Question re: Ads

[roddy]

Currently all ads are hidden from members - they are only shown to unregistered visitors.

This might change in the near future - there may be text / banner ads shown to everyone.

I have two questions related to this.

1) Any comments on showing ads? I've made every effort to keep ads out of the way of registered members so far, but the fact is that some advertisers specifically want to reach registered members. Meanwhile, I didn't start this site to make money, but if there are opportunities to do so without damaging the site, I'm not going to turn them down.

2) If I do start showing ads, would anyone be interested in a paid-for membership which hides the ads, and perhaps adds other benefits (can't think what though). What would a fair price for that be?

Thanks as always for any feedback, and you can comment by pm or the contact form if you prefer.

Rest assured, you won't be getting viagra and poker pop-ups from the forum - if anything appears, it'll be smallish adverts from relevant advertisers. Unless the viagra and poker people offer me enough money . . .

[gougou]

I would have no problem with ads. If you can make some money of this webpage, go ahead and do it, there shouldn't be many here who object.

I wouldn't be interested in membership to hide those ads, and I think neither would your advertising clients...

[roddy]

Yeah, there's an issue that if I sell someone advertising that will be shown to registered members, and then all registered members sign up for no-ad forums.

What I would probably do is make the no-ad version free for members who've been contributing for a certain time anyway, assuming any of this actually happens.

[gougou]

What I would probably do is make the no-ad version free for members who've been contributing for a certain time anyway, assuming any of this actually happens.

Well, like I said, I wouldn't mind some ads, and I guess the ones that are willing to invest money or time (by contributing) into this forum would be attractive targets for advertisers. If you exclude them yet again, I wonder how much potential advertisers would actually gain from this change in policy.

[JackP]

I wouldn´t mind text ads or normal (picture) banners...

What I wouldn´t like is these Flash banners which unfold and cover all the text on your screen... I would even consider paying to get rid of those even though I´m much more of a reader than a writer on this forum.

[wix]

roddy, I think ads are fine as long as they are unobtrusive. Text based ads like Google's are fine. Anything that flashes and annoys is not. I would just keep the ads at the top and/or bottom of the page where they don't really interfere with reading the forum.

[self-taught-mba]

Here are my two cents:

Have been a longtime reader of this site; but I have just recently finally joined. My experience as a “browser only” has never been intrusive at all with the ads.

Finally joined because after a year and a half or so of self-study and after being here in China for several months I finally feel as though I can contribute meaningful information and feel a duty to do so (and of course I’m always scared about being able to access the site now that I am in China). After joining and becoming a member I didn’t really notice much of the difference although I kind of was missing some of the ads (after I finally figured out they were gone).

Anyway my thoughts on the ad situation:

1) Roddy, you have put a lot of work into this web site and it has been of great benefit to me and many other members, so if you want to earn a little bit of money for your time I think that this fine

2) However, accepting specific advertisers always comes with a conflict of interest (I also have a degree in accounting). Whenever an organization/person has an advertiser and they become dependent upon that advertiser, there is an incentive to not really evaluate/criticize the sponsors product or perhaps preventing others from doing so. I’m not saying that you are capable of doing this only that from my experience in the accounting/auditing world, this type of opportunity can create a temptation or conflict of interest. Therefore, as an auditor, if I had to make a recommendation it would be to prefer google textbased ads as opposed to specific sponsors. I have no reason to think you have any intention of doing anything improper, but I would be remiss if I did not point out this possibility, and also so that you can realize some of the pressure you may feel later down the road.

3) I personally do like to see the advertisements and I have missed them. Sometimes I want to know what products and services are available out there. Furthermore, I like to know which companies take the time to target-market to me. Of course I also like to hear other people’s honest feedback and opinions about products and services and this aspect must not be compromised by excepting advertisements (as mentioned above).

Because I am primarily self-taught, I’ve tried many products, and unfortunately have wasted a lot of money on some of them. Some of the Chinese products are not well advertised but are of exceptional quality (Wenlin, Pleco, Interactive Chinese, BLCU Press Material etc). If I had been able to find some of these products earlier I wouldn’t have wasted my time on some of the really crappy ones.

My point is, I like to be able to know which new products are out there. So under this frame of thought, I actually think it’s OK to accept individual advertisers as long as you keep point number two in mind.

4) As far as buying the membership goes, that really is your decision. But from reading this web site for over a year and a half or so, I know that the primary purpose is to help people. Therefore, I don’t agree with adding premium services for paid members (unless of course the services come with extra costs which you must pass on to them). It would be nice if all information could be available to all those people whether they can afford a membership or not. As far as allowing people to purchase a membership not to see ads I wouldn’t have any real strong objection. I’ve seen some free sites that do that.

(by the way everybody www.matchdoctor.com is one of them, and it is actually a REAL free dating site where you can actually e-mail someone, but the selection of people is a lot less than the other sites (especially in China) and you are kind of bombarded with ads—but they also offer a fee to get rid of the ads—not a plug for the site but wanted to share(and please tell all beautiful ladies in Beijing to sign up and contact me since there are like none )

Anyway got off track, but there are sites that do this and they seem succeed. Furthermore, the membership could be a way to show support, but may also add practicality problems for you in terms of billing.

