Google AdSense - A Proposition

The link to subscribe annually does not work https://forum.watmm.com/store/category/1-watmm-subscription-packages/

If ads will help the running of the site I haven’t a issue plus it could encourage more guests/members to pay to join so would help with costs. I’ve just check my subscription and I need to renew, is there a way to auto renew each year? I couldn’t see the option @Joyrexunless I’m looking in the wrong place

I’m firmly in the fuck google camp, even if as a paying member I get spared the billboards.  But that doesn’t mean I expect someone else to pay for that.

One thing I’d love to be part of the discussion is ways to actually lower the hosting costs. How much of the bandwidth is "downloads" vs actual forum? And of that, how much of the database callups could be shedded off with a stripped down theme, one that doesn’t contain all the gizmos, stats and such a non-suscriber (and even more so a bot) couldn’t care about? Set as a default, wouldn’t it alleviate the load somewhat?

  On 10/30/2020 at 3:39 PM, aencre said:

I’m firmly in the fuck google camp, even if as a paying member I get spared the billboards.  But that doesn’t mean I expect someone else to pay for that.

One thing I’d love to be part of the discussion is ways to actually lower the hosting costs. How much of the bandwidth is "downloads" vs actual forum? And of that, how much of the database callups could be shedded off with a stripped down theme, one that doesn’t contain all the gizmos, stats and such a non-suscriber (and even more so a bot) couldn’t care about? Set as a default, wouldn’t it alleviate the load somewhat?

Agreed- I would be curious if that could reduce the costs.  The downloads and blogs havent really become part of the core of the watmm community.  As long as members have the files, we can generally act as a distributed peer community (for files that are legal to share of course) by requesting and sharing links within discussion threads.

Also, as a currently non-subscribed member, i had frankly forgotten to renew, and plan to rectify that soon.  Maybe some sort of annual virtual event, with a prominent spot on the front page, could help remind non-subscribed members to re-up.  Like a membership drive but cool.  Members could contribute tracks and dj mixes. And you could just embedded external sites like mixcloud for the streaming functions of this "event"

  On 10/30/2020 at 1:17 AM, cobra said:

If ads will help the running of the site I haven’t a issue plus it could encourage more guests/members to pay to join so would help with costs. I’ve just check my subscription and I need to renew, is there a way to auto renew each year? I couldn’t see the option @Joyrexunless I’m looking in the wrong place

Renewals are handled via PayPal (this goes for anyone else with a current subscription) - it will auto-renew each year unless in PayPal, not the forum you cancel the reoccurring subscription.

  On 10/30/2020 at 3:39 PM, aencre said:

I’m firmly in the fuck google camp, even if as a paying member I get spared the billboards.  But that doesn’t mean I expect someone else to pay for that.

One thing I’d love to be part of the discussion is ways to actually lower the hosting costs. How much of the bandwidth is "downloads" vs actual forum? And of that, how much of the database callups could be shedded off with a stripped down theme, one that doesn’t contain all the gizmos, stats and such a non-suscriber (and even more so a bot) couldn’t care about? Set as a default, wouldn’t it alleviate the load somewhat?

The hosting is via a VPS (virtual private server) and the reason we are on that versus regular website hosting you may be familiar with that is a few bucks a month is the forum software consumes more resources (CPU and database) than what is typically allowed in a shared hosting environment. It also provides us other features that shared hosting does not.

The hosting itself is 50 USD per month, and the forum software licenses spread out over 12 months comes out to around 20 bucks, hence the 70 USD we say it takes to "keep the lights on" each month. So it's not that expensive overall, and there really isn't anything that would reduce costs (the host does not charge for bandwidth in the sense (I think we have 4TB of ingress/egress bandwidth) of consumption.

Again, we're not in any financial straits; we're looking to increase revenue to do more cool stuff (e.g., WATMM Radio) and grow the user base so more activity happens, which will grow the site. 

  On 10/30/2020 at 8:07 PM, TubularCorporation said:

 

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Tossup between this and AFK Arena for most frequently seen ad the last year or two.