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| Migrating the forum to Discourse |
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| peter-h:
I run adblock by default and on eevblog I see just the two ads at the top. I don't know if there are others. These two are ok. But to get decent income you normally need lots more adverts. "Relying on adverts isn't a sustainable business model, and a business model is what a forum needs if it's going to grow and thrive" What would be a "sustainable business model"? |
| james_s:
--- Quote from: Ian.M on April 12, 2020, 12:44:09 pm ---Many of the users that block ads do so because they find *ALL* advertisements to be useless annoyances*. Even if you get them to turn off their ad-blockers, you wont get any clickthrough from them without tricking them. Any site with deceptive ads doesn't deserve any revenue they get from them. Customers that will click to buy anything shiny waved in front of them usually aren't technically savvy enough to (a) want, (b) install, and (c) maintain an ad-blocker. Therefore I question whether ad-blockers significantly impact the revenue stream of any reputable site. * The last time I bought anything due to an advertisement was back in the '80s, from an ad in a computer magazine. I have never bought anything from a TV or internet ad. OTOH I will occasionally impulse buy stuff that has been reviewed by a source I trust. --- End quote --- Exactly this. Ads are irrelevant to me, I'm just not a typical consumer, I have never deliberately clicked on an online ad in my life, I have never seen something in an ad on TV and gone out and bought it. Serving me ads is just a waste of bandwidth and a waste of everyone's time. When I see enough ads for something or someone (eg politicians) that I notice, it actively starts to turn me against them. I didn't mind online ads until they started getting pushy. Blinky animated stuff, then popups, it got so invasive that at some point I said ENOUGH and actually bought an ad blocker back before the free ones were a thing. I never looked back. |
| peter-h:
Without wishing to contradict you regarding the undesirability of adverts, how do you expect the forum which you make good use of to keep running? I run a forum too (technology, but not electronics) so I know what's involved. We have decided to not have adverts, for various reasons including - people hate them - everybody who knows how to will adblock them - if adblock doesn't work (e.g. because the ads are served from the same server, along with the main page) people will run scripts to block them (this is what e.g. Facebook Purity does on facebook) - if there is a disreputable vendor (which in the subject of my forum is pretty common) then what will you do if they want to advertise??? - you have to de-moderate the mod policy, because kicking/beating/biting posts generate far more traffic and thus clicks on ads (and then most intelligent people leave) - you have to run a "no bashing vendors" policy otherwise the advertisers will dump you, and new ones will be wary (and this degrades the forum because crappy products cannot be discussed) So we went to donation funding. This is ok until you have to pay commercial rates for server side development. I don't know EEVblog traffic but mine has had 250k posts over 7 years, about 100/day, and has 200 posters in any past 30 days. The donations cover what we have but not any significant development, and certainly no profit for the owner. I know of sites in the US which are 10x bigger and they run adverts and they are ok, but they have to deal with the above issues, including a no-bashing policy. But there are many cultural differences between the US and Europe... |
| MarkMLl:
--- Quote from: peter-h on April 12, 2020, 01:06:33 pm ---"Relying on adverts isn't a sustainable business model, and a business model is what a forum needs if it's going to grow and thrive" What would be a "sustainable business model"? --- End quote --- Something that doesn't rely on a broker- Google or otherwise- which is likely to demote you on a whim and insist that they are not accountable to you. MarkMLl |
| W9GFO:
--- Quote from: ddavidebor on March 29, 2020, 02:59:35 pm ---Hello, I have had this thought for a few years. Wouldn't it make sense to migrate the forum to the Discourse platform? --- End quote --- No. Discourse may be popular now but probably won't be in ten years. Then what, switch to the next fad? Keep it right here where the owner has total control and is not hostage to a third party that may change policies/owners on a whim. |
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