Strong Brutal Violence (?)

Harvey

Harvey

Administrator
Staff member
Why do we need advertising for strong brutal violence on FTO? WIll the site collapse without the revenue? I protest.
 
i believe admin said that the company supplying the advertising banners filters the adds to a certain extent, but a few of the dirty ones slip in sometimes. Not much you can do about it.
 
Ads are displayed in rotation, so it's unlikely that I see what you did. In the future, please send me the ad details and the click-through link (right-click to get it without clicking on the ad).
 
Ouch, sorry to cut into the profitability! Maybe instead of being lame they are upping the game by suggesting online business needs to find another revenue source. Newspapers that are online are already trying to scramble to figure out how to provide profitable online content. I don't know what the solution is, but I would support non-ad based content and functions if the price was appropriate and the content worth while. Content viewers certainly have the right to limit what content providers want to show them. I fail to see how a technological advance that forces capitalism and the market to adjust and progress to new business models while also giving users control is lame. Look at Epic Ski and their supporters program as an example as a mostly user supported web site. Using a computer without a blocker makes me want to puke, quite frankly.
 
I'm sure the paying supporters are a small minority of EpicSki registered users. And the usefulness of forums is in large part a function of user volume, certainly in skiing if we want to see a wide variety of North America represented. The "free" boards at Epic have most of the useful information. If the paying supporters have some kind of blocking privileges when viewing the free content, then maybe that's a solution. But if they get ad blocking only when viewing the less trafficked supporter section, that doesn't mean much IMHO.

I'm a junkie who spends way too much time online about skiing. But I've visited admin a few times since he moved to Utah, and he's in a completely different league. He puts a massive amount of time into FTO, and it would be nice to see him get some economic reward for it.
 
riverc0il":2yg1gvbt said:
Ouch, sorry to cut into the profitability! Maybe instead of being lame they are upping the game by suggesting online business needs to find another revenue source. Newspapers that are online are already trying to scramble to figure out how to provide profitable online content. I don't know what the solution is, but I would support non-ad based content and functions if the price was appropriate and the content worth while. Content viewers certainly have the right to limit what content providers want to show them. I fail to see how a technological advance that forces capitalism and the market to adjust and progress to new business models while also giving users control is lame. Look at Epic Ski and their supporters program as an example as a mostly user supported web site. Using a computer without a blocker makes me want to puke, quite frankly.
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I've actually thrown around the idea of subscription-based ad-free content on AZ and it was immediately shot down by all the mods. I would imagine that polling the community would result in a similar response. Even if it did fly, do you honestly think that most ad-block users would suddenly decide to pay for the same ad-free content they now can get free using an ad blocker? You might, Steve, but I doubt most would so yes, ad blockers are lame.

It's all about balance and I think we strike a pretty fair one on AZ, as does Marc with FTO. During the ski season, most of my advertising is sold directly to Northeast ski areas, lodging establishment, and outdoor gear providers. I can't imagine that on-topic ad content like that would really make you "want to puke", Steve. That's just silly. In fact, you might even come across something useful. For example, last summer Jay was offering discounted season passes to AZ members. You're a Jay pass holder, aren't you?
 
Fair enough. Still makes me want to puke. How many supporters would it take to pony up to cover costs for the year? Would 30 users ponying up $10 each cover it? It would for my services but you guys probably use bigger bandwidth options unlike FTO's Liftlines, vBulletin is of course not free. I'd be willing to pony up $10 a piece for FTO and AZ if it went subscription. Sure, I might be in the minority.

AZ, please don't patronize me and tell me what I think based on what you think is silly. Excessive advertising on the web has always bothered me. I suspect whatever price Jay was offering on their ad banner is pretty close to what I paid. If not, whatev. I would gladly loose out on a 10% discount on something and not have to view ads. And I mean that, and to me, it is not silly.
 
riverc0il":21ans4c8 said:
How many supporters would it take to pony up to cover costs for the year? Would 30 users ponying up $10 each cover it?
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Well, it's a business, not a hobby, so the goal is not merely to cover costs. This is no non-profit venture. However, you dramatically underestimate it...literally by several orders of magnitude. FTO serves more than a million page views to 150,000-200,000 unique monthly users in winter. We run on a dedicated mirrored server in a professional server farm in Virginia. We pay not only for bandwidth, but also for server housing and maintenance -- this ain't no virtual shared server, our traffic mandates otherwise.

riverc0il":21ans4c8 said:
I'd be willing to pony up $10 a piece for FTO and AZ if it went subscription. Sure, I might be in the minority.
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A frighteningly small one. The pay-for-content model on the Internet is a loser. If the New York Times can't figure out how to make that model work, why would you think that we can?

