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Captain Wayne's Blog
Topic: Advertising?
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fiogf49gjkf0d Well I'm going to throw this out there and see what happens...
I'm seriously considering having advertising on the site.
My wife has been out of work for 5 months (well, she has had a day or two here and there), my pay got cut $1,000 a month due to the economic downturn, and so I'm struggling (borrowing $) to support the two of us... and my daughter... and new new baby.
Since things are not getting better fast enough I have to either cut deep or find income. Cutting deep means cutting the site too. Website bandwidth is not a basic need - food and housing are - so the only way I can keep the site going and to implement my future plans is to make it self-supporting ($).
I'm looking into several advertising options. I realize it 'cheapens the site' and might cost us some members (don't worry, no pop-ups!!!) and it may annoy some members.
What's your opinion?
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Member Comments:
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fiogf49gjkf0d I agree -- go for it! Ya gotta do what ya gotta do!
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fiogf49gjkf0d Most of the sites I visit have ads of some kind, but this one's an exception. My FF Ghostery plugin says there's ad tracker programs on nearly every site. I don't notice it much anymore. My FF3 is weighed down heavy with Adblock & Noscript and other such things so I can manually block what's not blocked now. I don't think there'd be much of a fuss if you wanted to make the site more self sufficient. The main selling point of this sort of site isn't "Does it have ads?" If what you choose isn't too intrusive, it won't get much notice.
A bit of research is in order to find the least annoying ads likely to be clicked on by this sort of audience. There goes more of your free time. From what I see, these 'unique visitors' you mention mostly look for lyrics for the sorts of songs not found elsewhere- and those '80s songs that some silly editor guy keeps adding the details to are quite popular on the 'guests online' page. Search engines are always looking for those and they bring people here. It'd be helpful to gear many of the ads to these sorts of visitors since you only get paid when they click. Adtrackers I see most often include Google Adsense, Quantcast, Doubleclick, Kanoodle, Revenue Science and Omniture. Gotta be a reason those are seen most. Maybe the others have opinions of these.
I agree with the others. Ads with sound and pop-ups are the ones that'll make people actively avoid the site. Avoid those if possible. You could ask Devo Spice about the idea Tim had about putting FuMP ads in the banner space. Having an ad on the other large active site that sells FuMP albums might help move product and asking doesn't hurt, after all. ..Maybe try to kickstart the relationship with you-know-who if all else fails. His audience is the main one for this sort of music and snagging its loyalty would get people clicking those ads you would add and the site really would be self sufficient then.
This would give you peace of mind about site related things and allow you to focus on what you want to do with it rather than amassing funds for it. Just a thought.
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fiogf49gjkf0d Totally, man, go for it! Anything to keep the site alive (Even if it comes down to sending a giant pizza based monster to our houses, though I don't know how that would help the site).
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fiogf49gjkf0d Wayne
I have no problem with it. Times are tough & you do what you have to do.
I don't think that you'll subject the members to anything too garish.
Thanks again for all that you have invested in this great website.
Pete
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fiogf49gjkf0d As long as they don't have sound, or excessive pop up Wayne, by all means--anything to support the site.
Captain Wayne:
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Well I'm going to throw this out there and see what happens...
I'm seriously considering having advertising on the site.
My wife has been out of work for 5 months (well, she has had a day or two here and there), my pay got cut $1,000 a month due to the economic downturn, and so I'm struggling (borrowing $) to support the two of us... and my daughter... and new new baby.
Since things are not getting better fast enough I have to either cut deep or find income. Cutting deep means cutting the site too. Website bandwidth is not a basic need - food and housing are - so the only way I can keep the site going and to implement my future plans is to make it self-supporting ($).
I'm looking into several advertising options. I realize it 'cheapens the site' and might cost us some members (don't worry, no pop-ups!!!) and it may annoy some members.
What's your opinion?
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fiogf49gjkf0d Family should come first. I also lost hours and pay this last year so you aren't alone.
I won't like it but you have to do "what you have to do". If it means loosing this wonderful FREE resource by not having some advertising then I will learn to live with some advertising, or just get a better ad-blocker. I agree with Max and Tim, static ads only. No freakin' audio please.
