If it’s easy, I’d like to see a “If you’re willing to view banner ads to increase our revenue, please check here.” box on my subscribed member User CP. It could be off by default, but I would be willing to check it, as I don’t mind banners as much, especially if I have a choice and I know the money will go to something I care about.
Gaming forums tend to be very, very fond of the link insertion thing.
Thanks for the update, Ed.
I didn’t participate in the other pile-ons because for some reason I couldn’t see the ads (I am not blocking them). Maybe because they are served on a location-basis… or something.
Anyways. I think the SDMB could be producing much more money if somebody just set up to it. They could do that without ever annoying the membership (too much). The two tiered system is a brilliant idea, it should have been done years ago. But let’s forget about spilled milk.
I vote for these ideas presented before:
Amazon store (where are you going to find more geeks and book readers?).
Cafepress store (pretty please!).
Kill the vB search, open the board to search engines and use Google for the search feature (free, you can generate even more money).
Update vB to 3.7 (when it’s out), lots of fantastic feature that paying members will appreciate (blogs, facebook-type profile page).
Sell text ads to members in their sigs (Waste of money for me, but I can write off advertising here, it would just be a link to my store).
And while we are at it, I would pay to be able to switch skins. No, I don’t want flashy, but I have a wide-screen monitor and this thing is sprawled over half a mile of real estate. I look like a cartoon watching a tennis match when I am reading this. Og I hate fluid skins!
What Spoons said.
I don’t like Avatars either, I hate animation, the rating system sound likes something I don’t like. However does it matter to you, that vBulletin already has built-in, even in our version, the ability in **User Options ** to **NOT DISPLAY ** avatars?
There is also an option to turn off viewing signatures and pictures. So for those of us who don’t want to see avatars, I don’t think it hurts if posts pay extra for them.
Jim
I think I’ve probably seen things that are objectively worse on the web somewhere, but I know exactly what you mean, and I agree.
Inserted links are, IMO, the antithesis of what hypertext is supposed to be about - these links exist not to enrich the meaning of the text, but to pervert it. I hate saying things like this (and it doesn’t matter a fig anyway), but they are the one thing that is almost guaranteed to send me packing.
For those still in the dark about what ad links are; they’re links inserted into text by the server, not by the person posting the text - so someone might post an account about riding their pony on the beach, and the text is rendered:
*Last Sunday, I rode my pony on the beach *
- you click on what you think is going to be a link to a picture of the horse, but it actually takes you to a site selling saddles, animal feeds, horse trailers - and the other one isn’t a link to a picture of the beach, or a link to the location in Google Maps, it’s a link to somewhere that sells swim trunks, or some such.
Some boards permit only externally-hosted avatars - the bandwidth impact of those would be negligible, in terms of slowing down the server here.
I also say Thank You. Thankyuv’rrymuch.
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I, personally, wouldn’t have minded the banner ads, if we had been informed, warned ahead of time, and they were subtle, unobtrusive, and above all relevant to our own likes. We are a wide but somewhat identifiable demographic on the SDMB, and could probably be very successfully targeted by the right geeky companies and events.
Having said that, this two-tier approach may very well save the board from impending doom, and may even cause some old members to return. Good news all round.
Hear, hear. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but I like words. I hope that CL doesn’t just see the SDMB as a large number of page views, but for the special place this is and why that is.
Now that said, assuming for the moment that T(new)PTB have less of a concern over copyrighted content being posted to the boards than T(old)PTB, and assuming bandwidth and storage concerns could be addressed… maybe one new forum that allowed image posting could be created. For ubiquitous cat pictures and photoshop threads. In all other forums images remain disabled. Can vBulletin do that?
Oh, and were this a vote, I’d vote against opening the boards up to external search engines. It was like that here for a couple weeks a few years back. I know I can’t expect any more anonymity here than I do anywhere else on the web, but for some possibly irrational reason I just felt a little too exposed. So I like pay-to-search, personally.
I think that one problem with avatars is policing them for inappropriate images (shock images such as goatse, for example).
And I’d suggest that Ed and Pat look at the experiences of other media sites. For the last couple of years, for instance, The New York Times required a paid subscription to read its name-brand columnists and the archives. A couple of months ago, they decided to drop the paid subscriptions because they felt that they’d get more page views from having their content searchable via Google and linked to in blog postings. (That is the New York Times, though, and the example may not apply to the SDMB.)
Another big thank you…or listening and responding. I’m all for a two-tier system. I’m totally against avatars, unless there’s a corresponding feature/option to disable all images.
Just last month I pledged $100 in installments to the radio station listen to on-line (KEXP). I give a similar amount to my local community radio station (KRZA). I’m not rich–I’d be surprised if first year teachers around here don’t make more than I do, but that’s what those media are worth to me when I compare their value to that of other media I pay for like magazines and movies (and take into account the cool t-shirts I get for pledging.)
