2017 fundraiser, move to better server, SSD, SSL and more!

No, but he can digitally replace the gun with a walkie-talkie...

 

@ASSEMbler - just wanted to suggest editing the 1st post to put a direct link to donate in there. I and a few others had a hard time finding it at first. Thx

 

How?! The button is on the home page. Yes, on a mobile device, too!

 

I'm rarely ever on the home page. Usually to my usual subforums. lol. I found it relatively quick but I'm just sayin, in a thread about making donations maybe put a link to it inside the thread.

 

Totally agree. I had a hell of a time finding the link as well.

I also wanted to ask, is the "no ads" a personal choice? Frankly, I don't see why it has to be either\or and can't be both. Would anybody really be upset with a banner or two on the site? I know I woudn't.

 

I'm a little bit short of money at the moment but I've donated 20$... hope it helps a bit.

 

Donated. Will donate more at a later time

 

Do ads even still work for montization in an age where everyone has adblock? I mean, unless you want to go all-out with adblock-blockers (which are common enough so there's already adblock-blocker-blockers, you see where this is going), interstitial pages etc.

A membership fee may be a better option. By my estimate, with the headcount here, even a measily $1-2 a year should more than cover the server... right? Side effects: If it's a non-recurring payment, inactive users could easily be identified as such; and the psychology of "I paid for this account" (no matter the price) ", so it's worth something" should cut down on any a##holery going on. Obvious downside: It'd need to be implemented.

 

Well, 1-2$ per year does indeed sound fair for what you get in return.

Yet, if the "registration process" gets "too complicated", some ppl wont even bother.

For example there is/was this..."Xentar(?)" forum with really neat game modifications/unpackers/decrypters,
but you could only join via invitation. Hence I never tried to get in contact with ppl to be able
to "beg" for an invitation. I do understand such measures as it is/was an awesome place.
(from what I read and heard) But I didnt bother any further, as much as I wanted to read (and download) there...
and as you can see... by now I already forgot the name of this forum. :/ (Its been like 9 years ago or so)

 

> if the "registration process" gets "too complicated", some ppl wont even bother.
true, but
> could only join via invitation. Hence I never tried to get in
some torrent trackers did/do exactly this, plus in some cases an entry quiz/interview to make sure you aren't a total dud (god I wish more communities would do this...). (No fees though afaik.) And they still get loads of members. If the service/content you're providing is good and well known enough, a slightly convoluted signup shouldn't be too much of a problem.

 

Yes, I for example still get a good amount of revenue all of which is based on ads. Although the last time I checked metrics anywhere from one-third to half of my monthly views are monetized views meaning the rest of my views have ads blocked on them. YouTube Kids also does not run any ads, however I highly doubt a substantial fraction of my viewers are from there

Now I myself also have a full time job and do YouTube as a paid hobby, so if I have an excellent month or a bad month it (thankfully) does not have much of an impact on me. However due to this that is why you see so many YouTubers doing sponsorships and promoting affiliate links - On my channel alone it is safe to say I could probably make at least double every month compared to what I'm making now if AdBlock did not exist.

Anyways - On Topic: People do not like ads because of the inconvenience and the truly cancerous ones which take over your whole screen, make noise, are annoying, lock up your browser, etc. In fact, the last virus I ever got was in 2010 and it was from some malicious ads on a site I visited on a daily basis! Safe to say after I wiped my PC I angrily looked up how to block ads, found AdBlock Plus, and have been a user since then. Most people just keep their adblockers on though, I try to be moral about it. For most websites I do block ads, for sites I love I will either whitelist or pay monetarily. I always whitelist Reddit and I pay for YouTube Red, if Assembler got ads I would whitelist them unless they got really bad.

 

Thank you for the insight. Are those numbers from Youtube, a "real" website, or a mix of both? Because YT seems to be actively working against blockers and is one of the few sites that occasionally still gets an ad through my (not even very customized) uBlock setup, so I'd think on other sites (like, dunno, a forum?) the percentage of ad-riddled page views would be lower than there.

 

Put marketplace forum as a paid service

 

By numbers, do you mean when I said half my views? Those are from my own personal channel metrics, I cannot speak for everyone else but I think it is a good source as I get about 250K views per month.

I've also heard of many other people complaining about YouTube ads coming through, I've actually never experienced that on any of my PCs with AdBlock enabled, and this is without my YouTube Red account being active. I will say the sites that do an excellent job of busting through adblockers are the.... ahem.... 18+ sites...

 

Spoiler: more off topic adblock stuff

So it's just YT statistics, thanks for clearing that up. Leaves me wondering how many "normal" (i.e. banner etc) ads get through on random, non-video sites.

I think it might be uBlock's fault. It seems to eventually stop updating its lists, since once I make it purge its caches, the tubes are ad-free again. If you're still using ABP, or some other blocker you obviously won't run into this.

Hasn't this, or sth very similar, been suggested before? Iirc one point that was made against it was that a lot of sales are being done outside of those forums by PM anyways, so in those cases you'd have to rely on the goodwill of people to pay a commision to the site. Which is basically what you're also relying on with a fundraiser...

 

On phone so I didnt elaborate. Allownme to correct that mistake; my suggestion is to restrict access to the marketplace forums (not just posting, but viewing as well) to paid members. Not a fee per transaction, that would simply not be enforcable.

Off-topic but I'll throw it out there while Im at it; ditch the file download forum or restrict it to firmware/free apps/homebrew - that kind of thing. Too much of a pirate focus. If people were serious about preservation they would do something other than just sharing the files. /rant

 

Donated. It's not much, but hopefully helps some.

 

Hey good news! You caught me with a bit of Belgium's finest in me! I practically never donate to anything and I'm hardly ever on here but I like the place and I like your convictions. Here's a couple of bux.

 

If US services are still that expensive, looking into overseas services might save you a ton of cash.
You can get a root server with two SSDs in RAID1, 1 GBit/s, backup space and everything else you might need for less than $50 in Germany.