2005 and beyond...

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!

magpie

The google ads make shag all money

Perhaps encouraging users to actually click on them might be a useful stopgap. 1 click per day per user would add up nicely, and I'm sure many people here are just gagging to buy Futurama magnets.

seamus

Beruthiel wrote:

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

Amazon, Play and Komplett have taken a good chunk of my salary too. I'm going to be buying from them anyway so if I can buy from them, and help boards, even better.

DeVore

Magpie, Google get very very annoyed indeed if they find you "encouraging" people to click. Its unfair (from their pov) to the advertiser who is paying per click-through but not actually getting customers who have any intention of buying things.

DeV.

spongebob

DeVore wrote:

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

Again my adminmod theory could apply. Let each one of them find one affiliate, get the paperwork, haggle ,finally mail you the form to sign and then build their 'bit'; of the 'normalisation' or 'revenue assurance' script and remain tech contact for 'their' affiliate going forward. Users can do it too but you know the potential adminmods whereas a user could simply arrive and pimp their site so the affiliate suggestions should come from trusted sources in the first place.

It is a good delegation ploy , its easy to administer and an easy income stream . Much better than having them arf arfing at each other . I would not exclude someone from consideration if they could not drag in an affiliate BTW but mods hanging around can see who is getting a lot of mentions these days and can check things out before they make the suggestion.

I would be personally inclined to favourably comment on HM - SAT for Sat gear (anyway) . They have an affiliate programme so why not link the whole thing together and let the normalisation / revenue assurance script kick in then , this is purely an example off the top of my head and should obviously be rolled past the mods in the fora where I am most likely to make the favourable comment in the first place as well

( Now for the statutory rude comments , threats and thread lock from Eeksore )

*&&

Trojan

Get amazon set up rapid. I've just spend another 40 squid on there, that's my 3rd purchase in as many months. I'm guessing at least 5% of users here are the same, and that all adds up. Worry about the tech details later (normalisation), but get the actually affiliation stuff set up. It's not that hard:

http://associates1.amazon.com/exec/panama/associates/apply/

Cloud

Regarding the Amazon thing, we will probably apply the Amazon affiliiate mod to our vBulletin installation (to replace any Amazon links with ones containing our affiliate account details). Should be straightforward, once they stop releasing bug fixes

Peteee

Great idea on the amazon.

Do Komplett do affiliate programs. From the modders and comp boards alone there would be a massive amount of cash, everyone buys tech stuff off komplett (i've spent nigh on €600 there over the last 1 1/2) so if any of that could go towards boards.ie it would be great.

daveirl

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steveland?

DeVore wrote:

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".

It'd be like Wayne's World

Suddenly a Reebok skin covers the forum and noone can change it.

Boston

Sleepy wrote:

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.

no offence but boards beers shouldn't have a charge on them, it would be a kin to charging for people to use boards. Once or twice there has been a cover charge, and that wasn't a problem, but charging people to go to a pub for afew drinks is abit much.

mad m

How about we all give 50cents or a euro in(though PayPal)and the Admins will put all our names in a sort of raffle who have paided and let the computer pick a random winner for a years subscription...God this sounds complicated now! Or for example the Soccer Forum whoever is registered to post there they put in X amount and maybe prize would be couple of tickets to a match or flights to there given team they support.

WizZard

mad m wrote:

How about we all give 50cents or a euro in(though PayPal)and the Admins will put all our names in a sort of raffle who have paided and let the computer pick a random winner for a years subscription...

I like this idea, I'd say this would really be good. Realistically how much would it raise? €4-5k ?

mad m

WizZard wrote:

I like this idea, I'd say this would really be good. Realistically how much would it raise? €4-5k ?

Who knows WizZard might get more.But it could be a monthly thing or whatever Admins/mods decide.Maybe they've already thought of this and are planning something.

seamus

Komatoes wrote:

they don't bother me, tis optional whether you click or not and its not an ad, just a hyperlink

That's what annoys me most about them. It's an abuse of the purpose of a hyperlink. A bit like popups have always been an abuse of the window.open() function.

If I want to find a product, I'll search for it. I'm not going to click - what I see as - fraudulent links to buy a product.

Sleepy

Boston wrote:

no offence but boards beers shouldn't have a charge on them, it would be a kin to charging for people to use boards. Once or twice there has been a cover charge, and that wasn't a problem, but charging people to go to a pub for afew drinks is abit much.

Why? You pay money to go to a nightclub don't you? IMHO the boards beers I've been at have been better than most club nights in Dublin anyway (particularly boardstock, which I don't think anyone would've had a problem paying a tenner to go to which after the fiver for the Sugar Club would've still left a hefty collection for the site.)

