I got to agree with Lenny who started this post... there are too many ads here. In fact I just went through them a few minutes ago and removed a bunch of them... since they are not paying anyways.
They say the economy is getting better, but online advertising revenue is going down... down... down...
With some ad agencies we could make over $1400 a month and cover the bills, now with the same ad agencies we are lucky if we do $175 in a month. That is quite a difference. It is no secret that for most of this year I have been paying the shortcoming out of my own pocket. If I do quick calculations at the moment this site is costing about $1200 a month to operate, which includes bandwidth, server hosting for our 3 servers, maintenance to the servers (both hardware and software... we just had 2 of our SAS Raid drives get replaced a few months ago as well as we had to replace one of our KVM Spiders which is used to remotely access and reboot that server as needed) then we have licencing for the software, buying and licensing add ons, domain registration, mobile apps branding fees, spam filtering services, firewall service, legal fees, accounting fees etc to pay.
That does not include the costs of running SatelliteGuys Radio which I pay entirely out of my own pocket. The costs there are roughly $150 a month, with music licensing fees, hosting fees, custom voice work for our bumpers and promos, 800 number for the call in shows. Yes it has commercials, but so far in our first month (since payments are delayed 120 days) we earned a whopping $40. Why am I doing SatelliteGuys radio? Because I love radio and always wanted to be in Radio, and now here is my chance. I do wish more members would get involved as its a lot of fun and we have a lot of listeners from around the world.
As you might know I removed the Gold Sponsors last year of my own doing, the reason for this was because (especially in the FTA forums) that they could not talk about a product or service if our Gold Sponsors did not sell it. Also being listed as a Gold Sponsor was like getting our endorsement as we only selected the companies who we felt offered the best quality products and customer service. Over the years all the Gold Sponsors that were no longer Gold Sponsors were REMOVED by me, it wasn't because they didn't want to advertise on SatelliteGuys in fact most wanted to pay more to come back. I did not want them back because they were not providing the quality products or more importantly customer service that I thought they should be giving our members. Being listed as a SatelliteGuys Pub Member to me was showing you the members the companies listed as Gold Sponsors we companies we could stand behind, it was a hallmark in excellence.
I am thinking of bringing back site sponsorships in 2015, with a new self service option where ANYONE can advertise here and add, remove and change ads at anytime and pay when enable their advertising account. Unlike gold membership it will be open to anyone selling a legal product, and we will just be selling advertising space to them. We will not permit them to spam in the forums nor will their ads indicate endorsement by SatelliteGuys. I am also thinking if I do it this way, if its possible sell ads by position on the page and by number of impressions. This way we can sell more ads yet each advertiser will still be guaranteed that all the ads they paid for are served.
I will be honest... this year money is so bad that I am worried (and upset) that we may not have our annual Holiday Party. In the past we have taken the extra money we have gotten and purchased great gifts and given them away to SatelliteGuys members as prizes. Over the years we have given away tens of thousands of dollars of prizes to our members. I can't tell you how upset this makes me as you guys know how much I like giving back to our members and saying THANK YOU and Merry Christmas to our members. Without our members there would be no SatelliteGuys so I feel its only right to say thanks and give back.
Another thing that upsets me is that we normally do some kind of fund raiser / Pub Membership drive where I give over half the money taken in from Pub Memberships to a charity like Make A Wish, St. Jude Childrens Hospital etc. I just can't afford to do it this year, I need to Pub Membership money to pay the bills for the site. In addition it is normal for me when I find out one of our members needs something or is doing fun raising for me to personally help them out, I feel bad I haven't been able to do much of that the past few months. Even on a non SatelliteGuys level, me and my wife enjoy giving back to our community and for years have adopted families at Christmas and purchased all their Chritmas wishes, food and supplies... I am not sure if I can afford to do that this year.
Things WILL get better this I am sure of, the question is when.
Sorry for the long message but this has been weighing on me heavily for quite awhile now, and this thread gave me an opportunity to finally say something so THANK YOU.
As far as the ads go, I will continue working on them and taking some out as you are correct your experience here should be a good one, ads should not crash browsers. Ads a a necessary evil, however if they are crashing peoples browsers then that is something I can not be happy with.
Thanks Again!
