Advertising/Donation options

[admin (no pm's please)]

Where we house our servers has Dell engineers on site and the clout to get a good deal out of Dell.

It might not be the cheapest option, but it does mean things are very geared up to deal with Dell issues, and hence it makes an awful lot of sense for us to stick with Dell.

Thanks for the post though.

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[Excalibur]

I think Swoopo is probably one of the most unpleasantly misleading and unethical ads I have ever seen on this site - encouraging irresponsible gambling - its a very dodgy fairground game really pretending to be a legitimate auction site.

But I accept the problem. Many forum owners are volunteers - we set up forums as a public information service rather than some form of self-promotion. As such, we dont earn money from our sites, and I suppose we are reluctant or unable to pay for the luxury, or the hassle of trying to squeeze money from our own subscribers.  

Has affiliate marketing been tried - giving links to legitimate stores with a commission for sales? How does that compare with google adverts in raising income?

Google advert are very expensive to buy for advertisers, and raise very little for website owners. The logical way ahead is to work with major advertisers directly and cut out googles profit as the middleman.

[admin (no pm's please)]

Direct advertising has its own overheads and lacks the contextual nature of google that does mean that a lot of adverts people see are relevent and even interesting and actually good to have. Of course not all ads google dishes out are idea, but they are still a good solution.
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[perthtruebluetwo]

what about contacting all active forums asking for the £10 pound donation.


or what about charging new forums  £10 pound start up fee.

You have me worried here admin as i would hate to lose my forum that is run by yourselfs.
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[admin (no pm's please)]

Let me say again, we are a very long way off a crisis.

We continue to operate profitably.

But just not profitably enough for us to be as able to as easily get the new hardware needed for the long term as we were in the past.
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[mwl]

If we wanted to donate via a text message like in Holland is available can that be done here as well?

[admin (no pm's please)]

I can't say I have ever heard of that sort of thing   paypal is pretty global.
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[admin (no pm's please)]

Another factoid for anyone worried about us needing to appeal.

We have just recorded our best month financially on the forums for 18 months The number of active forums has continued to grow throughout that time. Of course that is painting a rosier picture than the overall reality which involves drops in the parent company income and the need to be totally sure that we are not at all vulnerable if the recession bites harder.

But rest assured money donated will go towards making myff better
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[Sandman]

I am at the moment consulting our forum team at   modelsteam.myfreeforum.org   about making our donation.

I'm just reminding those who intend, like us, to use paypal, that here in Britain, we have an option to mark a payment as a gift. This saves paypal fees, and over many donations will save a great deal of money.

I'm just posting here as many people are not aware of this facility.

Sandman.
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[admin (no pm's please)]

I believe with the "gift" options the sender pays the fees, nice for us, but it is not a free option.

What we are doing is consider that the money is VAT free as the payment is not for a service as such. A very good financial excuse for sticking to what were already our principles on this. e.g. we are not giving preferential treatment to people that donate, we endeavor to give everyone a good level of service.
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[Sandman]

[admin (no pm's please)]

Thanks for clarifying that.
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[Parch]

I purchased Advert free for 6 months from the site shop. Am I correct in my thinking that this removes all the banners and advertisments from my forum?

Seems like simple question I should know, I'm somewhat new to this forum.
Thanks.

[Zudane]

Yea, all banners and ads are removed there.
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Harsh Reality - Unleash your creativity!

[Parch]

Took effect early this morning thanks

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