If somebody pays for "Gold Membership" are they still exposed to all the ads that this site contains?

|QUOTE|djunod said: If somebody pays for "Gold Membership" are they still exposed to all the ads that this site contains?|/QUOTE|

Yes. I had asked people about that being a benefit, and the majority of people said they don't mind the ads.

Ads....what ads.....

If you mean the little bar down the left hand side....and the one that shows up across the top...no problem. I've even used them to go look at their sites.

Each vendor pays Adam a small (real small) fee for the add...and anything he can do to try to cover his expenses.....I say go for it.

I brought it up because today I was looking at a site (http://vetteheads.com/) and one of the reasons that they say they are worth the membership fee is because they have no ads. It made me wonder if C3VR turns them off for members or not.

I thought it was a funny thing, because I run a site that is totally free AND has no annoying popups or ads. Some of the other Corvette forum sites are littered with ads, some aren't. Corvette Forum is littered with them. Corvette Action Center has a single banner ad at the top. C5Forum.com and Camaros.net have none. Those are the only places I really check out regularly.

I don't see how the minimal dollar amount generated by ads offset the annoyance to visitor. Especially considering the competition.

BTW---Corvette Forum generates site traffic with its Babes section (check out the view count & activity there).

Just interesting observations...

|QUOTE|djunod said: I brought it up because today I was looking at a site (http://vetteheads.com/) and one of the reasons that they say they are worth the membership fee is because they have no ads. It made me wonder if C3VR turns them off for members or not.|/QUOTE|

Ok, so I went to VetteHeads too. You can ONLY get to content if you are a paid member, so of course they don't need ads.


|QUOTE|djunod said: I thought it was a funny thing, because I run a site that is totally free AND has no annoying popups or ads.|/QUOTE|

I'm not sure how you can afford to do that, but if you can, that's great!
By the way, I consider popup ads to be incredibly annoying and therefore you will NEVER see them on C3VR. The only popups I use are for important C3VR related issues, and those are rare.


|QUOTE|djunod said: I don't see how the minimal dollar amount generated by ads offset the annoyance to visitor. Especially considering the competition. |/QUOTE|

The volume of traffic that C3VR gets generates more than a "minimal dollar amount" from the small ads. C3VR has paid advertisers which also brings in money to help the site stay afloat.

|QUOTE|djunod said: I don't see how the minimal dollar amount generated by ads offset the annoyance to visitor. Especially considering the competition. |/QUOTE|

The volume of traffic that C3VR gets generates more than a "minimal dollar amount" from the small ads. C3VR has paid advertisers which also brings in money to help the site stay afloat.|/QUOTE|

If that is so, then I don't understand the rate increase for Gold Membership... "As traffic to the site increases, costs to maintain it also increase". Because, as you say above, the more traffic you get the more ad revenue you get. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me...

I've done pay sites before, and I've done banner ads as well (not together). I just prefer to do my site for free (along the lines of Netscape & Microsoft giving out the browser for free). I have a longer term objective than a few quick bucks.

.

Because of the increase in volume, I have had to move to a better web host which, of course, costs more. And also as traffic increases, other things will need to be increased such as transfer size and disk space, which also costs money.

The Gold Memberships ensure the survival of the site.

The advertisers come and go and can not be counted on for the well-being of the site. Gold Members are here to stay.

The site currently takes in the majority of it's revenue from Gold Memberships, therefore you can say that those fees are financing the site, which is the cause for the increase.

I'm glad you can offer your site to people for free. Personally, I love free sites, but when there is a site worthy of contributing money to, I will.

Adam, thanks for not using "pop-up's". What a pain in the A--.

I was getting a pop-up every time I came to the entrance to this site, asking me to register my C3. I click on the "here" to suppress the question, but it would still ask me every time I came back...

Just now, when I came in, it didn't show it to me ... finally.
.

|QUOTE|djunod said: I was getting a pop-up every time I came to the entrance to this site, asking me to register my C3. I click on the "here" to suppress the question, but it would still ask me every time I came back...

Just now, when I came in, it didn't show it to me ... finally.
.|/QUOTE|

Like I said, I don't use pop ups for Ads, just for C3VR related things. That is one of them.

For some reason, the "don't show me this again" link doesn't seem to be working right.

I'll work on that today.