The math on making this place more profitable is easy.
Sell to the people you’re already selling to - i.e., the only advertising that belongs on the SDMB is from the people already purchasing ads on the CR. It can’t be that difficult to provide those links, particularly within areas of possible interest - personals, via MPSIMS; performance venues, restaurants and book signings via Cafe Society; general marketplace (furniture stores and car dealers) via IMHO. Advertisers with a web presence would love more to steer more traffic their way, no? “Selling to the world” makes sense in this day and age. Tasteful banner ads in the margin are a lot less offensive than randomly generated Google links that look like posts, IMHO.
Alternatively, would it kill them to have a “Marketplace” where only members could advertise their wares?
Drop the PTP, too; it discourages people from joining on a lark just to participate in a question or two, which is part of what makes this place fun. Accept donations via PayPal for the diehards (NPR sure makes a lot of money that way) and let people choose to join, but don’t require membership.
Oh, and no ads at all in GQ. Have some integrity, people. Hold on to the original “branding” of this place.
It would kill me. Experience tells me that this would either change the nature of the board (turning it into a buy-and-sell place), spread throughout the other forums giving the moderators much more to do, or be completely pointless (why would anyone go here instead of places like ebay?).
We have discussed donations approximately 4.6 million times before, and it’s just not that easy. There are legal issues in for-profit organizations accepting donations.
And I think you’re completely wrong about the “marketplace.” How many times have people been warned about sharing such information inadvertantly? Encouraging IRL contacts makes a community stronger, not weaker.
Besides which, now that anybody & their brother can buy Google ads here, no telling which SDMB members are advertising here now. Why not make it transparent.
In many ways, this place never was. But, it was a lot closer at some point in the near past than it is today.
I paid when we went P2P because it was worth it to me as entertainment. However, we lost a large group of people who felt it was fun to answer specific questions in their area of expertise but who didn’t think that the fun of giving a real, worthwhile, and correct answer (not a google guess) to a question was fun enough to pay for. None of those people will be back. They’ve moved on.
Except for a few (very few) members who are truly experts on something, most who have decided to stay here (or joined as new since P2P) are here simply for the fun of being here. And the fun is dying for some people. So, any ideas for making this a great and profitable board are about 2 years too late.
No, I don’t see the board actualy dying any time soon. But let’s not kid ourselves here. This is simply another message board now. A pretty good one, true, but compared to the board that actually did fight ignorance (while still alowing mindless fluff, too), namely, the SDMB that aparantly sucked all the money off the Reader, it just doesn’t match up.
Yes, I’m still here, I still like the place (mostly), and I’m sure someone will come along to kill the messenger.
How do you figure? New guests have 30 days to post for free, and that’s more than enough time if all they wish to do is participate in one or two threads.
Who? I’ve been sitting here trying to come up with names, but I’m drawing a blank. I’m not seeing too many voids in the knowledge base here–we’ve got at least one or two experts on pretty much any subject I’ve seen in GQ lately, for the most part. The few names I can come up with (OK, two: Rex Fenestrarum and Desmostylus) were banned. Of course, it’s entirely possible I’m totally clueless here and just haven’t been paying attention. I ask merely for informational purposes, not to doubt your assertion.
We readin’ the same OP? Or is your sarcasm so thick I can’t penetrate it? ‘Cuz phrases like “shit-for-brains management” and “morons run the board” are anything but “calm, rational and non-combative.” Try tossin’ 'em out in the next staff meeting at your office.
And in case anyone hasn’t noticed yet, the majority of the sites on the Internet have advertisements on 'em. Haven’t heard too much about its impending demise lately.
Sweet. I have a proof for creationism, too. I’ll tell you for a dollar.
Man, I sure have a hard time seeing why people object to these ads so much. They just aren’t very intrusive at all.
I’m reminded of how public television has to take several different routes to obtain the funds that allow them to continue to braodcast quality shows. First, they have memberships but those aren’t enough to pay all the bills because like the SDMB, there are many people using the service without paying for it. So PBS also has corporate underwriters who get “mentions” in between programs. These “mentions” are more and more like private TV spots every day and they’re far more obtrusive than the Google ads here.
I think PBS takes a similar position to the Reader: “We have quality content but we need to have a certain income to pay for dissemination of it. If more of you people using this service would pay for it then we could do it with no advertising, but until that happens we need the ad (underwriting) revenue. We will try to present these ads (mentions) in the least obtrusive way possible.”
And when people demand greater service (faster and larger servers in the SDMB’s case) the costs go up, so remember that when you want more you have to pay more.
Perhaps some of the members here would like to pay $500 or $1000 a year to underwrite this board. You could get mentions say 10 times a day at the bottom of a few of the threads. These annoyances would appear less often than the Google ads but would also A) cost more, and B) still not totally do away with the perceived “problem” of having tiny amounts of blurb copy at the bottom of some/all thread pages.
