Hamish Gill
Tech Support (and Marketing)
I'm thinking of placing a few adds in the forum area ... Google ones ...
I know, the notion of it makes me feel slightly sick too!
But... It's a means to an end
And... This is the important bit:
A. They won't be visible to logged in members ... I'm always logged in, I'm guessing most regulars are?
B. I'm going to position them sparingly and sensibly so as not to disrupt the flow even for non members
C. They will be clearly labled as saying "not visible to logged in members" so people who find them annoying can join up knowing they will go away
Unfortunately this is becoming an essential move ...
The ongoing costs of this place have been able to be kept relatively low, mainly because hosting has been somewhat swallowed up into the shared server that F8 Creates already pays for for it's clients.
Unfortunately we are getting to a point that we are using up a bit to much of its resources for it to be manageable for much longer! So we are going to look at getting a dedicated VPS (virtual private server) for the forum ...
This is going to cost about £50 a month with all the little extras and bits an bobs I want to use to get it running as well as possible...
So, I need to raise at least £50 a month ... current advertising is making about £5.50 a month as can be seen by looking at my adsense monitoring app
Currently we can not justify charging that amount to te small companies that I'd like to have advertise on here ...
So, the idea is to get some ads in the forum, raise a bit more money for the server, and of there is anything left over its going to go toward paying for advertising for the forum
We haven't really pushed to make any money before concentrating on the "content is king" way (as Mark puts it) ... ... The key to this move is going to be finding the balance between making the place make a few extra ££ but not changing the overall feel for logged in members. As well as this, the feel of the forum needs to come accros to potential members!
The other impetuous in this move is that F8 Creates is expanding, we have taken on a member of staff, with one more in the pipeline within the next month and another planed for September (an apprentice) ... We are also moving into an office in town. We are getting more clients a lot quicker these days, have achived 50% growth in our second year (smug face) and fully intend to keep going this way.
Because of this we obviously need to free up server resources (as I said) but it also means that we will have more space for forum related activities! The space we are looking at is big enough to have a studio set up ... And longer term could house an RPF employee!
Ok, with our current £5.50 a month turnover that is probably a way off yet ... And may never happen... But I have to start taking steps in the right direction
To sum up, I hope I can rely on support from everyone in making this step ... I hope google adds won't be a part of this place forever... But for now needs must! And like I said, it shouldn't make any difference to logged in members!
Your thoughts?
I know, the notion of it makes me feel slightly sick too!
But... It's a means to an end
And... This is the important bit:
A. They won't be visible to logged in members ... I'm always logged in, I'm guessing most regulars are?
B. I'm going to position them sparingly and sensibly so as not to disrupt the flow even for non members
C. They will be clearly labled as saying "not visible to logged in members" so people who find them annoying can join up knowing they will go away
Unfortunately this is becoming an essential move ...
The ongoing costs of this place have been able to be kept relatively low, mainly because hosting has been somewhat swallowed up into the shared server that F8 Creates already pays for for it's clients.
Unfortunately we are getting to a point that we are using up a bit to much of its resources for it to be manageable for much longer! So we are going to look at getting a dedicated VPS (virtual private server) for the forum ...
This is going to cost about £50 a month with all the little extras and bits an bobs I want to use to get it running as well as possible...
So, I need to raise at least £50 a month ... current advertising is making about £5.50 a month as can be seen by looking at my adsense monitoring app
Currently we can not justify charging that amount to te small companies that I'd like to have advertise on here ...
So, the idea is to get some ads in the forum, raise a bit more money for the server, and of there is anything left over its going to go toward paying for advertising for the forum
We haven't really pushed to make any money before concentrating on the "content is king" way (as Mark puts it) ... ... The key to this move is going to be finding the balance between making the place make a few extra ££ but not changing the overall feel for logged in members. As well as this, the feel of the forum needs to come accros to potential members!
The other impetuous in this move is that F8 Creates is expanding, we have taken on a member of staff, with one more in the pipeline within the next month and another planed for September (an apprentice) ... We are also moving into an office in town. We are getting more clients a lot quicker these days, have achived 50% growth in our second year (smug face) and fully intend to keep going this way.
Because of this we obviously need to free up server resources (as I said) but it also means that we will have more space for forum related activities! The space we are looking at is big enough to have a studio set up ... And longer term could house an RPF employee!
Ok, with our current £5.50 a month turnover that is probably a way off yet ... And may never happen... But I have to start taking steps in the right direction
To sum up, I hope I can rely on support from everyone in making this step ... I hope google adds won't be a part of this place forever... But for now needs must! And like I said, it shouldn't make any difference to logged in members!
Your thoughts?
