Having Ads on your site.

For most people, ads are the way to keep the site alive and support it.
I disagree.

I started a small forum for my gaming clan at the request of the clan leader.
I don't have a single ad.

I do have a donations link.

In about a month, I must have got close to $180 in donations.
My expenses are small, but that donation has paid it all up.

Domain - $10
Hosting - $41.88
Flashchat - $5
CometChat - $49.00

and there is some PayPal fees. Considering we only had 60 members, this isn't a huge amount, but enough to live by.

Members of the clan have expressed that they like not having ads all over the place. Since they don't like ads and I don't need them to survive, I don't add them. Donors do get perks like Donor lounge where there is no rules, @dausa.info e-mails, etc, but it is not a huge thing.

So would you (do you) turn off ads when there is money in the account to pay for the years expenses?

 

I'm not that altruistic. My site site is admittedly for profit. Not looking to get rich, just looking for track day and tire money.

 

I will never put ads on my anime site, not even if I was paid to.

I will make skins and complete graphics requests.

 

Your never going to make any serious money from ads on sites anyway these days, too many people are aware of what Adsense Ads look like now and avoid clicking them. And the same goes for Affiliated Banners as well, which I see is used a lot here, some of them in signatures. People also use Banner Ad blockers with browsers like Firefox now to make matters worse. Plus, in most cases they don't even cover the site cost itself anyhow.

The only way to make money, is to work a job for it. There are no short cuts! I make more money working one day at work, than I would in 3 years from my "previously" most successful Adsense site that got the most clicks daily. So what's the point of even bothering and spoiling your site in the process?

Just get a job and pay for it that way easily, and then you can keep your site free from ads (that only spoil it) in the long-run.

 

Well I'm not out to get rich off my site but I my goal is for it to pay for it's self and maybe offset the cost of my hobby. Right now I've got ad similar to adsense that pays about half my monthly bills. Then I'm looking to install some affiliate ads and a donation button. All that stuff will be on the home page leaving the index page clean. The rest I'm hoping will come from membership and dealer packages. I'm already working on my first dealer arrangement

 

Have you approached the manufacturers as well? It adds a certain credence to a site, it really does.

 

No sir, I agree it would really make my site look good but I'm not sure it will happen. All of the manufactures in my niche are all advertisers on my competitor's site. That site grows at an astronomical rate compared to my slow growing site. So I figure I would wait until my membership improves or for someone to contact me. I wouldn't mind having a more tangible IT person on my team before I really start growing and dealing with advertising accounts.

 

I'll have to disagree with your comments. I think you are generalising too much and I'll try to explain why:

1. My site after about 1-2 years, I was making MORE from Adsense ads and affiliates per month than I was getting paid on my salary that month! I kid you not. It wasn't for every month, but during the Xmas, it was MORE and throughout that year, it was close. I'm not bragging, just telling you the truth that some people can make money from running a forum/site from ads. I didn't start the site to make money, it was to support and help other users out and also to learn more myself. It was my accident that the site was a major hit and wasn't intended on making money. All the money of course went back into the site anyway with me upgrading to dedicated servers, faster bandwidth, better design, prizes, competitions etc....

2. Ads can COMPLIMENT your site as well. Don't think of them as 'spoiling', I think of them as complimenting my site. I'll explain. My site deals with support for MP3/MP4 players. So people come on with problems or questions or 'how to mod my player'. People are also there to share their skins, themes etc... So, the ads I put on the site are mainly relating to MP3/MP4 players. I'm talking about ads from eBay or Google relating to accessories for MP3/MP4 players, newer players (for those who want to upgrade their players) etc... It compliments the site quite nicely, esp the eBay ads where people end up buying better earphones for their MP4 players as well as Google ads that display newer MP4 players or accessories for them. So don't think of it as a negative, it can be turned into a positive for members. You're right, there are some ad blockers for Firefox but I make sure I name some ad spots appropriate such as "Accessories for MP4 Players" which only show eBay ads for accessories for MP4 players (not Google of course as that will violate their agreement).

3.I hardly got any donations at all from members and the site is provided FREE. No payment for any special treatment. I did once run a "Donate and get some special benefits" such as a different "title" etc but that didn't work out well and I still wanted to provide the site as a FREE support site. Lets say about 5 donated and I got about $10 bucks........ I've been with Google Ads and other affiliates for almost 3 years now and the clicks are geniune and are from members who find them 'useful'. I filter out a lot of cr*p ads too which are irrelevant which also helps.


So, I think rather than makings assumptions as to what your members/users want or like, TRY out different methods of getting income to support the forum and see which works best for you. MordyT mentioned that donations worked out really well and their members didn't like ads. While I'm the opposite and my site purely relies on ads and I've tried donations which didn't work out for me at all.