which isn't supported by the current subscriptions mechanism.  However, there is a newer subscription system in place that I need to switch to at some point, and that does allow for auto-renewal of subscriptions.  I don't know if it allows the subscriber to disable auto-renewal, as it's not something I've played around with yet.  I'd be inclined to set that up as the default, though, as many times people have contacted me stating the let their subscription lapse and didn't know it as they either didn't see the subscription renewal invoice email or their email provider kindly marked it as spam.  I also don't know if the new system sends out an email warning you that your subscription is about to renew.  Again, it's something I need to investigate, as that's all part of the newer forum software, and we're using an old subscriptions system that Invision is probably going to phase out.

54 minutes ago, Mord said:

Regarding issues towards digital purchases in the store, I'm all for that (price pending of course - not paying 50 bucks for a digital download.

Well, they certainly would not be anywhere near that much.

54 minutes ago, Mord said:

Another possibility could be starting a patreon.

That's something I could look at down the road, but right now that would incur additional work on my part, which is the opposite direction I'm trying to go in at the moment.  Game releases to Patreon supporters, or doing some other type of subscription-based game sales system is an interesting idea, though.

 

 ..Al

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I've been here since the beginning, well about a year after IIRC 2002. I support anything Al does. I did subscribe a number of times but since my 'injury' years back I haven't gamed a lot, owe lot of medical bills and haven't been really visiting the site anymore because of my decrease in interest in console gaming and collecting. There's also the distractions of places like Twitter, Reddit, Discord etc. which I also spent a lot more time on the last few years. If I visited here more often and had the spare money I would probably subscribe again. 

 

If there are ads in the future I'm 100% fine with it also maybe a donation link on the front page would help too. I would definitely donate a little money now and then when I can. If I buy something from the store I wouldn't mind putting a 'tip' during checkout. Just some ideas.

 

 

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7 hours ago, save2600 said:

I would click on an AA ad though, advertising new store releases!   :love:

I would like to do that too. But who will verify that such an ad is legit and really coming from AA? How can we be 100% sure that "AA" ads with their assumed high click rates are not faked and abused by scammers and, even worse, criminals?

 

This is the key problem of 3rd party advertising networks. And unless Al finds a way (and time!) to manually double check each and every ad on AtariAge before it is used here, AA ads when mixed with normal ads have to be considered as an extra risk on top of the new risk of ads in general. Therefore I suggest that AA (or any other manually checked) ads are placed differently and clearly recognizable outside the normal unsafe ads area. 

Like I said before, this is not an AA problem, but a general problem.

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