Riv, no intent to offend is made here, but I want to try to put this into perspective. To do so let me first remind folks that Liftlines is but a small portion of our content offerings -- our bread-and-butter is news content. Now, let's look at the alternatives. Other media outlets both charge you for content and sell and display advertising. Ever buy a SKI Magazine issue? You paid for it, but you likely browsed the ads, too, and likely didn't stop to think that Mountain Sports Media should print it without ads because you paid for it. What about a newspaper? You paid for that too, yet the Caledonian Record displays advertising on its pages. I doubt that bothered you much. Why should you view FTO any differently?

Our financial costs are significant. Furthermore, like Greg's AlpineZone, time this project costs me is incalculable. Ads pay the bills, plain and simple. Occasionally one like the one Harvey apparently spotted slips through, and I do my best to prevent that from happening. It not only has the potential to offend users, but it also detracts from our professionalism and the appearance we try to create. For that reason, please - in the future send me the info that will help me identify the source and eliminate it.
 
Admin":1ixtx45i said:
riverc0il":1ixtx45i said:
How many supporters would it take to pony up to cover costs for the year? Would 30 users ponying up $10 each cover it? (...) I'd be willing to pony up $10 a piece for FTO and AZ if it went subscription. Sure, I might be in the minority.
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A frighteningly small one. The pay-for-content model on the Internet is a loser. If the New York Times can't figure out how to make that model work, why would you think that we can?
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Zoneski has an extreme membership which I think costs $15 CDN which give you certain advantages like special deals, special forum section, space to load movies, etc., I think? I just checked and 36 members were Extreme this season out of approximately 1500 total registered members. I personnally wouldn't go for it, like Tony, I spend too much time on Ski forums and I'm wouldn't appreciate paying to participate or exchanging information in a forum.

Admin":1ixtx45i said:
Our financial costs are significant. Furthermore, like Greg's AlpineZone, time this project costs me is incalculable. Ads pay the bills, plain and simple.
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=D> I thank you for taking all this time. This place has almost everything ski related, when you consider the team of people behind FTO, it's even more surprising. Thanks Marc.
 
Patrick":1f77q10k said:
Zoneski has an extreme membership which I think costs $15 CDN which give you certain advantages like special deals, special forum section, space to load movies, etc., I think? I just checked and 36 members were Extreme this season out of approximately 1500 total registered members.
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For an infinitesimal $390 total. That would earn me $0.18 per hour for what I alone put into this, not to mention the time and effort of others, or our server expenses.
 
Admin":3i5svsiv said:
For an infinitesimal $390 total. That would earn me $0.18 per hour for what I alone put into this, not to mention the time and effort of others, or our server expenses.
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I know that they were expecting more people that would buy into it, however like I started above, Why would people pay to access a ski forum and get a few freebies? Okay, this one is Quebec's only real ski forum and it's in French, but still.
 
riverc0il":21zcd7ft said:
Fair enough. Still makes me want to puke. How many supporters would it take to pony up to cover costs for the year? Would 30 users ponying up $10 each cover it? It would for my services but you guys probably use bigger bandwidth options unlike FTO's Liftlines, vBulletin is of course not free. I'd be willing to pony up $10 a piece for FTO and AZ if it went subscription. Sure, I might be in the minority.
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Admin":21zcd7ft said:
Our financial costs are significant. Furthermore, like Greg's AlpineZone, time this project costs me is incalculable. Ads pay the bills, plain and simple.
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It's not just about covering costs, Steve. Like Marc, I've spent likely thousands of hours over the years developing and maintaining AlpineZone since I started it in 1998. Sure, I love it and that's partly why I still do it anyway, but don't you think all that time is worth something? I'm certainly not looking to make millions, but being able to draw a decent part-time salary from the ad revenue would be nice. Ad blocking cuts into that.

riverc0il":21zcd7ft said:
AZ, please don't patronize me and tell me what I think based on what you think is silly. Excessive advertising on the web has always bothered me. I suspect whatever price Jay was offering on their ad banner is pretty close to what I paid. If not, whatev. I would gladly loose out on a 10% discount on something and not have to view ads. And I mean that, and to me, it is not silly.
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Don't go getting all "offended" on me now Steve. You posted an opinion that online ads make you want to puke and I simply posted my opinion that that's silly, especially on topic skiing-related ad content. Again, it's all about balance. I do not honestly think that the ads on AZ are all that intrusive. Sure, pop-ups, flashing ads, etc. are annoying, but I don't serve anything like that. And BTW, you're being marketing to every day whether you know it or not. Better not leave the house if it's really that offensive to you.

