2005 and beyond...

Beruthiel

BuffyBot wrote:

Perhaps the admins need to look at what they're currently doing and delegate some of the "lesser" stuff to some people they trust - i.e someone to deal with name changes, someone to deal with complaints.."uber-mods" sort of somewhere between mods and admins. I'm sure some of the long term folks that the admins know wouldn't mind helping out

great idea and would certainly help to take the load off a bit

Crash

*cough*powermonger*cough*

/me waves at beruthiel

anyhow, yeah i'd say delegating the menail admin tasks to some of the trusted mods might work out well. probably the easiest way to speed up responses without turning the admins into duracell bunnies. :P

Beruthiel

crash_000 wrote:

*cough*powermonger*cough*

/me waves at beruthiel

smartarse
I was not thinking of myself, I have enough to do thanks, plus, I can just about turn me puter on - this type of job is for a nerd, of which I am not...

Winters

lafortezza wrote:

A voluntary text-payment, even if it was a couple of euro per year from numerous users would make a difference.

This has been looked at before however it was thrown out the window as the service providers usually look for more then half the amount. So in reality although you many be "donating" like €3, boards will only actually recieve like €1 or €1.50 worth of that. [Providing my memory is correct and thats what was said last time it was mentioned].

More super-mods might help giving the admins more time. And maybe reinstating Lucutus as full admin

SantaHoe

Although 50% comission is a rip-off ... it's still 1.50 more than they'd get otherwise.

spongebob

SantaHoe wrote:

Although 50% comission is a rip-off ... it's still 1.50 more than they'd get otherwise.

I heard that some of the UK ones with Irish Premium Text Numbers in the 5nnnn range can do it for about 33% of Gross which includes the Irish Vat as well (17% of Gross) . Shop around a bit .

Ecksor wrote:

Cripes Muck, seriously, either amp is right and you have no idea how this place works or you do know how it works and you're just annoyed that it doesn't work to suit you. I wouldn't be surprised if both are true, despite the contradiction that would mean. Now, you can vote with your feet as you've mentioned on a few occasions, but get on with voting. Others may be sorry to see you go, but I sure as hell won't.

Muck has gone Ecksor, you know because you did the necessaries yourself at his request last week . Muck thought that overall Boards was evolving in a way that would ultimately (soonerish ) suit nobody and would probably be delighted to see the supermod/admin lite idea gain a bit of mo' .......if he cared enough anymore which is in itself debateable .

If the Feedback board is not where one should discuss the 'Boards Project' then do point me to the appropriate forum . Otherwise why act indignant if relevant stuff is 'fed back' in a Feedback forum :eek:

%*^(

ecksor

Talking about yourself in the 3rd person? This supports my theory about the potential contradiction.

Feedback all you like, but I don't have to pretend that you have a damn clue what you're talking about. But don't feedback while saying "I don't care" because then why the hell are you spending time posting or "I'm going now ... any minute ... don't like the way this is going ..." as if it makes any difference at all. It's just attention whoring nonsense.

ecksor

BTW, that post isn't an invitation to drag this thread off-topic. If you really wish to feedback what you feel is going wrong with boards then open another thread. I didn't ban you the last time you consistently dragged a thread off-topic but I will ban anyone who drags this one off topic.

Peace

How much revenue would 1euro per member per year generate?

ecksor

We have a bit over 27,000 registered users (not including banned) of which close to 19,000 have actually posted. Something around 5,500 seem to use boards regularly judging by how many have actually used it in the last 30 days. That figure is more like 7,000 if you take the last 60 days and 12,000 if you take the last year. I guess you could estimate it from that depending upon your model.

spongebob

ecksor wrote:

BTW, that post isn't an invitation to drag this thread off-topic. If you really wish to feedback what you feel is going wrong with boards then open another thread. I didn't ban you the last time you consistently dragged a thread off-topic but I will ban anyone who drags this one off topic.

So what is your vision for 2005 and beyond ?????????? , I did post mine.

(Lots of) Peace be with You Ecksor

*^%(*

SantaHoe

Ok, but where are we on the Crazy frog?
Seriously though, I think the texting idea could tie in nicely with the old idea the admins had of paying to change someone elses tagline.
Maybe have it set at €10 to change a tag line and you can text the users name followed by the tagline you want or something.
You could even (or could you? I have no idea) have a few users chipping in on the same vote to spread the cost around a bit.
I'd probably be a bit sore having some faceless corporation taking 50% if it were a larger transaction, but for amounts of say less than €10 a pop it wouldn't be a major source of grief in my mind.
Although you could get 100%(?) of the cash through if everyone setup an e-transfer, but I think it's the hassle of doing all that that puts people off.

koneko

If it's possible, the txt idea sounds good and a lot of the other members who don't subscribe would probably go for it (studenty types loves their texts, they do).

