Advertising

[John Morris]

Good morning Patriot Woodworkers!

I am going to experiment with placing advertising throughout our community for a few days just to see what kind of revenue generates from it. Please be patient, this is a test only.

I would kind of like to get away from our mid summer fundraiser if possible, it is a lot of work. And if we can raise enough funding from commercial advertising to support our community, then that would be pretty neat and eliminating the need to come to you all once a year with hat in hand. So we'd only be on the hook for our once a year fundraiser for our Christmas Adopted Family projects.

 

For now, you may see some advertising, my ultimate goal would be to have advertising seen only for those who are not logged in so basically only non member guests would see the ads.

But for now you may see many of the ads.

 

If you have any ads blockers can you please turn them off for this community for a few days? That way we can get an idea of what we are seeing as far as revenue, and, I'd like your feedback on what you are seeing and how it affects your browsing etc.

 

Thank you all for your patience as I test this all out.

[Cal]

Thanks for the heads-up John.

As to making the ads only show for non-members, I could see (depending upon how prolific they are) that some folks would elect to just keep moving on rather than spending much time looking over the site and trying us out.  Perhaps a large disclaimer early in the process might alleviate that...

[John Morris]

1 minute ago, Cal said:

Thanks for the heads-up John.

As to making the ads only show for non-members, I could see (depending upon how prolific they are) that some folks would elect to just keep moving on rather than spending much time looking over the site and trying us out.  Perhaps a large disclaimer early in the process might alleviate that...

That's a great idea, I've seen that in other forums and I can't remember where, but the disclaimer was a little banner on the home page that says something like "Tired of seeing ads? Sign up and no more ads!" or something like that, thanks for that Cal, awesome idea!

[John Morris]

While on the subject, We have ads activated but I myself haven't seen any at all yet, have any of you?

[Cal]

Not yet, but I may have an ad blocker turned on.  If I do, it does a sucky job of keeping ads at bay on other sites

[John Morris]

13 minutes ago, Cal said:

Not yet, but I may have an ad blocker turned on.  If I do, it does a sucky job of keeping ads at bay on other sites

Well it's definitely working here then!

I may decide to not even go this route, I've told you all before, I don't like those ads, sponsor placements is one thing like we have now, that's fine, it looks good and it's classy, but those ads, I don't know, never liked em. We'll see.

[Gene Howe]

All in pursuit of the almighty dollar.  But, we must remember that "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch".

You've done a magnificent job of starting and running this forum. Whatever you must do to keep it purring along will be OK with the great majority of us, if not all.

[DuckSoup]

If you look at the site while not logged in you will see ads below this logo, log in and the ads go away.

[John Morris]

@DuckSoup thanks for the report, I don't see anything, if I flip over to Chrome while logged out, I do see it, but on Firefox, I don't see it either way. Hmmm, as you all can tell I'm not too good at this yet, honestly I hope I don't have to be "good at this", so far not liking what I see. I love visually appealing "things" and that ad "thing" aint visually appealing.

[Artie]

I have not seen any ads, I don’t think I have any ad blockers, but I wouldn’t swear to it.

[John Morris]

Well I just removed everything, and canceled it all, I am not sure how it works yet so until I do, there is nothing!

[HandyDan]

I saw them at the bottom the morning you started them but they quit and haven't been back.

[John Morris]

9 minutes ago, HandyDan said:

but they quit and haven't been back.

Probably a good thing.

[John Morris]

How many of us use Amazon? Anyone?

[Fred W. Hargis Jr]

All the time, we're getting deliveries probably 3 or 4 days a week from them.

[John Morris]

35 minutes ago, Fred W. Hargis Jr said:

All the time, we're getting deliveries probably 3 or 4 days a week from them.

Fred, just trying to get some feedback here. Would you consider going to Amazon from a link we have here in our community. 

If we direct traffic to Amazon and a purchase is made, The Patriot Woodworker Community picks up a commission. You wouldn't have to go through our link every time, just a couple times a month. 

We could display a static link somewhere unobtrusively in our community. And you guys would just click the link now and then. It doesn't cost you anything more at the purchase point. 

[Fred W. Hargis Jr]

Well, maybe. Almost all the orders we get are made by Marie and she's almost certainly not going to sign in here just to get to the Amazon site. For me I might use it once in a while but the number of times I order (personally) is maybe only 2-3 times a month. That probably doesn't answer your question completely but it's about the best I can offer.

[John Morris]

26 minutes ago, Fred W. Hargis Jr said:

Well, maybe. Almost all the orders we get are made by Marie and she's almost certainly not going to sign in here just to get to the Amazon site. For me I might use it once in a while but the number of times I order (personally) is maybe only 2-3 times a month. That probably doesn't answer your question completely but it's about the best I can offer.

that's a perfect answer Fred, thanks, just a heads up, nobody has to login to click on the link, the link would be visible to the public.

[Larry Buskirk]

3 hours ago, John Morris said:

How many of us use Amazon?

Although I did get a package from ebay that had shipped through Amazon awhile back. 

[Gene Howe]

We order frequently from Amazon.  We could try to get in the habit of using a PWW link.