I guess we don't have enough ads (although intentional) and the forum is getting bigger so the amount we make is just covering the server costs. I also realized that our ad placement sucks and since we don't have tons of ads it's hurting us even more. I think people are generally good at ignoring ads in forums or have ad block programs these days which make it even tougher... Not sure if hadouken would want me to get into the details so I'll just say this, we probably lose money if we consider the amount of time we spend working on PA.
Why don't you guys start taking donations, I'm sure some folks here would donate some money. Donators get some added features/privileges for a certain amount of time depending on how much they donate or just have them in a certain color permanently as donors.
I personally think donations would lead to lot of drama and although quite unlikely and also the worst case scenario, it may lead copyright holders to think we are making a profit off piracy via the download section thus would attract more drama (donations + upload host reward programs = trouble). I don't think ang wallet would be able to hold all that off Dunno if I should say this but we did receive some letters off TVB in the past, fake or not so yeah, another thing to consider. Plus correct me if i'm wrong, the sever is based in the US which is also prone to that homeland security domain seizures, this again is probably unlikely but a possible threat. Well this is what I personally feel, whether or not ang or b-lee want to take donations is entirely up to them
^ Agree. Hm that's very true, I don't click on the ads. If we do spam the ad it would inflate the cost of the advertiser and therefore could lead to potential problems to PA, so it is therefore important that it is only those that is genuinely interested click on the ads. Which means both parties are happy.
We've discussed the possibility of asking for donations so it may happen, but honestly, I prefer if we didn't and just let affiliates/Google do the paying lol. It would be helpful though if everyone just white listed PA in their ad block programs and maybe provide input on what ads they clicked on, what ads were not interesting, or did not catch their attention, etc. This way I could optimize the ads (although I sitll don't really know how to do that yet lol) to everyone's interest. Maybe I should make a new thread on that.. until now we haven't really played with google ads much, ang and I are pretty much google ad noobs lol. we've never really put a lot of thought into them but I realized - after upgrading the site and being forced to switch to a more expensive server - to keep PA growing we'll have to optimize ads and somehow increase funds.