It really boils down to an ethics thing. It actually surprises me that you would encourage ad blocking. We've met a few times and you've been posting on AZ since basically the beginning so I think I know you pretty well. I've actually seen you posts things like not taking sick days to ski, or not browsing the Web while at work because you think it's immoral and costs your employer money. Well, ad blocking does the same thing to Marc and me. I'm not going to cast judgment. Ad blocking is not illegal. After all, I fast forward through commercials on my TiVo (although I already paid for the content via my satellite TV subscription). So, do it if you want, but please don't encourage others to do the same.
 
AlpineZone":5mq49os4 said:
And BTW, you're being marketing to every day whether you know it or not. Better not leave the house if it's really that offensive to you.
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Oh, don't I know that. I used to be a little more hard core than I am now. Lasn's Culture Jam is a feature of my library and used to enjoy purusing the Adbusters web site and honestly considering subvertiments but ultimately decided against malicious destruction of property even if it offended me.

You are right though, AZ, I am pretty ethical, so here's an open offer for the both of you. If you want to detail (PM is find instead of public) your total ad revenue and break it down on a per user basis and provide the average ad revenue you receive per user, I'll pony up my fair share via pay pal and stick my money where my mouth is since you aren't getting Ad revenue from me. Though I would want verification on the data to verify I would be paying a fair price, so you guys might not be interested. But did want to make the public offer that I am not affraid to pay for services that I my be thieving away from services I utilize.

Personally, I think (much like the music industry and RIAA) that your users utilizing AdBlocking software may just be suggesting the business model needs to change. Honestly, I don't have a recommendation for an alternative.

Also, I would like to suggest that frequent users of these web forums may be contributing to your financial gain as a for profit enterprise and doing so for the enjoyment of the service. AZ had given back to the users of the AZ site and deserves recognition for that. But tis a two way street. Users drive promotion of the site which drive hits which drives ad content.
 
riverc0il":1o4t4q7f said:
Personally, I think (much like the music industry and RIAA) that your users utilizing AdBlocking software may just be suggesting the business model needs to change. Honestly, I don't have a recommendation for an alternative.
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Therein lies the rub. I can assure you that over 13 years of doing this I've looked, in vain, for an alternative business model. It doesn't exist. Unless you're marketing nrop (sorry, had to spell that backwards to avoid the filters) the pay-for-content model on the Internet doesn't work.

I'll remind you, Riv, that I didn't particularly take issue with your ad blocking. I think that AZ's analogy to Tivo commercial-skipping is apt. Would I like to serve the ads to you along with the content? Of course...but your blocking implementation is your choice, and I recognize that.

And as a privately-held entity I won't be disclosing revenue or expenses, publicly or backchannel, nor am I interested in accepting your money. Advertising-supported content is our business model and we'll be sticking with it at least until something better surfaces. Suffice it to say that these two facts exist, however:

1. We don't make a boatload, but we do slightly better than breaking even over costs. My hourly income from FTO, however, is below poverty level, largely because of the enormous amount of my time this enterprise sucks out of me. It's for this reason that I can't make a living solely from FTO and therefore have to turn to other income sources as well to feed my family.

2. User subscription fees would never come even marginally close to equalling advertising revenue. Your offer here, and your comments earlier in this topic regarding just how much would cover our annual costs, reinforce my belief that you really have no idea just how much money changes hands either for advertising or for our expenses. Our direct sales are sold on a CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) or flat-rate basis. Google AdSense, however, is sold on a CPC (cost-per-click) basis, and in fact blows away the revenue derived from directly-sold CPM or flat-rate ads. AdSense does so well that we nearly completely abandoned direct sales. So while you may not be interested in contextually-relevant advertising, there are lots of people who are, and are therefore clicking on those ads.

Were it not for advertising, FTO wouldn't exist. This is no charity enterprise, and any red ink comes directly out of my own pocket.
 
riverc0il":31wrv1jn said:
You are right though, AZ, I am pretty ethical, so here's an open offer for the both of you. If you want to detail (PM is find instead of public) your total ad revenue and break it down on a per user basis and provide the average ad revenue you receive per user, I'll pony up my fair share via pay pal and stick my money where my mouth is since you aren't getting Ad revenue from me. Though I would want verification on the data to verify I would be paying a fair price, so you guys might not be interested. But did want to make the public offer that I am not affraid to pay for services that I my be thieving away from services I utilize.
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Well, I'm not going to disclose specifics, but let me just say that even if all of AZ's active member base (currently 500) ponied up your initial offer of $10 per year, that wouldn't even come close to the revenue plus barter value I do each year via AZ.

Speaking of barter, any guesses on where those comp lift tickets, of which I've given a number to you Steve, come from? Here's a hint - the answer can be found inside a 468x60 pixel rectangle... ;)
 
Admin,
Thanks for all your hard work and time.. You have made this a fantastic site. that is one of my favorite (non norp) sites :D :shock: :) just joking.. Place as many ads and banners as you need :!:
 
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