Air Gun Home :: View topic - Specific ads on top of the forum page really bothering you?

AirGunEric · Site Admin

I was getting good and tired of seeing some "is he abusing you again" ad- it was completely irrelevant to our content, and I found it insulting to boot.

So- I have instructed the ad people to block any more ads from that website.

As ads are generated based on a person's location-I obviously don't see ads that are placed for people in, for example, the UK or New Zealand. If anyone else sees ads come up frequently that are both offensive and irrelevant to the site's content- get the website url and let me know so I can have it blocked as well.

lauchlin · Supporting Member

why is there any ads

AirGunEric · Site Admin

Something has to pay for the place- perhaps you'd like to donate cash? Razz

As it is, no one has paid one cent out of their pocket to float AirGunHome- except myself. We tried a "50/50" cash raffle which would eliminate any border crossing problems and such- but that was early on and only a few people bought tickets- one person bought quite a few and wouldn't have even 'won' their fees back- so it ended and the money refunded to everyone.

Raffles and such for airgun-related prizes are not easily workable from a logistics point of view with a "worldwide" audience due to different laws.

If someone has some better ideas to float the place- by all means, let me know. The ads, as there are now are, in my opinion, minimally 'intrusive' for the most part. Perhaps some day we will get some more direct sponsors (i.e. like airgun manufacturers or distributors) but no one has offered, and until we build more momentum and have some "history" I'm not sure any big name vendors would want to spend the money here. This will change, but "right now" is not an option.

Bottom line is I won't put my hat in hand and go begging for donations and contributions. I have "put my money where my mouth is" in creating AirGunHome and do my best to obtain new resources and such as my time allows.

When traffic stays at a significant number of "hits" per month for an extended period of time, then I can go to vendors to see about them advertising directly on the site. Unlike some other sites, however, they will be advertisers- with no control over content or "official status" of any sort. Such financing would allow for the web service fees to be covered, implementation of a more advanced platform for the forum with more features and controls for members, and perhaps even covering the up-front costs of the production of goods like crests, t-shirts and so on.

Money, as I'm sure we're all aware, makes the world turn and everything costs- so the ads are up top and on the actual web pages of the site to generate a small amount of income (and it is very small- the only payment that occurs is when someone clicks on an ad- and usually only a few cents per click). This income will hopefully be able to cover web hosting costs. The ads are relatively small to be as unobtrusive as possible, and Google cannot expect or demand anything in respect to our content or opinions- they 'place' the ads and thats it.

lauchlin · Supporting Member

so how much dose it cost every year

AirGunEric · Site Admin

That's kind of a loaded question.

It depends on who the service provider is, and what amount of "bandwidth" per month you require. By bandwidth- this is an allotted amount for every information transfer from the server to a user (or robot or whatever) viewing something. For example- when you loaded up this page to view the post- you took up approximately, and this is just ballpark, about 80k of bandwidth- when you use the "back" button to go back a page- it will be cached on your machine and assuming there have been no changes to the page when you were last there, maybe 40k of bandwidth will be absorbed). Anyways- AirGunHome has a relatively low "bandwidth" allotment due to fees- so the actual cost of the hosting and domain registration issues, right now, is approximately $180 a year. By the end of this month we will likely be at the bandwidth limit- and I don't know if we reach it if people will get locked out, or I will just receive an additional bill (like an "overage" charge on a mobile phone- I need to investigate this ASAP). September may just be a "spike" so perhaps no upgrades, at increased cost, to the service will be required- but if they are- costs per year will approximately triple (we will have crossed from the entry-level threshold to a slightly more mid-range category)- but then we will have plenty of "growth room" being paid for as well. Funny part about all this bandwidth bit is that we have 10 times more people viewing the site in a month than we have "members"- and they absorb bandwidth too.

Ultimately- costs are higher than they absolutely could be to provide adequate service. When I first put the forum together (with a different name on a different hosting service) it was near the bottom-end in respect to fees- but the site couldn't be accessed 50% of the time, it was slow, there were tons of issues that might not be relevant if the site was "My Grandma's family photo album" or something else being used for a more specific, narrow audience so absolute "budget hosting" was inadequate.

lauchlin · Supporting Member

well maybe you should have some ware to send donations

AirGunEric · Site Admin

I hear what you're saying- we had one of those Donation "buttons" for awhile- but I got sick of looking at it, PayPal rapes people on fees (yes, I have alot of ideological mindset problems it seems!) and the ads will hopefully donate a few dollars eventually. We may have a "custom" airgun raffle (this will be looked at in the near future) that will be customized for legal purposes for the winner (i.e. for a UK winner, something under 12fpe, a Canadian winner something under 4.2fpe or 500fps unless they have a license, etc. etc.)

Once we obtain enough "history" to get actual airgun-type advertisers and not the generic stuff like we have now, those sorts of ads might be useful in letting people know about promotions, new guns and such- so that might be both productive in respect to fees and being a real source of airgun-specific information.

In any event- if any specific ad or ad genre is particularly offensive or irritating, I can block some things from being able to come up. The one mentioned in the original post was extremely offensive- it was an ad for women, put out by some radical feminist organization, that was essentially instructing them that all men were violent wife-beaters and such and they should buy their wonderful book to find out how and why- so I sh!tcanned it fairly quickly.