I do agree however with the posters who opine that these particular Google ads are unobtrusive but the real problem is the opening of the floodgates to a future of greater and greater amounts of advertising. This is a concern, but herein lies a difference between the SDMB and PBS: the SDMB is a commercial money-making enterprise, not a public service semi-mandated by the State. We’re in the waters of the free-market here, folks. When and if the ads become too obtrusive, people are free to walk away from the whole thing. If enough people do this eventually the proprietors will either decrease the ads or fold up the tent and end it all.
If this board were to go the way of the dodo I would be sad, but I would also look forward to the new and improved advertising-free SDMB that would inevitably be launched by one or more of the concerned philantropists in our midst who are currently griping about the Reader’s desire not to take a loss on their venture.
Some of you guys* would * pay for an new ad-free SDMB, right? Good. That would be righteous. As righteous as some of the comments I’ve been reading about the Google ads.
I can’t tell… is this a joke? I can’t imagine any company whose management isn’t completely wacked out of its gourd paying that much for click-throughs. I tried ads on my messageboard (just for unregistered users) but scrapped them after I realized I’d only be making five or ten bucks a month at the most. It’s not worth the possibility of scaring off new members (who may end up subscribing eventually).
Yeah but it’s 30 days of inconvenient posting with the reminder popping up every time they attempt to reply to something telling them they need to pay up. And I can tell you that I wouldn’t be here today had that been the system back in 2000 - it took me a couple years to get hooked.
What I suggested as an alternative was leaving regular users alone (normal registration remains free - no 30 day limit), and add incentives for people to subscribe at a cost. Allow users to have avatars, custom titles, private messaging, and signatures for 10 or 15 bucks a year. It wouldn’t be a “donation” any more than the current P2P system is (for the concerned - you can disable the display of avatars and sigs in your settings if such things annoy you). I’d almost guarantee that every single user who paid up for our current system would have paid for an upgraded account, and we wouldn’t have lost everyone who wasn’t willing to pay to continue posting here. Heck, even making it say “SDMB Supporter” for their title and allowing users to search would probably keep most people paying up.
The current model depends heavily on the existing members to keep things going, and that just doesn’t work too well with messageboards. New people are essential to keep things fresh and interesting, and I think the powers that be are going to have to focus their efforts on them eventually to save the board from stagnating.
You are right: PBS and NPR are now not-for-profit but nevertheless ad-supported to a high degree.
I don’t think SDMB has to be like PBS at all. I think they should advertise and make a hefty profit. I agree with you that the ads aren’t visually intrusive. The’re pathetic though, as they piss a lot of people off without (as I presume in the OP) generating significant revenue.
Everyone here is willing to pay a differnt level. The way to extract donations from members is really simple: Have different levels of contribution with different titles beneath the user name. You know, as they do in symphony programs: Saving Christ, Angel, Big Donor, Contributor, etc. But not stupid like that. Stroke the human animal’s natural desire for prestige. Actually, I said something similar when the boards went pay: Charge $150 for a lifetime membership is what I advised back then. Many people would have gone for it, and the world being certain as it is, it would be unlikely that collecting 10 years’ worth of membership fees would be a losing proposition (plus the NPV factor).
Or, best of all, have the ads somehow or another be something in which Dopers will actually take interest and view as a positive. I admit that that’s not easy, but it can be done.
But we’re still thinking small. Ad revenue is not really where the SDMB should get its dough. The site should be a portal to other experiences that Dopers would dig and pay for. Events, for example.
You build a brand, people enjoy the brand, and want more experiences based on that brand’s core principles or qualities. Coke lead to Diet Coke. Different but related. Now both sell like wild (for the longest time Coke didn’t want to dilute its brand by giving another product that name; hence, “Tab.” It was a reasonable concern, but eventually they relented and it was the right decision.)
The Reader is engaging in complete marketing pussydom. They are not even in the game. They are not making an attempt. I went to Loyola in Chicago and know “Unrealistically Left But Swingin’” crowd. My guess is that it survives on its ads for “escort” services, hard-core personals, and other things of that nature. Probably one reason why the Reader care fuck-all about this board is that, liberal as it is, it really doesn’t have the same kind of people who read the Reader. That is, the stoned-out, horny dregs of Chi-Town. (Full disclosure: I haven’t read the thing since graduating in 1992).
Well, that’s not my stance. I’m for successful comercialization. I do not agree with the “Ads Suck” crowd. Advertisements are fun and useful if they help you find what you are looking for or introduce to new things to enjoy. They can even be interesting and entertaining in their own right when done well. They could help build the community here. But these Google ads are just incompetent.
That’s their plan, whether conscious or un-.
It looks like you guys coaxed some gratis wisdom out of me. Enjoy it, because freebies like this are rare.
Exactly, and a lot of us predicted that would happen once we went pay to post-they couldn’t pull the same, “Our board, our rules, too bad if you don’t like it, get out” anymore. Not when we’re paying customers. So I wish they’d stop with the whole, “This place is SUCH a burden/sinkhole/money pit for the Reader!”, and “we don’t care what you think, blah blah blah.”
I will say, however, that I have gotten used to the ads, and quite frankly, sometimes it’s amusing to see what pops up in certain topics.
