Ever since the existence of the ad-block Plus plugin for firefox and many other plugins i don't think thats going to be useful , ,besides, the members that are posting their gifts are more powerful then the creators of the site who monitors and pay the websites fee .
So i think its a bad idea , no one likes to see ads on any website when they want to see pictures of beautiful scenery's , and i don't think people will click the ads itself unless they are more interesting for the members here .
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Since the existence of ad-block plus plugin for Firefox, or any other plugins people still make a lot of money from ads. People Do click on ads, and even if they don’t the website owner can usually use between a CPC ad and a CPM ad.
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I'm 50/50, 1st because some people who may gift, might leave the site because they are opposed to ads. 2nd ads might eventually make enough to gift a 5 dollar game, maybe even eventually pay for webhosting but that's a maybe. Definitely something worth a lengthy open discussion.
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I agree with what you say about people who might leave the site because of ad that is a good point. But with a website with a small amount of traffic, and not that many people they would make about $5 sometimes or not even. But if you look at a website like this, with large amounts of traffic they aren’t just going to make $5 - they have the potential to make at least a few hundred in a month, and even more.
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I've been tossing around ideas for a while with the moderators and some of the members, but we haven't decided on anything. I'll post some of the suggestions below.
Obviously none of the above will be implemented unless they get approved by the community, but they're something to keep in mind.
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I also like the idea of "Donations + Ads + Affilates". I'd gladly view ads to support this great site and occasionally donate. I'm opposed to memberships subscriptions. Well unless it's not holding back much needed features that should just be here by default, and it won't segment the user population by elitist premium membership only giveaways. It would be alright for something like advanced management features, email notification of wishlist games that are posted and other features a select few would want badly. Nothing that'll degrade or cripple the experience for the majority.
Maybe make an iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch and Android application and sell it for $0.99 to make a little extra money? With premium features? For the SteamGifters on the go, with home screen notifications when items you are interested are posted. Maybe auto entery based on a ruleset that you can program the application (drag and drop scripting made easy for the adverage users. [Auto entry on all Portal giveaways + when my spendable points is above 10 + 5 open giveaways at a time max + if max 5 open giveway entries are met then make sure 5 are the lowest entered giveways + if more points are needed drop Brink. Portal Priotary Top(/Reg/low). -- as an example]).
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The problem is there are less than five thousand of us, and not all of us likely have smartphones. I love the idea of a mobile app, but if intended as a source of extra income then we might want to wait till we get more members. Otherwise that's a very finite source of income.
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OK, CG, ill go through all this stuff
Donations: sounds good, and as we already see with the comments above mine there are some people that would actually donate, but i dont think it would do much tbh, most people dont like giving money without seeing an immediate reaction to their action.
As you said, short term yeah, but after a while i'm afraid there would be less and less people donating even though the traffic will probably rise.
Ads: I'll be honest, i hate ads on websites. Not because of the fact that there are ads, but because most the time they are annoying as hell and/or are plain rip-offs. You have to be really careful with that. There is this website, steamunpowered.com, that always posts about how unlicensed keysellers suck, or how unfair the euro prices on steam are. Then they posted ads for an unlicensed keyseller that after a little gogling turns out to be a rip-off (no one received keys). Since then i'm not using it anymore, they kinda killed their reputation with it.
What i also hate is those "you are the 100.000th visitor! You won a car/iphone/ipad/house/whatever" ads. i hate those. pointless and just try to get you to send them a text that costs 15$ -.-
Somebody should invent a proper ad system that is monitored to get rid of that stuff, or dont even get it in.
Affiliates: wouldnt work for this site i'm afraid. the way you said i think would only clutter up the site and have no real use for users.
Membership subscriptions: Sounds great imo, but maybe have something like what we planed to do on SGS. I mean a kind of VIP club.
My idea would be something like: if you either pay 1$/month (or 10$/year to encourage people to join long-term) you get the bonuses you talked about, and you can also get the bonuses without paying if you hold 3 or more giveaways (to encourage giving AND give something to the nice people) Maybe make it more than 3, dunno.
Sorry for the wall of text.
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I am completely unbothered by ads that are relevant and unintrusive.
If I'm on a game related site and all the advertising is gaming and hardware related I sometimes even click on them.
If it started playing obnoxious ads with audio for cars, cell phones, and tampons I'd be bugged :)
But with a good ad setup, the site should be able to run an effective and revenue generating campaign.
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I guess this would be the first side where i would turn AdBlock off.
Add ref-links anyway, it doesnt harm us and generates a bit money.
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but they're annoying when people try to get you to click them for them. especially if they are trying to disguise the link as something else. not saying i would fall for it, but like i said, its annoying when they try. and it's not like they do anything good to me.
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I used someone's ref-link for greenmangaming.com. We both got 5.00£ Credit for free. Thats a ref-Link i Support. If your going to buy a Game on direct2drive anyway, Why Not use the Steamgifts ref-Link?
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Difference is you're thinking of Referral links for games and such. These are referral links for other websites that aren't hidden at all. There's just a side panel or something that says "Recommended Sites" or whatever and all it does is track people coming from this site to their site as well as potentially give people coming from this site an added bonus when they buy stuff from the other site, join it, or whatever else.
Like coupon codes for Newegg that can only be used by people who come from this site.
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I love ads. Honestly, I don't know how many great games I've found solely by seeing an ad for a game and clicking it. Why? Because I like to click ads for games that look good. Yeah, I'm probably one of the few people that does such, but honestly, I don't understand why people don't do this and then complain about not being able to find good games, tsk tsk.
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I think this idea of having ads will have positive and negative effects on the website, But mainly positive. The only main negative I can think of is that people will stop coming to the site, but seriously if people hate ads so much that they Won’t come back to the site wont they have ad block or something else to block the ads? Also the money generated from the ads should go to the owner of the website so it can help him cover the bills of the website. This website has the potential to make a Lot of money because of its traffic, whether it's from CPM or CPC ads.
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The Ad's you added are okay, they are pretty decent and dont play any sounds or so. Do they generate money by unique clicks? Or is it enough if I tolerate them and disable my AdBlock?
Is it possible to stick to plain text ad's? Otherwise its no good for my iPhone. Don't have any AdBlock here :(
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Ads are a requirement for a modern site. There is also no excuse for them to be obtrusive. Ads could be disabled for people who do a giveaway. It could be one of those incentives people keep begging for.
The ads as of now look fine. If it is possible, it might be better for them to be ads for games than ads for sweepstakes.
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I know it seems the site has gotten a lot slower lately so if ads help pay for a better host/server then I'm all for it
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I think many of you will hate that idea, but if the site had adds, it could grow up money for the creator and he could use it to giveaway more games. I see here are over 4000 members, and majority of it is active daily and multiple times. This could mean a lot of add revenue and a lot more gifts!
Just a thought.
Discuss!
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