I honestly can't see the problem with asking those who attend the boards beers to kick in a couple of quid towards the running of the site.

seamus

Boston wrote:

no offence but boards beers shouldn't have a charge on them, it would be a kin to charging for people to use boards. Once or twice there has been a cover charge, and that wasn't a problem, but charging people to go to a pub for afew drinks is abit much.

Not really.

As Sleepy says.

I'd have no problem seeing boards beers turned into boards fundraisers. However, I think the "donation Jar at the door" model would probably work best. You could charge everyone, say €5 or €10 for a ticket. That leaves other problems though, Mainly;

1) A lot of people shy off once they see a charge. Particularly students, they've no problem spending €100 when in there, but there's no way they'll pay a tenner in.

2) If people pay in, they expect a good night. Boardstock is fine, there's quality entertainment, but the common or garden Boards Beer, is just guys standing around chatting (and dancing later). If someone doesn't have a good night, they'll never go again, and if a load of people don't have a good night, then a load of people never go again. If however, you don't charge in, and someone has a **** night, there's still a good chance they'll give the Boards Beer another chance. Over and Over again.

The "Jar at at the door" system also helps manipulate the growing drunkenness, so people will donate stupid amounts as they get drunker. DeV will say that people are free to give him money at the Beers, but I'd say most people would be happier with the Jar.

Trojan

Charging for beers is not going to work. It's a community thing and whether people show up is up to them. Hell, I'll sabotage it by announcing a free "unofficial boards beers" in the white horse on the same night

/me loses Events moderation.

DeVore

No you dont! I agree wholeheartedly.

What we do now for free wont change. Thats the agreement the admins unanimously came to. There wasnt even a discussion about it.

We'll use the subscription model to cover off not-safe-for-minors forums but thats about it for that sort of change. We're successful for what we have *done* so I dont want to change that!

Boards Beers will always be free afaiac. Boardstock might charge for obvious reasons.
Thats really up to them though.

DeV.

WhiteWashMan

seamus wrote:

Not really.

As Sleepy says.

I'd have no problem seeing boards beers turned into boards fundraisers. However, I think the "donation Jar at the door" model would probably work best. You could charge everyone, say €5 or €10 for a ticket. That leaves other problems though, Mainly;

1) A lot of people shy off once they see a charge. Particularly students, they've no problem spending €100 when in there, but there's no way they'll pay a tenner in.

2) If people pay in, they expect a good night. Boardstock is fine, there's quality entertainment, but the common or garden Boards Beer, is just guys standing around chatting (and dancing later). If someone doesn't have a good night, they'll never go again, and if a load of people don't have a good night, then a load of people never go again. If however, you don't charge in, and someone has a **** night, there's still a good chance they'll give the Boards Beer another chance. Over and Over again.

The "Jar at at the door" system also helps manipulate the growing drunkenness, so people will donate stupid amounts as they get drunker. DeV will say that people are free to give him money at the Beers, but I'd say most people would be happier with the Jar.

there will be no paying to go to a public social event.

a privately organised reception is completely different, but while boards beers are held in a public location like a pub or bar or club, then there cannot be charging.

but no reason why you cant ask for donations while youa re in there.

DeVore

If people want to support us, the supporters pack is there for that. I'm not going to strong arm anyone or embarrass them by buttonholing them for cash on whats supposed to be a friendly night out. All donations gratefully received but prefer not to harrass people for them.

DeV.

seamus

So a "please donate" jar it is then!

I have the best ideas sometimes....

Boston

seamus wrote:

Not really.

As Sleepy says.

I'd have no problem seeing boards beers turned into boards fundraisers. However, I think the "donation Jar at the door" model would probably work best. You could charge everyone, say €5 or €10 for a ticket. That leaves other problems though, Mainly;

1) A lot of people shy off once they see a charge. Particularly students, they've no problem spending €100 when in there, but there's no way they'll pay a tenner in.

2) If people pay in, they expect a good night. Boardstock is fine, there's quality entertainment, but the common or garden Boards Beer, is just guys standing around chatting (and dancing later). If someone doesn't have a good night, they'll never go again, and if a load of people don't have a good night, then a load of people never go again. If however, you don't charge in, and someone has a **** night, there's still a good chance they'll give the Boards Beer another chance. Over and Over again.

The "Jar at at the door" system also helps manipulate the growing drunkenness, so people will donate stupid amounts as they get drunker. DeV will say that people are free to give him money at the Beers, but I'd say most people would be happier with the Jar.

