Says this is an old thread by 120 days but the pop-up took me here & i've had it pop up more than once this visit to Graybeards.
Yes it may have popped up a maximum of 3 times which was my fault and I apologize to everyone that it popped up on more than once. The first time I published it the link was bad and then after that I noticed a spelling error so I fixed that and published the 3rd time.
First and foremost, I enjoy reading the forums on this site and do post from time to time. This
isn't the only forum i frequent but i still come to this place when i know i have a question that needs answered or to kill some time.
Thanks for the kind words but it truly is the Members that make GBO what it is.
Anyways, My thoughts on helping Graybeards pay for this.....
I enjoy many sites and all of those sites make money through my choice to visit that site. The advertisments that are all over this site should be enough to pay for a small fee of $150. There has been many times where i had to close off an add that grew that i had to close off manualy, Chevy Silverado add comes to mind. I have never had any pop-up stating they need money donated to keep my privacy through there site up to date.
OK, well first and foremost your privacy is not at risk. The attacks that we get are denial of service or DoS attacks. These types of attacks aim to slow a site until they are able to kill it. I keep a very close eye on the server and have many stats on it in real time that I monitor most all day just in case there is an intrusion into the system. The software that has expired will automatically black list any IP that tries a DoS attack on the server and thus it makes my job a little easier.
Secondly the Ads you are referencing have been off of GBO for OVER A YEAR! sorry didn't mean to yell but you must not pay much attention when you are on or you would know this. We took the pop up ads down 1-1-2011 as most of our members did not like them. They paid a very nice return but not enough to override the members. Most of the ads you see on GBO are from our partners and though we make a little it is not nearly what you seem to think it should be so how about you pointing me in the direction of some information on how I too can make that much off this site and I would never let another member donate a dime. Fact is we do not make that much and just had to renew the Atlanta servers hosting contract which pretty much broke us. So I do apologize if my requesting donations from members offended you but truth of the matter is we rely on the donations from our members to keep this site up and running. Several years back GBO became much more than anything GB and I ever had in mind and since that time the GBO Admins and Mods do what we can to hold to the original concept of GBO but the Members make this site what it is both in content and funding be it the moeny we get from the ads or direct donations the Members keep this site alive and full of centuries worth of first hand knowledge about most any firearm topic you want to discuss.
Point comes to mind is that on Youtube, if you load a video that has alot of internet traffic. Those little pop-up add's that you need to click off to view the video, they acutally pay those people depending on the traffic they get. So some of those funny videos that go "viral", those people can make anywhere from a few hundreds to 180 thousand dollars a year. Granted that this site does not get youtube status of viewers. It does point out that sites that advertise make money.
I guess you are not aware of how hard it is to recruit advertising related to or at least not offensive to firearms, hunting and shooting. We had google ads for a while but we chose to keep the classifieds so google banned us from the adsense program. We have Outdoor Hub and Tactical Republic as partners and they make up most of our advertising revenue and that has been reduced several times due to our unwillingness to subject the members of GBO to some of the crap they wanted us to. Hell for that matter we get offers very often to sell our email database and some offers have been over 100k but we said NO to protect your privacy just as we state in our ToS we will.
So, with that in mind. How is it that Graybeards can't afford a small fee when there is so many companies paying to advertise here & sponsor forums? Afterall, are those add's not put up on this site because people like me & many others visit this forum for those adds to get viewed.
Again you are assuming something to be fact that is not. GBO HAS NO ADS OR REVENUE STREAMS BASED ON VIEWS OF ADS. Now that I have gotten that out of the way here is why. We can not control ad views and therefor will not agree to contracts that require us to deliver a set amount of views. We settle for a set amount of money instead and thus many of those revenue sources you talk about are off the table for us and therefor we rely on the Members who feel that they receive a service from GBO that is worth a buck or two to make up the difference in the revenue that we refuse so we can keep this site the way it is. I assure you we are always looking for ways to get GBO to make more money so we don't need donations but we have yet to find it so we are open to suggestions.
I don't see any reason to pay/donate, as this site should be making enough money for basic this such as website security or any other fee's associated with running a site.
Hmm so I guess you did not even read this thread did you? If you had then there would have been no need for this post at all as you would have read where we have said ONLY DONATE IF YOU FEEL IT IS WORTH IT TO YOU! We do that in hope of not having to rehash these same exact things over and over as we too feel that if you do not think you get anything of value from this site that there is no need to donate to it or any other that you do not feel are worth it.
Again I am truly sorry if the GBO notification offended you.
Matt
