Amen! I replied to his pm asking for change for classified permissions. I agree with exactly what you are saying.
I would like to know how the site doesn’t make any revenue for advertising when it’s coming from Gun places? Why would those places not want to advertise anymore?
Thanks everybody, we've picked up about 100 new supporters so far, that helps a lot.
I've never run a site in a way that would generate more pageviews or clicks and I've never put money over user experience. I've been offered a lot of money in the past to run video ads or page takeover ads and I always turned them down. I figure if they drive me crazy on other sites then why would I want to subject my users to it?
I'm always open to hearing people's opinions on changes but there are some issues that I'm pretty set on, open classifieds being one of them. My reasoning is because classifieds are what initially got me to participate on a forum many years ago, and if they had been closed or limited I may not have ever started participating in a forum or gotten into running a forum of my own.
I've never run a site in a way that would generate more pageviews or clicks and I've never put money over user experience. I've been offered a lot of money in the past to run video ads or page takeover ads and I always turned them down. I figure if they drive me crazy on other sites then why would I want to subject my users to it?
I'm always open to hearing people's opinions on changes but there are some issues that I'm pretty set on, open classifieds being one of them. My reasoning is because classifieds are what initially got me to participate on a forum many years ago, and if they had been closed or limited I may not have ever started participating in a forum or gotten into running a forum of my own.
Put the spammers on ignore!! There are only a few and they for the most part do not contribute. And on the other side of that , some folks benefit with new purchases from those spammers. !! Not speaking against what you are asking, just adding an easy way to fix what irritates you.
I agree, to a point.
I used to just HATE the classified spam. And in fairness Okuma did listen and put some things in place not only to mitigate the spam but also create some revenue from them and yet keep it open for everyone. More recently my opinion on the classifieds has softened. With the recent change in Armslist, look at how many new members have joined us since then. Now yes, not all of them are here for the conversation but many have begun to take part in that as well as the classifieds. Okuma always stated the opinion that the classifieds were a way to get new members to join and well, recent events seem to show that he wasn't entirely wrong on that.
The advertising world has changed dramatically in the last couple years. There used to be 2 large ad networks that worked with gun websites, and at the same time they were also offering to buy gun websites, and over the years they created their own large networks of sites that they owned.
Then, a year or two ago, those two companies merged into one and basically cut loose any websites that they didn't own themselves and now they just run ads on their own network, basically sites like ours were not needed anymore. Once the companies merged the site lost 95% of its revenue immediately. (That was a bad day.)
There are still other ad networks, but they have decided it's not worth it to work with sites that have anything to do with guns.
Good timing since mine is about due for renewal.
Thanks for the explanation. I hope I didn’t come off sounding like a rear. I love this place and would be happy to help it along.