Nothing against boards fundraiser, Usually at this stage there is a pot at most boards beers. Problem would be, as others pointed out, charging for a public get together, which I feel should be open to all, not just those willing to pay a tenner.

jesus_thats_gre

The texting is a genius idea.. The initial outlay is a little high IIRC but could bring alot of money in..

Farls

The text idea seems good enough, personally i prefer the pay a yearly rate but i have to commend ye on the "its upto you" policy if you want to pay or not.

Making people pay for the use of something like this generally turns new comers away and we'd be lost without newbies!

As for the growing size of boards i have noticed that if you miss a few days on here it takes ages to catch up on your favourite forums!

Well done anyway lads and thanks for the excellent service.

Farlz

Fysh

How about the boards member space as a possible revenue source? I know you don't want to charge for it because it's currently for free, but hear me out. The Ts & Cs for member space already indicate that sites which rack up heavy bandwidth use are subject to being removed or whatever, and there's limited control to the user over what they can *do* with their page.

So, how about you offer Member Space Plus? A charged member space service where you get more storage space, no ads on your pages, and (maybe, depending on how much time and effort you want to put into the idea) a restricted range of boards-tested CGI/PHP scripts made available for use? I mean, you can fiddle the details but basically if someone wants webspace for whatever reason and they use boards, they can get it from you guys and contribute along the way.

DeVore

I guess a Members Space Plus is an option. I'll talk to Hosting365 as they have some neat systems for mass management of users. Lets see what can be done. I'm not keen on charging unless it really adds a lot more to it but something like a scripting language and database access would certainly fit that bill...

DeV.

trap4

Tom I admire the idealistic determination to keep access to these forums subscription free - genuinely - but I would encourage you to reconsider it.

I myself left my last 'job' in 2000 to try to commercialise a discussion forum which had grown out of two Yahoo! Clubs originally started in 1998. For two years, until 2002 we tried everything we could think of, from affiliations to classifieds to auctions to sponsorships and had no choice in the end but to try subscriptions. But with one crucial twist - we decided against charging our few thousand existing members and instead just charged for new memberships (after an initial trial period). In hindsight I think this was the only way we succeeded in not destroying our community completely. If we had started charging everyone for access I believe we would have simply had a mass exodus.

So, what we did instead was to give all our existing members the title of Charter Member and leave them with full access to all features they enjoyed at that time. Any new features added since then can only be enjoyed by 'Full Members' ie. subscribed members. So, as well as happily gaining loads of new paying members we've also seen many of our previously free Charter members pay up to enjoy access to live chat, private messaging and so on.

I for one would have no hesitation in paying a subscription for boards.ie similar to what we charge ourselves Eur29.99. I realise that our forums are targetted at a niche international audience, totally different to the audience here but I still think this is the way forward for boards.ie and believe now is as good a time as any to bite the bullet.

Just my 2c, but whatever you decide best of luck and continued success with the very best Irish internet resource.

DeVore

well, thank you!

I think Boards difference may be in a matter of size, a few thousand is pretty big but 10,000 begins to make things workable that might not otherwise be... We have 8M page impressions per month. Normally you can sell 10% of a site consistently without breaking a sweat, thats 800,000 even at 1 Euro per 1000 thats 800 notes. Thats a lot of cash!

Subscriptions are going ok even though we've told noone about it and would be the main stay of the site and finally we have affiliations which I a have no idea what sort of revenue they might produce.

I'm gonna give it a shot and see where this whole thing goes...

DeV.

Sleepy

Just to say that I'd probably be quite interested in members space plus if there were php scripting available with it. Don't need such a facility enough to go out and organise some decent server space but if it was just a matter of an extra few sheets onto my boards subsciption I'd probably be inclined to get it. I'd imagine a lot of other users would be the same.

The affiliations thing should go quite well too. I know a site I used to run which only had a couple of thousand hits a week used to earn me about a hundred euro a year in affiliate earnings with Amazon.co.uk.

GoneShootin

I agree with Members Space Plus, would avail of it at the right price and spec

trap4

Still beating the subscriptions drum here:

I realise that part of the problem in introducing subscription to boards.ie might be in the demographic - ie. I presume a large percentage of members would not have credit cards. So, some kind of micropayment mechanism not requiring credit cards might be best if such a solution was possible.

I may not fully understand the economics involved but how about getting someone like - http://www.playprint.com - to run off a large batch of pre-paid 'callcards' especially for Boards.ie? Let's say Eur5 cards for 3 months access or Eur10 cards for 6 months access. It would be easy enough to integrate the security number database with vBulletin I'd imagine?

I'm sure with the huge number of members here it would be feasible to get at least one store in each major county town to stock the cards. Of course I I know nothing about the business relationship between the phone companies and retailers so sorry if it's a completely daft idea. Maybe vending machine operators would stock the cards - in colleges?