5) Obviously for me, I would not be willing to pay to get rid of the ads and for me that would be a price of zero

6) I am in total agreement with the last poster: Text and even some pictures/banners are acceptable, but anything that has flash, animation, moves, breaks up text/posts, blinks or otherwise pisses me off, will ah well piss me off .

Hope this helps,

[roddy]

Thanks for your thoughts. By number . .

1) Complete agreement, naturally.

2) Advertising wouldn't come with any right to restrict discussion - and I have no doubt what the opinion of members would be if I tried to do it. I'd encourage advertisers to reply openly to any criticism, but that's what I do for everyone.

3) You can temporarily bring back the ads quite easily if you want to see them. When you log in the cookie is specific to EITHER www.chinese-forums.com or chinese-forums.com (without the www). So assumiing you log in to www.chinese-forums.com and then browse to a topic and are curious to see what the relevant google ads are - delete the www in your address bar and hit return to reload, you'll be treated as a guest, and you'll see the ads.

4) Paid memberships wouldn't give you access to any more information - maybe something like an alternative style for the board, hiding ads, but it's in my interest to have as much info as possible in public - it improves search engine indexing, and therefore traffic.

5) Send me $100 dollars paypal and I'll let you see the ads ALL the time.

6) I wouldn't display anything other than text and static graphics to members. Maybe animation to guests, but even that I'd be reluctant to do.

Incidentally, I should point out that this is still speculative, I've just had a number of advertising queries in the last couple of weeks, and thought I'd sound people out.

Roddy

[Outofin]

I wouldn´t mind text ads or normal (picture) banners...

What I wouldn´t like is these Flash banners which unfold and cover all the text on your screen...

I second that. Ad is fine. But flash, animated ads... very annoying.

[nipponman]

No problem here with normal text ads, I see them anyway when I'm logged in on a different computer as a guest. As long as it doesn't get like this site: http://www.cheatcc.com

nipponman

[roddy]

Thanks for everyone's thoughts on this. General opinion seems to be (amongst the small subset of people who read all the way to the bottom of the board) that text and simple graphics are fine, and there's not much interest in a paid 'hide the ads' option, unless the ads actually get annoying, and I don't want to do that. Yet.

I think what I'm going to do is go ahead with putting banners up for some of my own sites and maybe a few selected others, and intersperse these with paid ads as and when they come in - and they might just not come in. I'll probably also set up a free hide the ads option for those who want it, and then anyone who doesn't like the ads can just hide them rather than complaining to me. Now, where exactly to put them . . .

[chenpv]

As long as you dont charge the membership and ask us to pay $XX to a bank.......

[sui.generis]

6) I wouldn't display anything other than text and static graphics to members. Maybe animation to guests, but even that I'd be reluctant to do.

That sounds fine to me. It's a nice resource to have around, and I'm happy for you to get some economic motivation to keep it around. Now if I start getting flooded with pop-ups, that would be a different story

[roddy]

Got some very simple text ads up and running now.

If you want to hide the ads, Click here. If you then wish to see the ads again, Click here. You'll obviously need to register to be able to do that.

You can also do the hiding / unhiding from the User Control Panel - look for "Group Memberships[/url]

[Lu]

Please nothing animated or moving, or pop-ups, or something you have to click away before you can reach the page proper. If possible not even for guests. It's just annoying. I'd prefer no ads at all (not even google text ads). I can understand you want to make some money on this site though.

[roddy]

Have removed the ads for the time being. They'll probably reappear in the near future.

[roddy]

Just as a heads up, ads are likely to be coming back in the near future. I'd still be offering the option to turn them off, but I'd have to hope not too many people would do so and that if they did they might consider a donation. The single 'Site Sponsors' block on the front page would remain though.

If you want to see what ads look like currently, log out and visit any discussion.

Roddy

[adrianlondon]

I like using this forum and, like most things on the internet, I expect to be able to use it for free. I also, therefore, expect the owner to at least not lose money in keeping me informed. So, adverts are fine. The less irritating the better, obviously, but then the companies behind the advert want to do just the opposite.

[roddy]

Ads are up now, for both guests and registered members. Info on how to hide them is here - and it's very easy.

[roddy]

Bu bu bu bump!

Have been messing around with different ad placements lately. You'll get different views depending on whether you:

Have opted to hide ads: nothing except the list of forums sponsors on the home page.

Are logged in but not hiding ads: the above, + link unit in navigation bar, banner below navigation bar, list of forum sponsors on discussion pages

Are a guest (register!): all of the above + a block of ads within the first post on each page.

Also experimenting with sub-forum sponsors - the eagle-eyed will have noticed the first appearing, the elephant-memoried will know who the sponsor is.

If you want to have a look at the changes, log out / change your hide / not hide ads status. Comments welcome.