Gotta admit that it jibes with my experience. Several years ago (2001-02 IIRC) I contacted advertising for my computer game site. I got some halfhearted contacts back regarding advertising on the wider Reader site or in print. When I mentioned here communication just dried right up.
I recall another poster some years ago mentioning that he was not able to advertise on the board.
Incidentallly, I know of one banner ad location within the SDMB enclave, it’s on the home page which I rarely visit in contrast with the forum index. Have I missed anything?
Not sure why the Reader’s ad department hasn’t been so quick on the trigger about this, I suspect they’ve been mostly focused on the main chance – the print version of the Reader – and online offerings have been at best an afterthought.
In the past we’ve had people inquire to them about running banner ads. They tended to be more “vanity” type ads than anything else – people wanting to run a little advertisement about something or someone – and not a big ad campaign per se, which is what any business prefers.
I note the Reader deals with a national company that handles ad placements for many alternative papers, that’s doubtless where the focus goes.
Currently we have no banner ads running on the SDMB. There’s a banner ad on the front page of the Straight Dope site itself. In the past we’ve also run banner ads on certain selected pages, but that’s not happened in quite a while.
I believe that if you run Google ads – as we do on the SDMB – that you’re not allowed to have other ads, so that would tend to make me think you’ll not be seeing banner ads on the board any time soon.
TubaDiva
My Guest Membership here expires on 17/04/06, and whilst at this stage I’m planning on paying for a subscription, I do have a teeny bit of concern over the price.
Now, before everyone jumps down my throat and says “OMG IT’S LIEK $15!11!! GET OVA URS3LF!1!shift+one!”, hear me out.
As I understand it, a year’s membership here is USD$14.95. That’s all well and good if you live in the US, but if you don’t live in the US- say, you live in Australia- then you’ve got to factor in the fact the US dollar is worth more than an Australian Dollar, plus the various fees and charges.
In short, that USD$14.95 works out at about AUD$21 or so, depending what your bank charges to process ForEx transactions and what the exchange rate on the day is.
I know it sounds silly, but there’s a big psychological difference between $15 and $21- and I know it’s enough to put a couple of people off signing up, especially when you consider that The Chicago Reader is a totally unknown entity outside North America.
Anyway, here’s a suggestion: Why not offer a reduced membership rate for non- American members? Say, offer a USD$10.95 membership for people outside the US, which would bring the price down to around AUD$15 or so (about the same in dollar for dollar terms as a current membership), and maybe encourage a few more international posters to sign up.
It’s just a suggestion, mind you (and one I fully expect to get shot down in flames), but I’d be interested to hear input and responses to this.
Also (Captain’s Log, Additional), are there any plans to run the $7.95 membership promotion again this year? I suspect they probably don’t tell you in advance or anything, but it would be helpful to know…
We have not heard for certain, but our expectation is that the Charter Member rate will be the same as last year. US$7.95.
There is no way that we can custom tailor the rate to fit your currency; how could we do this? Rates change every day. Some times non-American posters will get a price break, some times not. It’s impossible to say who will get lucky from year to year. I do believe the dollar was taking more of a beating overseas this time last year and gee, not only were there no complaints, I do believe there was some gloating as well. (Okay, not from you exactly, but it wasn’t an issue.)
FWIW, AUD$21 is the staggering amount of $0.05 per day. How much do you spend on a newspaper every day? How much do you spend for lunch, or at the pub? I realize there’s a bit of a psychological barrier here, but isn’t Cecil worth it?
TubaDiva
Sorry, I don’t think I was particularly clear in what I was getting at: I didn’t mean a custom-tailored price for each individual SDMB member, just a flat “If you aren’t in the US your money is probably worth less than ours, so we’ll charge you a bit less to make up for it.” Sure, sometimes people from the UK and Europe will get a break, but I can’t see people in Canada, Australia, NZ, South Africa, or Samoa getting much of a break on the price unless it turns out the US has been using Monopoly Money as currency. 
Seriously though, I realise it’s probably not a practical suggestion, but if you’re ever looking for a promo to draw in new members, it’s something I’d consider.
Oh, and to answer your questions:
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I don’t buy the newspaper. The two local papers cost AUD$1 each, and one of them is utter crap not fit to be recycled as toilet paper, whilst the other is part of News Ltd, and as a result everything in the paper is available on their website for free.
