Google Ad's

Rich · January 18, 2013, 08:38:01 AM

What is the real reason that Google Ad's are showing up on the board? Do the boards like this one receive pay for allowing the commercials? I raised a big fuss on one message board because that board was plastered with a whole lot of those silly commercials. I have uninstalled Adobe Flash player so I don't have to see them. I saw one google Ad on this board before I took Adobe Flash player off, and I even saw one on Predatormasters last night. Pisses me off big time.

bigben · January 18, 2013, 10:25:10 AM

I dont know about this one but some boards offset the cost by doing that.

FinsnFur · January 18, 2013, 11:01:54 AM

The real reason??? Well......what was the lie or the bull^%#* you were being told? I dont recall the prior discussion LOL

I kinda feel like I'm being accused of making money off ya.

The ads are down there to generate revenue, yes.

Do boards like this one receive pay for allowing the commercials? Well..not really, sorta. First of all they arent commercials. Commercials are more fleeting than ads, they demonstrate products etc. An ad displays information.

The pay works like this. Google charges business's to run their ads, and from that, they pay us for each time an ad is clicked.
So pay is based on a per click ratio. And there is no set denomination. The pay per click varies by the ad and can be anywhere from 2cents to who knows...I think maybe 10cents.

Why are they here? I'm glad you asked actually. Member Funds
They dont pay to run the site. I pay to run the site. They dont cover costs of running the site. I pay the costs of running the site. And they dont reimburse me costs incurred.
They are here to generate revenue for the board. We used to have folks donate things for board which created revenue for members funds. Folks used to auction things off to help raise member funds. And some people just straight out donate to members funds.
The economy, peoples outlook on this country, loss of jobs, and lightened board traffic has slowed the income of members funds to a crawl. This directly effects and ends the boards paying contests etc.
The ads was my way of picking up some of the slack in hopes to generate that income again.

Member Funds are used to finance the contests we have. Every nickel in is publicly documented, and every nickel out is publicly documented, here

If your fears are that I am personally obtaining monetary gain from this, I sincerely invite you to my Google account where you can see every aspect of the program concerning these ads. Let me know if your interested and I will openly and very willingly share the username and password to log in with. You can see how much has been paid, when it was paid, etc. Which by the way, you will notice that no payments go out until a total of $100 is reached. And you'll also see that 2 payments of $100 have been paid to us in the last 4 years. The 2008 payment was not from ads on this forum as there were none at that time.
AND those ads run on three other sites which all get added together to try and help collect revenue for this forum. finsandfur.net, finsandfur.net/forums, finsandfuroutdoors.com.
click to enlarge

You dont have to worry about me making anything off the ads. In fact the latest payment as shown above of $102 being sent on the 31st of January is being used to purchase Orion LBL calls for the LBL Hunt. Which cost me $110.00, not $102.

I'm not here to make money, I've said that over and over and over...and as mentioned everything gets publicly documented here.
Speaking of board funds and making money...here's how much money I make. If you click that link and look at the amount of money we actually have on hand, it shows 151.63
But guess what? There's nothing close to that available.

Why? Because Paypal charges a fee to send money. SO whenever someone donates paypal gets a chunk off the top, we dont get the actual amount.
And when I pay a contest prize out, PayPal takes a chunk off the top of that too. So I up the amount paid so that when it gets to the member he gets the full promised amount after PayPal takes theirs.
So basically the difference between the posted amount available and whats actually available, comes from my pocket. It always has, which assures the amount we pay out is the amount the member gets.
I figure me eating the PayPal fees is much easier then try to explain them to people whom might think I'm lining my pockets.

Now, with all that said. May I ask you why these ads piss you off so drastically? I tried to be respectful when setting this up, by placing them at the very bottom of the page, they never appear within posts, and I never once pimped them or made them invasive in anyway.

Also...I'm going to say this again...I'm not here to make money. It obviously costs me money to have this forum up, and not just with the Paypal fees. And even if I was here to roll some coin, it wouldnt be with those ads cause what little it does generate goes right back to all the members. So if the ads are an issue, or spawn suspicion, let me say I have absolutely no problem removing them. I will lose a grand total of $0.00
I wont be offended one bit if you would like to set up a poll regarding the removal of the ads. In fact I encourage it, cause I'm not real big on suspicion. If a poll shows that the members want them gone, they can be gone, whether it's from suspicion or inconvenience. It's definitely not a problem

Lastly...remember...if you or anyone wants login information for the boards Paypal account to see the amounts, transactions, etc. Let me know. Absolutely every nickel is documented along with dates, and your more then welcome to view it. The account is exclusively for the members funds, there's nothing of mine or fins hosting, or any other personal information in there.
Same goes with the Google ad account...anyone wants to log in and look around, your more then welcome.

Rich · January 18, 2013, 11:44:10 AM

Jim,
I don't blame you for wanting to make money from advertisement, I really don't. The Ad's piss me off because I am fed up with commercials. Some of those Ad's are phony offers for a free this or that, some advertise stuff that don't really work and they are simply annoying. Thanks for being honest about the situation, I really appreciate that.

FinsnFur · January 18, 2013, 11:54:18 AM

Maybe I worded something wrong up there Rich, but again I am not making money off of them.

bigben · January 18, 2013, 01:13:58 PM

Quote from: bigben on January 18, 2013, 10:25:10 AM
I dont know about this one but some boards offset the cost by doing that.

Read my reply again jim. I am a mod on another board where it does create revenue for the owners. I didnt believe it was the same here so i didnt say it did.