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fiogf49gjkf0d I'm sorry to read about your financial woes. I'm having diffuculties myself with my real job that pays my bills getting slow business, which leads to less tip and wage income for me, about $500 a month less than this month last year, due to this recession. Keep looking for work for your wife.
If you really must cut this website to pay for your family, do so. Your life comes first. We'll collectively find another solution to stream the dementia shows. I could create my own MMCZ channel, which would cost me $10 a month to stream six shows at a time. Others can create and pay for their own stations for their shows.
Google links pay you only when people click the links. I'm not making much on google ads myself on my websites, like about $2 a month, but my site is also affilliated with Amazon, which brings in some $20 a month. You could try affilliation with Amazon.
If your bandwidth is a major problem, you may try disabling streaming of older episodes of several shows and make the listeners a pay $1 or whatever per segment or show to help pay for the bandwidth.
You could try partnering with somebody to help finance the website.
Lots of ideas floating around.
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fiogf49gjkf0d Right. The ads that have sound attached to them are annoying. You know the ones, that play, like, pirate music, or kung fu music, or the Star Trek theme or...
Uh...why are you glaring at me like that, Dave AuJus? :D
Medemia:
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Agreed. A site like this should be able to self-sustain, if not pull a little extra. As long as we don't get those annoying smiley ads (HE-LLLLLOOOOO) or the free i-pod ones (Congratulations...) I guess it's just the talking ads that are the most annoying.
Even so, if we get those, it doesn't take long to refresh the page :)
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fiogf49gjkf0d Google ads would be okay and should be less intrusive than other types. There are some pages that they might not be best for, like the home page and maybe a few others we have talked about before. However for the playlists of the MMA hosted shows, it makes sense. Same for artist, album and song pages. Google adsense, from what I hear, can be fine tuned to keep away some that don't really relate (i.e. off-shore internet gambling).
Maybe the demented artists or The FuMP would be interested in that banner at the top of the page for a link to their site (opens in new window).
Don't just have the pay-pal donate button on The Mad Music Show page, have it on all the other MMA hosted show pages. Allow a drop-down to show which show is being supported, or if generic support is offered. However, focus the drop down for any show page to that show. Consider it a fundraiser for the license fees and bandwidth.
Would ads within the mp3 store help or hurt? Again would the demented artists want adspace that could be valued more than adsense or others.
Please, no big sidebar blinky ads unless they are paying a tenth of a cent per page loaded to somebody (.001 x 6 mill = good revenue).
I'm not sure of what other sites you can look at to see some other examples of less-intrusive ads. If others members can point to some, this would be a good place to report them.
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fiogf49gjkf0d Wayne, sorry to hear about your financial difficulties. I am also going through some right now.
If you want to run some advertising on this site, sign up for Google Adsense - www.google.com/adsense/
With the traffic that's here, hopefully you should earn at least $100 per month. That's the minimum in order to get paid. Just place one 336x280 text ad above the fold on each page, and I am sure you will be successful.
Many of my online friends are doing that, and earning a nice second income. Don't forget, you are subject to reporting that income on your taxes, which means you have to pay federal, self-employment, and state tax. That could be about 35%, depending on your tax bracket.
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fiogf49gjkf0d Agreed. A site like this should be able to self-sustain, if not pull a little extra. As long as we don't get those annoying smiley ads (HE-LLLLLOOOOO) or the free i-pod ones (Congratulations...) I guess it's just the talking ads that are the most annoying.
Even so, if we get those, it doesn't take long to refresh the page :)
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fiogf49gjkf0d I say go for it.
It's only fair that there be a way for this site to pay for itself.
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fiogf49gjkf0d Just some info - advertising stats (based on the past 30 days):
Page-views per month: 1.9 million (59,000/day)
Unique visitors per month: 94,000
Sessions per month: 236,000
(means little but sounds cool: Hits per month: 6.0 million)
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fiogf49gjkf0d Go for it. I've gotten really good at ignoring advertising. :)
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