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Lunch each day is about AUD$10, but I have to spend that regardless of whether or not I’m getting my fix of Cecil’s brilliance…
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Pubs here are cheap. A Schooner of beer (425ml) is AUD$2.80 from my local, and since I can’t drink more than two of those in a two-hour period if I plan on driving home in a legal manner, it’s a cheap night out.
BTW, thanks for the prompt reply! Like I said, I’m planning on sticking around anyway, but it’s always nice to see if there’s a job for Discount Man™, so to speak… 
That’s actually not true. If you run Google Ads you’re not allowed to run ads from any other competing text-based ad service. You can still find your own advestising and run that.
Thanks for the correction, Justin.
As for you, our Aussie friend, everyone would like to get a discount . . . even on something that’s dirt cheap already. Human nature, I suppose.
TubaDiva
How do you verify if someone is a local or international?
Well, I’d imagine IP addresses credit card billing details would be a good start, but as TubaDiva says, it ain’t gonna happen anyway, so it’s a moot point…
The subscription system is not as high tech as we might wish for.
I’d love to be able to offer our members all sorts of deals, including add-ons and extras and such – and perhaps in the future this will be a happening thing and won’t THAT be great? – in the meantime we’re having to do the best we can do with what is available.
It will handle our member/Charter Member needs very well and we’re thrilled with that.
TubaDiva
“The Straight Dope: Figuring out ways to separate you from your money since 2004.”
Martini Enfield, you raise an interesting point about International dopers and the psychological barrier that a larger figure creates.
I’m from India, and for me the dope translates to Rs. 675/- Now, comparing this price against the average price of a newspaper or a cup of tea makes the subscription more difficult to overcome for International dopers than for US based dopers. For instance, I can get 337.5 cups of tea or a year’s worth of newspaper for that price. But I still feel it’s worth every paisa.[sup]*[/sup]
Martini Enfield, I do hope you stay. Cecil needs your brilliance.
*[sub]of course, I pay nothing. I’m freeloadin’[/sub]
Someone will certainly correct me if I’m wrong, but with the two accepted payment methods, Paypal or online credit card charging, there shouldn’t be any additional “fees and charges”. You make the $14.95US charge to your credit card and when the charge comes through, your credit card calculates that it works out to $21AU or whatever and charges that amount to your account.
15US is about 1800 Japanese Yen. Should the board only charge Japanese folks 15 yen to even things out? Or is it just that our two countries use the same symbol that bothers you?
But isn’t that what an exchange rate does, make up for variations in value between the two currencies? Something that costs you $21AU in Australia should cost us about $15US here in the United States.
What you’re really suggesting is that people in the US should have to pay twice as much to be a member as folks in Australia just because you’ve got a psychological problem with exchange rates. Doesn’t really sound very fair to me.
How about we develop our own form of currency, and charge everyone here fifteen cecils.
I don’t care where you’re at, just cough up fifteen cecils. It just so happens that cecils exchange at par with the US dollar.
But seriously, the amount of manual back-shop labor that the CR staff would have to do in order to verify a person’s claims that they’re not in the US, generate a renewal/subscription charge on their user account and deal with the currency exchange would completely consume that fifteen bucks.
One renewal feature that we **desparately ** need though, is third-party payment. The current runaround of having to get the user’s password, then the benefactor logs in as the user and makes a payment is nutty. If we could just let people type in a user’s name and make a payment to that account, then the user gets an email saying “It’s your lucky day!” it would be much easier.
We grant wishes[sup]TM[/sup][sub]sometimes[/sub]
Can I pay for another Doper’s subscription without getting his password?
Oh, the irony. If you ain’t gotpasswords, who’s got?
Huh. Interesting little end-run around the login there. Now that we’re coming into renewal season, it might be worth making that sticky (Like ATMB needs another sticky!) or otherwise publicizing it.
Sticky, my ass; I’m gonna ask Ed to put it in the announcement.
(Not that anyone reads announcements or anything.)
BTW, when the resubscription period opens, please go ahead and pay up; the new subscription picks up where the old one expires, which for most of you is April 28. There’s zero benefit to wait until a few minutes to midnight on that day, it makes no difference except to the overtaxed server. So give us a break and pay early and often!
TubaDiva
Spoken like a true Chicagoan!
Eh? TubaDiva isn’t a Chicagoan. Most of us mods/admins aren’t, you know. For instance, I live in Fort Worth, Texas, and have only been in Chicago once, for a Modfest. Unfortunately, I turned in early one night and missed the strip Air Hockey games.