Just thinking out loud......

ecksor

We appreciate the suggestions and input, but I've never seen the idea of charging new signups seriously put forward or entertained by any of the admins and, speaking solely for myself although I suspect I'm not the only one that feels as I do, it's the sort of thing that would very likely make me walk away from boards.

That's not to say that the idea of it costing something to sign up isn't attractive. It is to me, but for a different reason, which is deterring the steady flood of spammers and muppets we're getting.

trap4

Ecksor, why would a charge make you walk away? As in every other walk of life I expect to pay for value received. A few weeks ago I knew absolutely nothing about Satellite TV. Then I read on the Satellite forum here that the Satellite system on offer from Lidl after Christmas was excellent value. So I bought it and learned how to install it (not easy) reading through the thorough and detailed advice and instructions I got for free here. I literally saved hundreds of Euro with my FREE membership of Boards.ie

And that's only one example of the many ways in which Boards has financially and otherwise helped me over the last few years. I received a huge amount of value and I do believe I and everyone else who does likewise should be prepared to pay for that.

Your second point above is very important and something I forgot to mention previously. Before we introduced paid subscriptions on our forums it had become a nightmare dealing with the 'muppets'. Many of our earliest and best members were walking away because of how low the signal to noise ration had become. Introducing a subscription completely transformed the site - the quality of discussion shot up and has created a virtuous cycle whereby new visitors can immediately appreciate the quality of discussion on offer and recognise that it's worth paying for despite the presence of numerous free competitors.

If Boards.ie fears a mass exodus on introduction of subs, because another free alternative might pop-up I would suggest that such an outcome is extremely unlikely. We feared it initially but then realised that our existing database of information, 'critical mass' and 'reputation/social equity' made the difference. I'm not going to abdicate to an alternative forum when this one has a huge information archive, enough members that I always get to my questions, and 'recognisable' characters whose personality and experience I am familiar with. Without intending to be confrontational here I would suggest that those who might walk away are those with least commitment to the community. I wonder for instance if you really would walk away yourself if it came down to it?


[By the way, our forums don't 'compete' with Boards.ie and I'm not going to point to them - I'm offering my feedback here because I value Boards.ie, believe in it and want to see it thrive.]

Peace

I read this on a US based forumn website... www.scubaboard.com

Its an add that only appears to unregistered users... check the screen shot i took....

steveland?

Peace wrote:

I read this on a US based forumn website... www.scubaboard.com

Its an add that only appears to unregistered users... check the screen shot i took....

I think they already decided there was definitly not going to be ads between the posts

halenger

Just in terms of uber-mods and the like. Clearly the first place to look for such people would be amongst the underworked current mods. Some of us have very little to though, though I'm sure some value that and would like no more work to do.

It's quite hard to remember often enough the sort of work the admin team actually does. Not to add to I pretty immense list I'm sure but I don't think I'd be the only one interested to know what you guys actually do. Such a thread could generate interest from certain users/mods/etc - "Oh that? Cool. I'd love to do that!" "I'm really interested in doing <x> would you like help with it" etc etc etc...

DeVore

Halenger, I'm going to write a blog about it soon enough. I've got www.Devore.ie (dont bother, nothing there at the moment) and I'm going to try and write about all the weird stuff that happens in the course of my daily life there.

Trap4, I'd be right there with Ecksor if we seriously went to pay-to-talk. I agree that it would be really handy for us to say "right, a 5-euro lifetime membership please" so that we could have a reliable way to block arseh*les.... but other then that, we do this for reasons that are non-financial. We can make this place fly without such charges and its kinda like a puzzle for us (well, me anyway) that we do this on OUR terms. I guess its the Tyler Durden in me

Besides, it would make my teeth hurt to prove those assh*les who said we'd eventually fnck everyone over for our own profit right. I know you dont see it like that, I know many wouldnt. We do though

Lots of people have done the pay-model you are talking about but very few have taken the road less travelled and I want to see where it leads

DeV.

uberwolf

DeVore wrote:

very few have taken the road less travelled and I want to see where it leads

It's almost as if you were a visionary...

GoneShootin

Jesus Christ reborn in the guise a geek.


All praise Dev and his Disciples

Skud

DeVore wrote:

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.

Couldn't you use this in someway like get sponsorship for the forum but put it at the top like tha announcements and say "feature of the month," "featured product" or "featured site". Adds a dimesion of advertising without adding advertising.. People can view it if they want and is no bigger than the universal announcements. This also gives the option of having unique sites/products per forum and have it on monthly contracts so they'd have to renew it, which gives option of change (different scenery) or competition (more money).