When Good Forums Turn Bad!!

[Chitsu]

Hello,

As a martial artist first and foremost and a slow learner in terms of the internet age, I have a love hate relationship with many bb's on the internet today.

Participant content is one thing, but have you noticed how sooo many boards these days sneak in more and more ads? They put bigger and bigger banners top bottom and sides!!!

I guess that’s just the world we live in, but personally I am not a lover of it. What is more important the content being discussed or the almighty buck???

Some would argue that running a company you have overheads, but I am not too sure this applies to running BB's, as they cost next to nothing by comparison - (most of the good ones are a labour of love anyway).

Any thoughts, experiences?

[edit] and oh yes!! this ones not too bad of course.

Chitsu

[JusticeZero]

There's a huge difference between "next to nothing" and actual "nothing". Banner ads bring in very little revenues, and my love for things tends to wane much faster if I have to spend money I was hopping to put into rent to keep it afloat.

[Toptomcat]

Boards cost money to host, and banner ad revenue is an ever-shrinking proposition these days. Doesn't bother me a bit, they're just doing what they gotta do to keep afloat: the forum to discuss the content wouldn't be there in the first place if some attention wasn't given to the economics of it.

[sensei8]

I'm dumber than a bag of rocks when it comes to computer stuff... so...What is a BB?

Personally, all of the ads and stuff that's here at KF don't bother me one bit because the ads and stuff are part of this forum and/or any other forum's that I've ever seen.

Patrick...it's all good with me sir!

[Chitsu]

No problems with me either. As I said, this is one of the better ones - some are getting to the point where it seems as though 80 % of the content are ads.

I suppose being a Brit I still struggle with the commercial world of ads in ever walk of like. Remember we still have TV channels over here that have no Ads at all - imagine that!!.

BB by the way stands for Bulletin Board.

Chitsu

[Spodo Komodo]

I don't much mind about what is around the page as long as it loads in a reasonable time and I can read the messages easily. I find advertising to be far less of an indicator of a board "going bad" than a degeneration in the behaviour of it's participants. Some of the boards I have frequented in the past you would think companies would be ashamed of being associated with them. It's quite nice here so I don't mind the odd advert.

[GeoGiant]

I don't mind what appears around the board but those little boxes that move around the screen and have to stop before you can close them drive me nuts [there are none of those here].

[DWx]

Remember we still have TV channels over here that have no Ads at all - imagine that!!.

Yes but we pay TV licensing to cover the cost of running them ad free. I'd imagine there are plenty of boards that give you the option of paying a premium for no ads.

[Patrick]

Hey all,

I really appreciate all of the replies to this thread and the general understanding of the need to generate some revenue. I've been managing online communities for 10 years now. It's something that I'm very passionate about. So, I'll try to explain how all of this works.

Running an online community is a job - whether it be your profession or a labor of love, it's still a job that has to be taken seriously. Online communities take time to run and, in general, the larger they are, the more time they take to run. They also take money to run, if they are to have long term stability, though it doesn't have to be a lot of money - depending on your definition of a lot of money and the size of the community itself.

Most people don't have a deep understanding of what it takes, behind the scenes to keep a community like this running smoothly or, even more so, a community larger than this one and the time it takes to do so. And that's perfectly fine and, really, how it should be. On this site, I don't want anyone worrying about that stuff, but me (and, to some extent, the staff ) as that's what I'm here for. I just want members to talk, share and enjoy themselves. There is so much more than what you see, though.

As an example, this site is coming up on 9 years in May. 9 years times 365 days is 3,285 days. Let's say that, conservatively I've spent an hour a day on this site overall on average, including time I was away, etc. 3,285 hours divided by 24 hours is 136.8. I've spent at least 136.8 days of my life (that's consecutive 24 hour days) on this site. It's probably more than that, but you get the idea. Before I'm done, I expect I'll have spent more than a year of my life working on just this community.

At the end of the day, it's hard to ask someone to dedicate a large portion of their life to something that does not help them to accomplish their life goals as a person. That is the point where communities stop being maintained or cared for because you have to make a choice between running it and going to get a "real job" to actually further the lives of you and those who depend on you. JusticeZero made reference to this. In simple terms, with many communities (including this one), there would be no community if there were no ads - and there would be no ads if there were no community. They both need each other.

Ideally, you can combine both so that you can accomplish your life goals, while also doing something that you love (assuming running your online community is what you love to do). For that to happen, there has to be money.

If I love something and I enjoy something, I want the person or people behind it to be successful in life because that, in turn, generally means that the thing I love will be more successful, as well. Deciding whether a community is one of the "good ones" is certainly in the eye of the beholder as everyone likes different things. But, the more people that consider a community a good one, the more it takes to run it. Derwentbob makes a great point. For the most part, I don't think ads have an impact on whether or not a community is a good one.

With this sort of thing, there are two ways to generate revenue. You can either get it from the people who use the site (premium memberships or TV licenses as DWX put it , paid access, micropayment systems, merchandise) - or you can get it from the people who want to reach the people who use the site (advertisements in many forms). Or you can do a mix of both. But, for any somewhat large community to have long term stability, the money has to come from somewhere, like any operation.

People can pay for a website's expenses with their personal income, if the site is small enough and they have a good job, and that'll be fine, if that's what they want to do. But, for many, it can be difficult to have that be a drain, who might want to put the money toward something else. And in those cases where there is a "real job," the community has to be a secondary thing, professionally. Your "real job" has to take precedent because it is what is paying your bills and (hopefully) moving you forward in life.

While there are some people for who it is all about the money and for who this is a numbers game, I find that the majority of people who run online communities care a great deal about how the money is made, including myself, and agonize over ad placement and finding the right balance between maximizing the "inventory" that the site can offer and creating an enjoyable user experience. I've run this community since day one; no one cares about it more than I do. I turn down so many ads here at KarateForums.com, both based on their format (no pop-ups, no pop-unders, no InVue ads, which is what GeoGiant referred to, no ads that automatically play audio, no ads that automatically expand, etc.) and content (no ads about tobacco or alcohol, no ads featuring risque content, such as ads that focus on a woman's chest, etc.).

Whenever we take adjustments or test new things, it's not something that I take lightly. I am willing to try new things, however, as I believe that, without experimentation, we never learn anything and we never get better.

So, I guess, in summation, what I am saying is that running a community is like any other responsibility or job in life. It's hard work and, it's hard to continually do hard work for someone, if you aren't being paid for it. It is my hope that everyone here is doing what they love to do, that their job is a labor of love for them. I know that's not always possible - real life is real life - but that is the ideal, so I implore you to make small changes that put you closer to a job that you love. At the same time, when you reach that point, you also have a reasonable expectation of being paid for your efforts and that extends to all undertakings, including managing online communities.

I hope that this sheds some light on how this all works.

Thanks,

Patrick

[JohnASE]

I don't much mind about what is around the page as long as it loads in a reasonable time and I can read the messages easily.

Interesting point. Many people don't have broadband. I can't imagine how long it would take loading some ads. It could really bog down your experience.

Oh, and I almost never see ads. If they're particularly intrusive, I might see them and make a point of not buying their products. I can only think of one instance where I an ad actually worked on me. A local theater was putting on a musical-comedy parody of Fellowship of the Ring called Fellowship!. I HAD to check it out. It was pretty funny. Silly, of course, but good fun.