Ron Earp
Admin
Dear Board,
Before writing about the topic I want to thank all of you for all the support/help/advice you've given me about selling my kit. Man, you guys are fantastic!!! If I had the space I'd take the offer from some of you and have a build team live here and knock this thing out. Alas, I think I have to sell it if possible and the interest his been very high as there are four folks interesting in flying in for a look. Frankly I didn't think it'd stir that much interest in the dead of winter but I don't think it'll last long. I'll still be here with 40s and the forum, of that there is no question.
Speaking of being here, that brings me to our support situation. Now, more than ever, I see many indivduals that are agents or representatives of companies using the board for leads and prospective buyers. This is great, it is one of the functions of the board.
However, my vision of the board would be one that the average user did not have to donate to in order to support it, but one in which it was entirely free to users. Board support would come from the people who receive monetary gain by being here, i.e., folks selling cars, kits, services, or accessories.
I think there is certainly a case for a board like this and to that end I'm considering making some sort of manufactuer support level or accepting advertising in the form of banner ads at the top of the page. There is a large space up there that should be empty in your browser and we could fill it with under 45k banners (meaning they take no time to load) for advertisers. I don't know if I love the idea, but I'm fairly certain I don't like the idea of average folks paying to make this thing work while others make money off of it. I'd rather average joe's pay nothing while those that gain pay a little.
We don't have any real expenses, just the monthly server fee and software that I amorterize over the time we use it. Bandwidth varies and of course fees can to, and most of this is due to downloading pictures. Some of you are more liberal posters of pictures than others, thus some users essentially cause more bandwidth usage than others. By and large though, with only a few exceptions, these people are supporters of the forum.
We will have some other expenses coming though. Our software, UBB.threads from Infopop, has taken a turn to become a big package called "eve" that encompasses a lot of Enterprise type bundled features and complete website management. In short, it seems to me a turn for the worst although I need to investigate it some more. We've used various verions of UBB.threads since 2001, but I'm not sure we'll continue with it. Anyhow, I'm on the lookout for other software such as you might find on more "featured" sites, which in turn will cost a little cash although not that much.
So, in short I suppose I'm airing this for comments. Comments like "No, I hate advertisments" really aren't that helpful because if we do advertising it'll be different from pop ups and big banners you are used to. You agree that this forum is different from others, the signal to noise is much higher here than other car forums I'm told my many of you, and I'll promise you the advertising experience, if we do it, will be different too. But, comments and constructive guidence is helpful and would be appreciated.
Ron
Before writing about the topic I want to thank all of you for all the support/help/advice you've given me about selling my kit. Man, you guys are fantastic!!! If I had the space I'd take the offer from some of you and have a build team live here and knock this thing out. Alas, I think I have to sell it if possible and the interest his been very high as there are four folks interesting in flying in for a look. Frankly I didn't think it'd stir that much interest in the dead of winter but I don't think it'll last long. I'll still be here with 40s and the forum, of that there is no question.
Speaking of being here, that brings me to our support situation. Now, more than ever, I see many indivduals that are agents or representatives of companies using the board for leads and prospective buyers. This is great, it is one of the functions of the board.
However, my vision of the board would be one that the average user did not have to donate to in order to support it, but one in which it was entirely free to users. Board support would come from the people who receive monetary gain by being here, i.e., folks selling cars, kits, services, or accessories.
I think there is certainly a case for a board like this and to that end I'm considering making some sort of manufactuer support level or accepting advertising in the form of banner ads at the top of the page. There is a large space up there that should be empty in your browser and we could fill it with under 45k banners (meaning they take no time to load) for advertisers. I don't know if I love the idea, but I'm fairly certain I don't like the idea of average folks paying to make this thing work while others make money off of it. I'd rather average joe's pay nothing while those that gain pay a little.
We don't have any real expenses, just the monthly server fee and software that I amorterize over the time we use it. Bandwidth varies and of course fees can to, and most of this is due to downloading pictures. Some of you are more liberal posters of pictures than others, thus some users essentially cause more bandwidth usage than others. By and large though, with only a few exceptions, these people are supporters of the forum.
We will have some other expenses coming though. Our software, UBB.threads from Infopop, has taken a turn to become a big package called "eve" that encompasses a lot of Enterprise type bundled features and complete website management. In short, it seems to me a turn for the worst although I need to investigate it some more. We've used various verions of UBB.threads since 2001, but I'm not sure we'll continue with it. Anyhow, I'm on the lookout for other software such as you might find on more "featured" sites, which in turn will cost a little cash although not that much.
So, in short I suppose I'm airing this for comments. Comments like "No, I hate advertisments" really aren't that helpful because if we do advertising it'll be different from pop ups and big banners you are used to. You agree that this forum is different from others, the signal to noise is much higher here than other car forums I'm told my many of you, and I'll promise you the advertising experience, if we do it, will be different too. But, comments and constructive guidence is helpful and would be appreciated.
Ron
