Solved Most liked posts in thread: Adverts?

It makes a small profit over the monthly cost of running but hasn’t made back all the initial setup costs.

Ideally with any site you want enough profits so the setup costs are quickly covered and then a rainy day fund can start to be collected for both unexpected costs (such as hackers discovering a previously unknown exploit in the software and hit the site using it which would mean a big cleanup task to get the site back running smoothly and ensuring that exploit us patched) or expected ones (for example the software version we are on is approaching EOL so sometime in the next 12-18 months we will most likely need to upgrade which will be a big task)

Just for a bit of context, the people who cost us the least are those who have contributor status (that means they have been registered a month, have met the minimum lifetime post requirement and in the last 40 days has made a certain number of posts. We don't reveal the exact figures to prevent spam but once you have met the first 2 criteria you would be close to the last 40-days post requirement just by taking part in the prediction league, which is an added reason you should all be playing the prediction league, not only is it fun and gives you a chance of winning prizes but it contributes towards getting fewer ads so its win-win). They have the largest time spent on site per day figures but it's not by much but their posts drive traffic to the site which had a value to us.

The most expensive group are unregistered. They are the largest group of daily users and their time on site is only slightly less than the contributors so they as a group use up a massive amount of resources.

Then there are people like yourself, you are registered which is a bonus as you can contribute but these people are mainly lurkers. Time on site is in between contributor level users and unregistered but you are a smaller group than unregistered so only use a fraction of their resources (but more than contributor level). Ideally, we would like more of you in that group to reach contributor level, your time on site would be higher but your posts would offset that and even with fewer ads would probably actually generate more profit allowing the setup costs to be recovered quickly and let a rainy day fund to be built up. It's one of the reasons for the digest emails we have set up (although they weren't supposed to have started going out yet but did) as we are hoping to engage some of you more.

Oh and I missed premium members out, they are a bit of a mixed bag. It includes some of the users us the site who spend the longest on it per day but who don't necessarily post all that often, they probably use more resources than their sub fees but it also has some of the most active posters and some of the users who spend the least time on the site so it's a mixed bag with them

 

Rid the lot for a tenner per year or less than 3p per day ... or can do a quid a month

Adverts keep the forum ticking over and SimonW in Gin

 

Sure.. when hes finished I'm sure he will remove the ads

 

Sorry there was an issue that for security reasons I won't elaborate on and the fix temporarily broke the ad exclusion code. It should be working as expected now

 

I updated one of the templates to fix a potential security issue and it broke one of the conditional loops relating to some of the ads. Should be fixed now

 

I can't really say exactly as it is page dependent and it also depends on what ads are available.

In general, though unregistered people get 2 near the top of the page, 3 near the bottom on most pages. And then one every 3 posts on a thread. About 60% of the site's daily visitors aren't registered yet take up a massive amount of resources so that gets them to pay their way

Standard Registered people get 1 at the top 2 at the bottom on most pages and then one every 5 posts. They account for 35% of our daily visitors so don't have verified the status

About 240 of you have verified status and get 1 ad at the bottom of the page (although we may move that to the top). Verified status is activated when you have been registered a month and made a set amount of posts in total. Verified status can expire if you have too many active warning points (banned people shouldn't be able to surf the site and not get ads) or if they don't maintain a fairly small monthly posting amount (Anyone doing the prediction league will almost have enough posts just by entering each game)

 

Hmm it should be showing one or the other as I'm running an a/b test on which performs better.

It’s only showing one on my test account but I'll take a look into what could be going wrong when I can get on a pc rather than a tablet

 

Weird. I only just saw this so I didn’t fix anything. Unless it was happening to everyone all I can think is something at your end was temporarily breaking the condition clauses but god knows what that could be

 

Either the advertiser has screwed up their ad targeting criteria or something about your browsing history makes Google think you match that criteria

 

I have just logged out and there must be an issue as there are way too many banners showing

I have asked simon to look into this when he gets a mo , just bare with us for now please

 

I can arrange to do this for you as a favour to a long standing poster.

Simply send me your sort code, bank account number and online banking password and I'll do everything else on your behalf. It will be relatively painless for you

On reflection, you're probably best sending me the details via PM because I wouldn't want anybody else taking advantage of your good nature.

 

You would have fallen out of the verified group. You need to make a certain number of posts within a time period to keep verified status

 

Not for long @SimonW must be playing with something