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[5030]

Opinions are what drives forums like this, they drive participation and comments.

 

[K5lwq]

What you are missing' is that you can already impose discretion on posters through the ignore feature that is built into all Zen Foro front ends. Anyone who uses that platform has it, built in. Either that or just don't read the comments. That method is all about being an adult more than anything else.

What does this have to do with advertising? I do not have anyone on ignore, nor do I need or want to. If I don’t want to read what they wrote, I just don’t.

 

[5030]

What does this have to do with advertising? I do not have anyone on ignore, nor do I need or want to. If I don’t want to read what they wrote, I just don’t.

Nothing with advertising at all as I don't have any, ever. Ignore is 100% discretionary.

I cannot see any reason to further 'muddy' up the website with a 'premium membership' membership other than put more money in Muhammad's pocket.

If this website wasn't turning a tidy profit, it would have been gone, long ago.

Your options are yours alone to enable, not mine. I use it to remove posters that are constantly irritating, nothing more.

Divisiveness is common place on sites like this no matter what. Like I said, that drives poster participation.

 

[Snobdds]

That would severely reduce participation and in reality Muhammad gets paid for all 'click throughs' anyway and always, that is how this works and don't think for a second, he isn't making revenue because he is and has been plus he charges a fee for 'paid advertisers'. Keep in mind that this is one of the few privately held websites left and I'm sure that Vertical Scope tendered an offer to him to purchase this website and he refused simply because he's making money on it. Also, while I never allude to it, I have a .com website with a forum attached but in my case that forum is for the benefit of my customers only and it's not a public participation forum.

In closing, one he's making money on this site, always has and 2, if he decides on a 'premium membership' it's nothing more than greed on his part and I would never join, in fact, I'd probably abstain from participating at all.

I don't ever get any ads anyway. I run a security program on the front end, plus DDG and Ad blocker and always will (at the suggestion of my IT).

Where I stand on the subject and while I've been here a long time, I can end that with a simple key stroke.

If I don't want to read a comment for whatever reason, I just put the commenter on ignore or just gloss over it.

Where I stand on this subject and will.

Have a nice day. I need to go bale hay anyway.

It's not greed when you replace ad revenue with a paid subscription to not see any ads. It's a wash, mr business man.

 

[Muhammad]

Not that I need to justify it but logged-in members already get 75% fewer ads than non logged-in visitors. We only get about 2,000 members log in per day vs 30-40k visitors per day. So we already give back to the users in terms of fewer ads when they log in, as well as host a number of forums that get a lot of traffic but produce almost no revenue (i.e. front porch).

It would be great if we could run the site completely ad-free and exist on premium memberships only but the results of this poll demonstrate that the current ad experience for logged-in users is a "fair trade" for completely free access, and that means we wouldn't make enough to sustain the site on memberships alone.

Really the only thought about premium membership is to appease the users who have asked for it, not really about the money at all.

As for making money, I would make a lot more working for a big tech company than I do running TBN, but it wouldn't be anywhere near as entertaining to read every morning.

 

[Eagle1]

Not that I need to justify it but logged-in members already get 75% fewer ads than non logged-in visitors. We only get about 2,000 members log in per day vs 30-40k visitors per day. So we already give back to the users in terms of fewer ads when they log in, as well as host a number of forums that get a lot of traffic but produce almost no revenue (i.e. front porch).

It would be great if we could run the site completely ad-free and exist on premium memberships only but the results of this poll demonstrate that the current ad experience for logged-in users is a "fair trade" for completely free access, and that means we wouldn't make enough to sustain the site on memberships alone.

Really the only thought about premium membership is to appease the users who have asked for it, not really about the money at all.

As for making money, I would make a lot more working for a big tech company than I do running TBN, but it wouldn't be anywhere near as entertaining to read every morning.

Having done both, forum reading is way better than the plethora of email generated in the tech world over night. Now some of those email are highly entertaining except that writer was serious..... making is more a nightmare than entertainment.

 

[5030]

Not that I need to justify it but logged-in members already get 75% fewer ads than non logged-in visitors. We only get about 2,000 members log in per day vs 30-40k visitors per day. So we already give back to the users in terms of fewer ads when they log in, as well as host a number of forums that get a lot of traffic but produce almost no revenue (i.e. front porch).

It would be great if we could run the site completely ad-free and exist on premium memberships only but the results of this poll demonstrate that the current ad experience for logged-in users is a "fair trade" for completely free access, and that means we wouldn't make enough to sustain the site on memberships alone.

Really the only thought about premium membership is to appease the users who have asked for it, not really about the money at all.

As for making money, I would make a lot more working for a big tech company than I do running TBN, but it wouldn't be anywhere near as entertaining to read every morning.

Don't matter to me, one iota as I never have any ads, ever