But with the crazy frog... now you've just gone mad

DeVore

Wow you people are commercial hahahahah.

Ok, Crazy Frog makes my b*ll*x hurt. I mean physically. I'd rather eat my own legs.

Texting pays a huge chunk to the operators. 30-50% (and I've only seen the 50% ones). I dont like it much but if it dropped to anything reasonable I guess we'd use it as an additional option.

Subscription is a nice way to raise cash but we really need someone looking after the subscribers as we need to offer more to them and give them some TLC.

Affiliation is another way we can generate cash. I intend to look into affiliations with Play.com and Komplett among others.

We cant just throw bodies at this, we need to do accounts, pay tax returns, make agreements, work on things other then simply making sure the site is going (like debates, boards events etc). Thats the fun stuff that being here allows us do.

I am most certainly NOT putting more ads on the site. If anything I want to take them off (or at least improve their return, the google ads arent exactly churning cash in our direction. Very poor revenue actually...). Putting ads between thread links is kinda evil. Put them between forum and thread itself (ala Yahoo!) is pure fookin' Satan, so dont even think about suggesting it

Our ideas so far involve Affiliations, Subscriptions and a possible opt-in monthly or bi monthly PM from the admins (ala DNTK but containing an ad at the bottom). The aim here is to make enough to keep things ticking by stealing tiny slices where noone notices

DeV.

StupidLikeAFox

Question!
Whats the difference between affiliations and sponsorship?

For instance, you mentioned we wont have a ''Broadband, brought to you by Eircom'' but wont play.com or komplett be annoyed if someone is complaining about them etc on some board?

Moriarty

I think it's more along the lines of a 'click on this link to go to play.com and 5% of whatever you spend goes back to boards.ie', ColHol.

I think.

koneko

Yep, what Moriarty said. Also, what Dev was saying, I think, is that sponsorships/affiliations won't affect normal boards. Like the Broadband board, sponsored by Eircom. Or the Pets board, sponsored by Whiskas.

DeVore

Correct. Affiliations is a % kick back when someone from your site buys something from theirs. Like Amazon will pay us 5% of your entire purchase price if you go to them from our link.

However, its automated and theres no link or understanding about any of the forums we have here! There would be no connection between the Books forum and the link any more then there would be from any other forum.
Such deals are very common on the net and people like Amazon let you fill in a form and it automates your Id and spits out a special url for you there and then!

What I meant by the eircom comment is that I dont want to get into biasing the forums. Ever. We get so many requests from suppilers in a specific area to "brand" the various forums (omg, the Tech ones get them all the time!!!) and they always get the same response. No. Never. We have done targetted advertising before which is ok, but I dont want any idea that anything said on our forums is unaccceptible because of a "sponsor". If that ever happens, I'll have failed from my primary goal that made me want to set up Boards in the first place.

DeV.

mike65

koneko wrote:

Like the Broadband board, sponsored by Eircom.

*cough*

Mike.

Moriarty

Down with this sort of thing.

ARGINITE

I think the Affiliation idea is good espically with play.com/cdwow.
I think the Admin could delegate the giving out of TLC to the nonsubscribed members to other mods, while they could take care of the subscribed people.
I wouldnt see a problem with more ads at the end of the pages, because there are SFA ads their.

Mimikyu

This post has been deleted.

sceptre

Komatoes wrote:

what about those intelli ads you see on a lot of sites, not actual ads, just when certain keywords like CPU are posted they appear as a link to intel or amd etc, they aren't intrusive

Can I vote "no, no, a thousand times no" please (no offence intended Komatoes but they're among the most annoying "features" you see on any sight short of annoying flash adverts that fill the screen)

Worth looking at the setup on www.thedvdforums.com for the affiliate deals. Last time I was there they had drop-downs at the top of the page (taking up far less space than the google adverts) with their affiliate companies and they're pretty sharp about changing any links posted in their bargain forum to include the affiliate ID if it exists for a particular online store (and editing out affiliate links owned by other people - you have to keep in mind that you'll need to do this, make it clear and make people understand why they can't post their own affiliate links or we'll be overrun with the evil ones). CDWow also do an affiliate deal and their stuff is posted all the time on our own bargain forum (let's use the bargain forum, it's sitting there anyway)

seamus

Komatoes wrote:

what about those intelli ads you see on a lot of sites, not actual ads, just when certain keywords like CPU are posted they appear as a link to intel or amd etc, they aren't intrusive

Oh God.

