Originally posted by FieroLT1: If this banner idea flies, which is fine by me BTW, what would be the ground rules?
The advertiser provides their own banner? If so, what would be the requirements? as far as image size, file size, animated gifs, flash, what?
Also, if all this was brought up because of the banwidth you were eating, wouldn't banners affect some of that too? Compounding the problem?
Yes, the advertiser would make the banner. Animation to a certain degree is acceptable. Flash is out of the question. Image size would probably be 300x60 pixels, file size under 100K.
The reason why banners don't amount much to the total bandwidth is because we are talking about only a few different banners. Since they are on every page your browser will cache them and keep them in its cache.
Banner advertising will go directly through me, so not through some kind of ad selling company. So no hidden cookies, no redirects, no X10 camera ads, no whack the monkey, no casino ads, no pr0n ads, no you-are-today's-winner ads, no popups, no your-internet-connection-isn't-optimized ads, nothing of that all.
1) charge redhott88 every time he looks at the 'Stefani' thread (redhott goes bankrupt)
2) charge Ryan per username he has (forum gets paid up for the year)
3) charge furious_fiero per post and retire a millionare
I will never mind clicking on the 'Budwiser O/T' section or reading the 'Hefty Trash Can' threads. Lucasfilm should give you some money for all the Star Wars we qoute, and Uncle Bens for all the times we mention rice.
But seriously Cliff..., You have the support of the whole family here.
Originally posted by Cliff Pennock: The banners will be [b]Fiero-related. Anything other than that simply doesn't work. So it will not be those annoying banners you see on other sites, and most certainly no ****, no x10 camera, no "you are today's winner".
The banners will be non-intrusive. So non of those annyoing flashing banners.[/B]
What about PONTIAC Banners, or GM Banners...Does the Fierstore have a banner or something?
------------------ Sig Underconstruction...PLEASE STAND BY.....http://www.geocities.com/mkfiero87/ Friends don't let friends drive Corvettes!! Mike Kroyer N.I.F.E. Activity Director '02
I think if you do have sponsored banners that you should not allow the types of advertising - under the guise of normal list conversations - that some commercialized businesses are freely using this forum for at no cost to them. West Coast Fieros is an excellent example. Let those businesses pay for that advertising bandwidth!!
Do it!, Fiero or even Car related banners could be an advantage to many enthusists (like me) they could even advertise "Sales" or "Specials" or New/Improved products. Definatly do what ya gotta man, nothin's free and advertizing works. If used properly it could be a real Win-Win-Win situation. You get $-Companies get advertized directly to the enthusists-And we get to see cool vendors!
Originally posted by cadero2dmax: I think if you do have sponsored banners that you should not allow the types of advertising - under the guise of normal list conversations - that some commercialized businesses are freely using this forum for at no cost to them. West Coast Fieros is an excellent example. Let those businesses pay for that advertising bandwidth!!
G
Except that some of these businesses are also current members who chose to become members not only for the advertising but also for help (both giving and receiving). Take Rodney Dickman for example. Sure, he advertises his new products, but he also asks for misc parts for prototypes and contributes to the forum in other ways. I don't think it would be fair to make him pay or get out. Others like the Fiero Store are a different matter entirely.
I'm with the rest, anything to keep the Forum going! This place is my homepage, and an absolutly invaluable resource. It's the main reason I have broadband! Seriously, I would pay a reasonable yearly fee, say $30-60. Thanks, Cliff!
I approve. Sounds as if you've thought it out pretty well, Cliff; I don't object to Fiero-related ads. As long as you don't impose a surcharge for bad puns, I'm okay with it
Whatever it takes Cliff. If PFF closed, it might be years before anyone figured out how to start a new one. Thanks again for the great service to Fiero-humanity.
------------------ "Wise man say, when in doubt, mumble."
The original assumtion of many, that only banner click thru is relevant to their value, has generally proven wrong. Same for most other web advertising...
On the other hand, Brand recognition is incredibly important. X10 for example has mainly P-issed people off and certain of their business tactics are unethical if not illegal. Their brand is now recognized as a place to not deal with.
Even if people don't click thru like crazy, they remember your name.
Popup/under adds.... In general, all I ever do is close them. If you want me not to buy your stuff, use a pop up/under.... If a site uses too many of these, I stop going there. No site is worth being assulted by trash.
Banners, I don't have problems if you even want to use standard banners. I don't even mind an animated one if it's well tuned. Cnet allows animated ones but they are generally very well done so they aren't irritating. Tho I'm not a big fan of Cnets new large format ads.
