- Joined
- Nov 3, 2001
- Messages
- 19,227
- Reaction score
- 5,144
Guys / Gals
I want to make sure that we do the best we can for the members and get you all what you want out of the site. We have had thousands of registrations over the years and I sometimes forget how long it has been since we put updates out about the site... We go through generations around here every few years. As the Hayabusa has grown in the market so has this site, every time Suzuki sells a bike we have a prospective member. When the site started there were just a handfull of us and my vision for the site was clear. To provide a place for motorcycle enthusiast to come to share stories and meet up with folks from all over the country. The vision has always been that corporate America would pay to advertise and the members would always have free access to the site. It took many years of struggling but we made it to the point a few years ago where we had enough sponsors to cover the cost.. This is when it started getting difficult! I would say the best years to date were about 2006 and the site just exploded with great people. The economy was good and the Busa was King of all then.. We grew and grew to the point where we had to start hosting the servers at a co locate instead of my office! This increased cost and once again we were looking to find money to cover cost... We have a lot of great advertisers and I do my best to keep the best on the site, I have never increased banner rates because I know if it's tough for me to keep the site running it's also tough for businesses to pay for advertising. This is why we started running Google ads a few years ago. This brings me to what I want to discuss with you now...
To be able to keep the site free we just have to include Google banners on the site. Charging membership is just not an option... So I want to put some options in front of you all and see what we can work out... Remember there has to be some give and take... We get a few cents on most of the banners that are posted from Google, if you see something interesting and click on them we get more money. For those that are using pop up blockers I have to ask, what have you given to the community? It doesn't cost you anything to come here but you use an ad blocker because you don't like ads... those ads keep us running so I ask that if you don't have a reason to use an blocker like for access for work you keep the ads open...
We have added ads in the threads in the classifieds section. there is a 300 x 250 area in the first thread now. We figured that it would not be too intrusive and if you are buying and selling then it would not be too intrusive there...
Does anyone have any other ideas for advertising, what are your thoughts? If I were to remove banners from the main forum pages would you be okay if I added the ads in the threads.. you guys chime in here.. this is how we get things done.
We have made some changes in the banners that are presented to you so you should start to see more motorcycle specific banners shown too.
cap
I want to make sure that we do the best we can for the members and get you all what you want out of the site. We have had thousands of registrations over the years and I sometimes forget how long it has been since we put updates out about the site... We go through generations around here every few years. As the Hayabusa has grown in the market so has this site, every time Suzuki sells a bike we have a prospective member. When the site started there were just a handfull of us and my vision for the site was clear. To provide a place for motorcycle enthusiast to come to share stories and meet up with folks from all over the country. The vision has always been that corporate America would pay to advertise and the members would always have free access to the site. It took many years of struggling but we made it to the point a few years ago where we had enough sponsors to cover the cost.. This is when it started getting difficult! I would say the best years to date were about 2006 and the site just exploded with great people. The economy was good and the Busa was King of all then.. We grew and grew to the point where we had to start hosting the servers at a co locate instead of my office! This increased cost and once again we were looking to find money to cover cost... We have a lot of great advertisers and I do my best to keep the best on the site, I have never increased banner rates because I know if it's tough for me to keep the site running it's also tough for businesses to pay for advertising. This is why we started running Google ads a few years ago. This brings me to what I want to discuss with you now...
To be able to keep the site free we just have to include Google banners on the site. Charging membership is just not an option... So I want to put some options in front of you all and see what we can work out... Remember there has to be some give and take... We get a few cents on most of the banners that are posted from Google, if you see something interesting and click on them we get more money. For those that are using pop up blockers I have to ask, what have you given to the community? It doesn't cost you anything to come here but you use an ad blocker because you don't like ads... those ads keep us running so I ask that if you don't have a reason to use an blocker like for access for work you keep the ads open...
We have added ads in the threads in the classifieds section. there is a 300 x 250 area in the first thread now. We figured that it would not be too intrusive and if you are buying and selling then it would not be too intrusive there...
Does anyone have any other ideas for advertising, what are your thoughts? If I were to remove banners from the main forum pages would you be okay if I added the ads in the threads.. you guys chime in here.. this is how we get things done.
We have made some changes in the banners that are presented to you so you should start to see more motorcycle specific banners shown too.
cap
Thank you so much for YOUR time, effort and money to keep this place up and running over the years. 
I'm a member for life so as long as the board is around you're stuck with me. 
I'm talking cold hard cash here...need a way to send back all the savings I've came up with from the wealth of knowledge this site has provided. I've ran out of mods to buy......well OK maybe not, cause these diehards keep coming up with great ideas.
lease: 