They are the spawn of Satan, just one level below pop-up ads for annoyingness.

davej

Just on the affiliates thing. Normal boards users are always posting links to products on the likes of komplett or play.com . It would be good to set things up so that an ordinary user could post his link such that boards would get a cut of this action too..

Or is this what is intended anyway?

davej

spongebob

Even better write a normalisation script which, for example, replaces every iteration of ' www.play.com ' or ' play.com' or 'http://www.play.com' in postings with

http://www.play.com/affiliate/boardslink.htm or whatever.

If the url were longer it may point to a specific product and should not be rewritten but the shorter links could.

Its easy to automate and can be run once a week/fortnight . The same script could normalise all links to all affiliates in all posts and can be used to rewrite links were an affiliate linking to change .

A word of caution in the specific case of play is that their euro - sterling rate is apparently crap. One is better off 'buying' in sterling and letting the cc company take care of the currency excahnge/ Boards should therefore consider whether it should be a UK affiliate and get its outpayments in sterling into Paypal .

Other sites should be checked before affilaiate deals are made in case their Euro rates are crummy.

My 2c

(&*

therecklessone

alkjdflkajf wrote:

A word of caution in the specific case of play is that their euro - sterling rate is apparently crap. One is better off 'buying' in sterling and letting the cc company take care of the currency excahnge/ Boards should therefore consider whether it should be a UK affiliate and get its outpayments in sterling into Paypal .

Other sites should be checked before affilaiate deals are made in case their Euro rates are crummy.

My 2c

(&*

A very good point TAFKAM.

Also bear in mind that most users of boards wouldn't touch cdwow.ie when they know the UK site (among others) is a cheaper option, especially since they can choose € as the currency of transaction when checking out.

Sleepy

Affilitate links for the likes of Amazon, Play & CDWOW are a good idea. The basic ones (i.e. amazon.co.uk/boardsusername/) could just be linked into the top drop down menu. I know I'd use thm and I'm sure lots of other regulars would use them too (even if it does mean forgoing piggy points on pigsback.com).

The amazon affiliates thing works by adding your username to the end of the link (or at least it did a few years ago when I was last involved in it) so a normalisation script for amazon at least would work.

My own 2c is that we could charge entrance for Boards Beers. These have become extremely popular and the ones I've been to have seen over a hundred people in attendance. Any of us that go to them would probably be more than happy to pay a tenner for the night (cos hey, that's still cheaper than entrance to most nightclubs in Dublin). That means you could raise close on a grand (or over even) from each beers so over the year there's an earning potential of roughly three to five thousand euros which I'm sure would dramatically help the war chest.

It could become a "reccomendation" that a Paypal donation of a couple of euro is made by anyone engaging in transactions on the For Sale/Wanted boards. EBay initially paid for itself off this honour system and I think we can all agree it worked okay for Pierre Omidyar.

If the Ads by Google aren't making much, would it be worth while to run ads commercially? I'm sure an approach to the right advertising company could be worthwhile. Armchair, Blacknight, Komplett etc. might be interested in placing ad banners on boards too as I'm sure they've discovered at this stage how many customers boards.ie send their way. (Speaking of which, do komplett offer any affiliate program because I know I've bought off them based on recommendations given on boards.ie).

I have to say I like the text idea as an extra revenue stream. It mightn't be the nicest idea but I think the revenue from it could be quite surprising. Especially were the system setup in such a way that you are texted your password for your username (instead of email verification), this could also tie every user to one account and one account only (unless you've access to more than one mobile) which should in theory cut down on muppetry as people would find it harder to create trolling/flaming accounts.

my 4c.

DeVore

Aye Muck, that occured to us too. My desire is to harness Boards without yoking it, and that sort of thing works nicely.

I've never seen these intelli ads but I dont like the sound of them (or the immediate reaction ahahha). We dont need more ads, we need just to improve the cash flow.

The google ads make shag all money but they *are* easy money. Let me put it in context, the google ads for all of last year paid the lions share of our new server. an Average of 4 Million a month, 12 months .... you do the maths.
We can do better then that, much better imho.

Also, it would be nice to do a few things that arent simply bulletin boards.

DeV.

Beruthiel

Play.com have made a small fortune out of me this year, I alone could keep boards afloat with the amount I spend there!