The one thing I won't accept is cookies or scripts from ads. DoubleClick, qksrv.net, and plenty of others are on my permanent ban list in CookiePal. (I also use Internet Explorer security zones to prevent their script from processing. This kills allot of pop up/under and other things.)
------------------ 11-Sept-01, The day the world as we knew it ended.
Cliff, You may want to try www.allclicks.com they offer a whole slew of sponsorship programs that are fairly uninvasive that can generate a somewhat large amount of cash for you. Pop up ads can be annoying, but they have a very lucrative program that involves a small pop up. Check it out. I haven't used them in a while, but I was able to generate some extra cash when I was using them. Go to the website and check out the forum they have, you'll learn a lot just from that. I'm not sure if they are accepting all foreign applications currently though, but I do know that often times they will if you just send an email to them and explain the site you going to run the program(s) on. The good thing about their programs is that you don't have to sell anything for them in order for you to make any money, all that is needed is for the pop-up to appear, or for their 'click here to find' page to load. Simple. Just food for thought.
Sounds good to me. Fiero related ads on a Fiero related BBS just seems fitting to me. It would round out the whole "feel" of the forum. I think businesses like the Fiero Store, V8 Archie, et al would be chomping at the bit to advertise here. And that means lotsa moola for Cliff.
Besides, when you think about it, we all get to post Fiero related banners so to speak, in our signatures... and Cliff doesn't get a dime for those (he actually ends up paying for the extra bandwidth).
[This message has been edited by Blacktree (edited 04-11-2002).]
I have a few ideas and thoughts to share. Hope some of them are useful and not too controversial.
First of all, banner ads are ok with me. I do second the concerns of others with respect to how much real revenue you may generate from them. Survey says that banner ads (and their kin, popups etc) are generally unsuccessful yet are still used because they are the best thing the marketers got. But regardless of that, we have a different type of community here and it may actually work for us. The marketing is very targeted, unlike most of the advertising I see on the 'Net.
Second, I like Ben's idea. It's been percolating in the back of my mind for a while - why not have multiple servers that serve the content? That is to say, if people were willing, we could host the forum off different servers around North America and Europe. I imagine that a peer-to-peer network of volunteer servers is doable. I'm not just dreaming; I freely offer my services to try and figure it out. There are a number of us here who have the educational and or experience to come up with something that could work. What I envision is a P2P network not unlike some of the others that have been created whereby each server hosts a small portion of the forum on their machine. You retain control over that information. This sort of thing could be setup on machines with any decent amount of bandwidth available - i.e. a DSL modem such as mine has a half megabit or so upload available, and I imagine that this would be enough to host a few topics anyhow.
Complicated, yes, but doable I think. Of couse, it's at the wild fantasy land level only.
Third, Totally O/T. I remember when you created Totally O/T because silly chats were filling up GFC. Perhaps it's time to reevaluate whether O/T is needed or not. No offense to people, but I wouldn't miss it for a second. I do read there from time to time, and there are people in there that I don't see posting anywhere else on the forum. 'nuff said before I get myself in trouble. I do recognize that dropping O/T would probably cause those conversations to blossum elsewhere - serious thought would be needed to figure out how to qwell that. Know you hate it, but perhaps a heavier moderators hand for a shortish time period would help.
I know that you didn't want the membership option to come up, but it has, and I have this to offer. Anyone remember www.thefieroclub.com? Mark (Pendragon) tried to setup a small Fiero club. The dues were reasonable - about $2 a month as I recall.
He had lots of members sign up when it was free. When he switched over to the for pay service, membership dropped so much that he decided to close the service down. I was one of the few paying members, even if I didn't join until a week before he took it down (I didn't know that he was going to, and in fairness, he did refund my money). Think there were less than 20 paid members, out of a total before-pay membership of ten times that. If anyone recalls better than I, please let me know.
I agree with limiting uploads. In fact, I think you could disallow uploads altogether in some areas of the Forum. See earlier comments about O/T.
Cliff, thanks again for this place. Hope I haven't ruffled any feathers with my comments about O/T, k guys?
If anyone - Cliff especially - wants to look at the distributed forum idea, please e-mail me. My address is in my profile. I'd really like to try it out. Maybe I'm just a geek
Cliff, everyone else has covered just about all the bases, so I'll just say this...whatever you do, be it banners, or membership fees, or whatever, I'm behind you 100%. This forum is an important source of information, a place to share ideas, and even a place to meet friends and make enemies! Whatever it takes to keep it going...I'll do my part, whether it be reading a few banners, cutting out my sig pic, limiting my posts, or sending you a few bucks anonymously.