I read the SDMB way more than I listen to the radio. I’d miss it more if it were gone, too. Now I’m not saying I’d pledge that much in a SDMB fund drive (You’d need a MUCH better shirt for one thing. You’d have to become a non-profit for another.), but I hope it gives TPTB an idea of what they have here.
I love this place, but the banner ads came closer than anything so far to driving me away. This thread and TubaDiva’s thread have done as much as anything else to guarantee that I’ll re-up my subscription when the time comes, even if posting becomes free and the subscription price multiplies. (And buy a shirt if you make a nicer one. I already have the coffee mug!) Excellent job, guys. Many many many thanks!
Thanks for the explanation, Ed.
I agree that the ad/no-ad model would seem to have limited usefulness due to the ease of obtaining ad-blocking solutions. But I think a multi-track model is an excellent idea.
In the past, the Reader never openly solicited member suggestions; this was a stance that alienated/annoyed many of us. It seems to me that Creative Loafing has an opportunity to take advantage of member loyalty and expertise by forming an additional advisory board that could develop proposals for multiple subscription tiers: free posting, social networking features, and everything in between.
If CL truly views the board as an asset, it could easily develop it into something that fills a niche that is currently going unfilled (well, partly filled, but that doesn’t sound as nice or dramatic), with free advice from their target audience. A great deal of loyalty could be gained by recruiting members to serve on a board that could think through the Board’s target audience, identify features that would appeal to this audience, and propose tracks for membership in a community that is unlike any other on the Web. How better to develop an on-line community than to recognize it as such and encourage member involvement?
We know we don’t own the board, but a whole lot of us are quite attached to it and would like to see it continue to be an amazing place to learn, make friends, and be able to have an intelligent (as well as silly) discussion about myriad topics.
I was surprised at the degree of my reaction to the sudden appearance of banner ads. I never actually saw them (AdBlock Plus and Flashblock are wonderful inventions), but the mere description of them told me that no thought had been given to character of this community. That hurt and made me wonder whether the Dope was likely to continue to appeal to me.
Like many other members, I wouldn’t mind direct links to vendors that I would patronize anyway (amazon) or vendors that I might not otherwise discover (ThinkGeek, Unemployed Philosophers Guild, Patina Stores, Archie McPhee), but I don’t think random Google ads appeal to most of us. (I’ve never been moved to click on one when I’ve seen it, at any rate.) I think a direction that includes unobtrusive advertising that is truly targeted to the membership and a range of features that appeal to smart, geeky, reasonably literate types could bring CL an actual profit and make most Dopers very happy.
Thanks again.
GT
I like the two-tier idea. I’d love to get some of the old pre-P2P vitality back, and I think that would help.
Also I would buy a shirt with the slogan on it!
The discussion of a multi-tiered system makes me think it will look something like this:
free - basic membership: ability to post in all forums (maybe limited to 50 a day or something?), banner ads visible
$10 - level one: unlimited posting, use of search engine, no banner ads
$15 - level two: level one, plus custom member title and use of private messaging
$20 - level three: level two, plus ability to post polls (or whatever)
$100 - lifetime level three
Would that be more or less preferable to a totally “a la carte” pricing system? Something like this:
$10 - basic membership, as above
And then pick any of the following individually:
custom member title - fifty cents
ability to post polls - one dollar
add an avatar - dollar fifty
ability to turn off avatars - fifty dollars 
Is there a general sense which approach might be preferable? I can see it going either way. Packages would be easier to administer; a la carte would give the userbase a lot of flexibility in picking the specific features they’re looking for. With the levels/packages, you’d probably get “everything” for less than it would cost on a piecemeal basis; but with the piecemeal model, people could have only what they want, for less than the “everything.”
Wow, what an emotional rollercoaster today has been.
Okay, maybe not a rollercoaster. More like “6:00am: ‘Woah, bummer.’ <uneventful and yet almost universally drunken workday> 6:00pm: ‘Oh, hey, cool.’”
What kind of ride is that? The Slingshot? The Bus Queue?
As I said on the other thread, the way to make real money is through Straight Dope books. SDMB and all of SD online generate peanuts. Books, on the other hand, are popular and make actual money. Cecil’s back catalog is priceless, and his online presence is a great catalyst for selling more books (if only it were positioned as such). You can even publish SDMB books, although the editing work for that would be monumental (but hey… free labor is aplenty on the SDMB, ain’t it?).
SDMB->books->SDMB->books-> is a cycle that finally leads to: an actual, profitable, diversified brand.
The SDMB Roller Coaster. It’s got plenty of ups and downs, but you’ve really got to watch out for those unexpected turns!