And run the board as you may jim i didnt even notice the ads personally and really could care less if you did happen to make money off the boards ads to offset the costs of providing the board for free for us to use and its awesome you have with the board for a pretty good chunk of time.

Yotehntr · January 18, 2013, 02:40:52 PM

So let me get this straight... if we click the add we get more prize money huh? clickety click click click.

click

FinsnFur · January 18, 2013, 04:16:27 PM

No probs Ben. I agree and I know there's several sites that have fairly good income from Google ads. They are high traffic sites.
It took us four years to get 100 dollars,

and most of that came from finsandfur.net not the forum as they only been on the forums for a few months.

Doug...I can actually get in trouble for answering that. Take it as you may

I know people have put them on forums and then posted "go to town boys", only to be banned from Google.
I can also get banned if I get caught clicking them myself. Part of the agreement is my machines are marked to make sure I dont do it.

Frogman · January 18, 2013, 04:39:21 PM

Profit is what's left of income after expenses. Sounds like Jim isn't even covering his expenses?? If you consider the time he puts into the site, let's say at $5.00 per hour, Whoa, he's really in the hole. I know this is a labor of love for him, and not really a business, but I sure do not begrudge him some adds to help increase income. Remember, income is not profit!

I had someone question why my ccw classes were not free? Once I pay the expenses they almost are. A lot of people who have not been in business do not understand expenses. I think they thought I got the adds in the Bulletin Board, and the range time for free, the NRA just gave me the text books and certificates, and all the extra materials I copied for my students didn't cost anything? And that didn't even include the expenses I incurred going to school to become a certified instructor. Forget about my time. I enjoy doing it.

What is the easiest way to donate so that you get 100% of the funds? Is it best to just send a check? If so please PM me your mailing address so I can send a little something to help out.

I really like this forum and feel at home here!!

Jim

KySongDog · January 18, 2013, 04:53:49 PM

I think Jim is a long, long way from covering expenses for this site.

As for the Google Ads, I didn't even notice they were on the bottom of the page.

I guess I have just learned to tune out ads. All of the "free" apps on my cell phone come with ads plastered at the bottom of the pages. I've just learned to ignore them. Same with Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and all of the other "free" stuff on the net.

kyfuzzyface · January 18, 2013, 06:19:47 PM

Quote from: Semp on January 18, 2013, 04:53:49 PM
I think Jim is a long, long way from covering expenses for this site. As for the Google Ads, I didn't even notice they were on the bottom of the page.

I guess I have just learned to tune out ads. All of the "free" apps on my cell phone come with ads plastered at the bottom of the pages. I've just learned to ignore them. Same with Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and all of the other "free" stuff on the net.

WOW I am with you Semp, I never noticed them, I am going to start checking out some of the good deals !!

FinsnFur · January 18, 2013, 07:33:47 PM

Quote from: Frogman on January 18, 2013, 04:39:21 PM
What is the easiest way to donate so that you get 100% of the funds? Is it best to just send a check? If so please PM me your mailing address so I can send a little something to help out.

I really like this forum and feel at home here!!

Jim

There isnt a good way really Jim. Checks mean I have to put them in a bank and then transfer them to Paypal. And the same with cash.
The simplest way is right through PayPal. I actually use a Paypal Calculator which tells me how much extra I have to send someone for them to get the full amount.

But it's really not that big of an issue, seriously. The members dump money and items into the board, so I kind of look at the PayPal fees as my contribution. It's easier for me to whine about it then anything else.

The point I wanted to make though, was that I dont run this forum to make money and I dont make money from running the forum. The ads were put up there to make money for the members. You know what I'm sayin

Frogman · January 18, 2013, 08:56:06 PM

Yep!

Yotehntr · January 18, 2013, 09:37:47 PM

Quote from: FinsnFur on January 18, 2013, 04:16:27 PM
Doug...I can actually get in trouble for answering that. Take it as you may

Doug??? now that's just insulting...

Rich · January 18, 2013, 10:44:34 PM

Quote from: Semp on January 18, 2013, 04:53:49 PM
I think Jim is a long, long way from covering expenses for this site. As for the Google Ads, I didn't even notice they were on the bottom of the page.

I guess I have just learned to tune out ads. All of the "free" apps on my cell phone come with ads plastered at the bottom of the pages. I've just learned to ignore them. Same with Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and all of the other "free" stuff on the net.

---------------------------------
I actually posted my question over here because I had just raised heck on another board because their site is really plastered with those annoying ad's. I only saw ONE on this board and it was on the far right of the page, not at the bottom. Anyway, I knew that Jim would be straight forward with me rather than blame my personal computer and suggesting that I run a scan for spam and other junk like they did over on that other board.

KySongDog · January 19, 2013, 09:57:37 AM

I know some of the sites that do use lots of ads and I agree they are annoying. I also know it does cost money to run a site. Server time, software upgrades, bandwidth charges.....the list is a long one. Glocktalk was a site I used to frequent quite a bit and they now require a paid membership fee to get full access to the site and to get rid of all the ads.

yotefever · January 19, 2013, 12:55:27 PM

I used to be on a site a lot, that has some great people but it got too clicky for me along with the site owner starting his own business (shooting parts and equip) with adds that pop up several times in a post you are reading. Others on the site had trouble posting their own stuff, you had to be a paid member to have pm's and they started classifieds and other things for paid members only.
I miss the 'old' site which I was a paid member for years. I learned a lot of the behind the scenes from a friend that was a moderator, until cancer got him.
The adds here are nothing compared to other things, remember when cable started there were no commercials?