Hey Bit-Tech, I have recently discovered your site through a link to the Goldeneye: Source preview you have done, and I must say that I think your site is way cool. It contains all the content that a geek like myself can spend all day reading at work and not have to do any work lol I think my stay here will be a long one... Anyway, my reason for posting this thread is this: Have you ever considered offering users some kind of service where if they make some kind of donation they can have the advertising removed from the site ? I understand that a lot of sites these days use advertising as a form of funding for hardware, upgrades, and general maintenance, but its one of those things that bugs me a little when im trying to read an article or a nice long forum thread, when all I can see fom the corner of my eye is the flashing of banners etc. Dont get me wrong though - I'm not complaining, im just curious I have only been here 2 days, but can safely say that i would definitely take advantage of such a service if it existed, and I'm sure im not the only person though who has thought about this
i couldnt find what i was looking for on the search but this has being discussed before, i cant remember what the outcome of the discussion was though.
Hi jedeyeNite, Thanks for the kind comments about bit-tech.net The Goldeneye Source Preview article has been generating a lot of traffic for us. So welcome to bit-tech first and foremost. To answer your question, unfortunately, we cannot offer a pay-to-remove-advertising service. Let me explain why 1) to equal the loss from the banner sales membership fees would be extortionate, and also makes it harder for us to sell banners on lower figures viewing ads. If you're familiar with SomethingAwful (.com) who charge for their forum membership, $10 each from around 60,000 members and they still make a loss each and every month. Forum membership cost isn't their only source of income either. The adverts on bit-tech make a lot of money. It isn't just a bit of pocket money for beer every now and then and the money doesn't just buy hardware and that kind of thing - it pays peoples salaries, for lots and lots of bandwidth and many other costs monthly (travel expenses spring to mind). It costs us a 6 figure sum (£ not $) to run annually and as we grow that will only grow also. 2) people who REALLY dont want ads are going to install an adblocker, not pay for no ads / subscription. 3) other sites who do this now wish they hadn't, as they have to continually provide the service whilst making a loss - no going back. 4) sharing of accounts, more loss of money and admin time 5) extra code bulk to site and forums, meaning more cpu usage (server costs will grow) Let me just point out something that you said: Think of it like this: You get to do no work all day, we provide 'all the kind of stuff a geek wants to read' for you, and all you have to do in return is just to have ads placed on your screen. It doesn't cost you anything and there's no limit to how much you can read or anything like that Another common misconception is that it's ok to block banners if you don't click them. bit-tech doesn't get paid per click for the banners - we get paid by impressions, so blocking banners directly harms us. We try our absolute best to deliver adverts that will appeal to the people that read bit-tech - bear that in mind also. We don't advertise stupid crap like free similes for your instant messages or anything of that nature. So, in conclusion, you actually help us more by having those ads on screen than you would by contributing money for ad-free pages. Let your friends know what we're up to and you're helping us even more I hope this answers your question, and as I said: thanks for the kind words, and welcome
While we're on the subject of ads... what happened to the ads by region thing? I think the only ads that'll take me to a site where I can buy stuff and not import it is the XFX ad. And what became of the google ads? I clicked thorugh quite a few of them to see if there was anything I might want to buy.
Hugh has decided that 'run of site' is the way that he wants to sell the ads. I can't really argue with him, because he's doing a fantastic job with sales. Can you not buy AOpen/Foxconn components in the US?
Welcome to the forums jedeyeNite. RTT pretty much covered everything there - the breakeven threshold cost per reader is vastly more than what you guys would be prepared to pay for access. There is still the "free" mentality on the net that means if we charged a membership fee, people would just leave in droves instead. Maybe once the micropayment era arrives, people will pay 0.001 cents per page they read instead of ads. Just finally, we do try our best to make ads interesting, and relevant. Most importantly, we aim to never run advertising on bit-tech that we would object to on any of our other favourite sites. So, you won't see ads for Casinos, porn, the latest smiley icons, those annoying sponsored keywords everywhere, pop-ups etc. We use the site too much ourselves each day, so if they'd annoy the crap out of us, we *know* they'd annoy you guys. Which is not cool. There's no getting around the fact that all ads are animated these days, and designed to attract your attention, but we do try to blend them as best we can with the site, and make them stuff you might want to click on. Bloodcar: we appreciate your support mate, but the GoogleAds looked rubbish on the site compared with the other ads, and it was always the plan to phase it out once we had enough manufacturer contracts. The "ads by region" concept is called Geo Targetting if you wanted to research it. It can be handy in certain cases, but it is a lot more work for us than just a normal worldwide campaign. As Tim said, many of our partners are global companies, so if you see something you're interested in, most of the time you should be able to click Where To Buy on their homepage and find your local reseller.
thanks for taking the time to explain it...im not going to leave becasue of a few ads, and after a few months im sure i'll get used to them..hell i might even click a few
Loads of cool information there, thanks guys - good to know I don't have to click on every ad to support you - but i generally do find at least one per month which interests me. And can I take this opportunity to thank everyone at bit-tech for NO STINKING POP-UPS!!!!!! or pop-unders, or movie clips or stupid animations which block out half the page, play annoying music and hide the tiny little close button where you can't find it. Keep it up and may you never offer me the chance to win a free ipod, punch the monkey or download smileys.