Right now I'm paying for JokeADay at about $20 a year and Top5 at about $20 a year. I'm not getting anything but stuff I don't read half the time anyhow. On here, last week I pulled the cradle down, removed the tranny and put it all back together. I had been quoted $440 just for R&R. Now, that means that PFF saved me $440, since I'd never even have THOUGHT about doing my own trans the month before! Also a bunch of people on here are just great folks! SO .. kick in the banners, and set up a place for me to send some PayPal. Long as NO ONE gets any recognition from contributions there should be no problem, eh?
85SE? What are you thinking man! Get rid of O/T????!!!! NO WAY - JOSE!
My Fiero is in storage right now and not expected to come out of her sleep until about the middle of May (pending weather changes), maybe sooner.
In the meantime, I keep active with the other members by just "shooting the breeze" and staying in touch by being in O/T or on Chat. If I need information, then I jump over to the other sections, find what I need and move on. Occassionally, I do post when I have something to offer...such as cleaning a very darkened dipstick with Easy-Off in 30 seconds.
There are a few rotten apples that do come about from time to time in O/T. But just because of the occasional bad apple or two, you don't throw out the barrel now do you.
Okay! Okay! So some bad apples had to be scraped finally from the bottom of the barrel, but the other apples are okay in my opinion.
Please...oh please...don't get rid of O/T or even suggest such a move.
Just because I don't post in GFC or the Tech section, doesn't mean I don't visit it. I'm not an automotive genius, guru nor do I have the automotive mechanical background that many of you do. My forte is computers...not cars. I, as well as my step-daughters, just enjoy the Fiero. Due to my automotive ineptness, I would rather take it to an automotive shop, pay the bucks and have it fixed quickly (cause with me, it would stay in a dismanteled state which is Fiero Abuse) and properly. However, there has been some small things I can tinker on and fix which I do find in GFC, like that confounded "Blue Dingy Thingy" that was driving me and my step-daughter nuts on her 86GT that I had bought her.
Just because you don't enjoy O/T...hmmmmmm...I don't go over to GFC that often, so maybe we should get rid of that section because of all the images people post of their mods, wasting bandwidth. j/k!
Go for it, anything but pop ups though. I think the Fiero related banners would be good, cause anyways I would click some of them too cause I like surfing different Fiero sites. Its all up to you Cliff, do anything besides closing the forum! I couldnt live without the forum!
I have a couple ideas for helping to conserve bandwidth (and keep hosting costs under control).
1) Lock that freaking Gwen Stefani thread. Half of your bandwidth drain will instantly disappear.
2) Drop PIP image uploads. Images use alot more bandwidth than text. I'm guessing that everyone's PIP uploads probably rival the amount of bandwidth used by the rest of the site. If I'm mistaken on this, please correct me. I was surprised when I found that users could upload images to the database. This is the only forum I've seen that does this. We can find other means to post our pics. There are lots of free hosting sites out there. I'd even be willing to host people's pics on my own computer (which I use to host my website/pics/etc).
just my 2 cents
[This message has been edited by Blacktree (edited 04-12-2002).]
I emailed you a server deal Cliff that could save you mega $$$$$$$ with the company who hosts all my sites. Hope it can work out. But if not advertising wont hurt us.
I'm not a member for a long time but this forum helped me so much and keeps on doing it as I don't have any elp in FRANCE! Thus, I agree with all the other members...No problems with banners! Regards from FRANCE
------------------ DJWINNI from FRANCE "86 SE V6/2.8L"
I see a lot of good suggestions here, but I'm going with the banners. Again, these will not be pay-per-click banners because I don't want to generate false traffic towards Fiero Vendors.
The banners will be Fiero related only, but that also includes shops that aren't Fiero specific (businesses that sell rims for instance).
I'm not yet willing to cut in the forum. That means I will not get rid of the TO/T section, I will still allow uploading and the Gallery will stay. The forum just won't be the same without any of these.
I'll try the banners for 1-2 months to see how it goes. If it turns out there is no interest to advertise here, I can always think of something else. I'm still willing to pay a substantial amount myself for the forum. Every hobby costs money (as we all know here) and since this forum is the hobby I enjoy the most at the moment, I don't mind paying for it.
The introduction of banners will not change anything for Vendors. This means that the free Vendor Index (top of the page) will stay and that Vendors are still allowed to "advertise" new products through normal forum messages. The banners should in no way limit the flow of information towards members.
Anyway, I will start building the banner system so you'll probably see some test banners appear in the coming days.
Again, thanks for all your input. I'm sure I can find a non-obtrusive way to fund the forum.
11-Sept-01, The day the world as we knew it ended.
85SE? What are you thinking man! Get rid of O/T????!!!! NO WAY - JOSE!
j/k!
