Problem

I figured I'd go ahead and make this discussion public and more accessible to everyone, so here we go.

The first thing I want to do is apologize for the censoring that's been going on, as well as all the butthurt and ragequits we've seen lately. I'm not trying to make everyone here politically correct and I would rather we all have the freedom to say whatever the fuck we wanted (save for the personal attacks and the harassment, because those aren't fun for anybody).

The problem is finding a money-making solution that can keep the site afloat and pay for the premium upgrades we may need (like the alerts mod). I don't want to pay for this shit myself and I don't want to make you pay for it either, so there needs to be a compromise.

Adsense is...amazing for their payout. If we just used that one banner, it could pay for the site and probably a paid update once every two months or so. The downside is that since Adsense is so efficient and popular, they can be choosy if they want to (and they are). Blogs and websites get dumped by them all the time for minor infractions and we've already received a warning from them. I've been looking for a while now for an alternative, but so far they all really suck in comparison.

The various ads we had near the bottom made maybe $0.02 to $0.04 a day, which is less money than I could make on my phone doing surveys and shit. Amazon Affiliates doesn't work in Missouri (where I am from) so they are out as well.

So right now we are stuck with Adsense, and I cannot afford to lose the income it creates for the forum. Your thread titles need to be safe for work and the content of your first post (if you are making a thread) needs to be relatively clean. Use a spoiler if you aren't sure and PM me (or post in here), but please try to control yourself when you're making a post.

Solutions

Something I've been considering is swapping out the adsense code in The Flood for something that makes less money, but still brings in some money. The problem with this is that The Flood has the overwhelming majority of our activity, and we would lose a lot of funding this way.

Another option is to bring back a watered down version of Anarchy for this purpose, which would become a permanent board on Sep7agon. You wouldn't be allowed to attack other members, but everything else about the board would remain. I'm less convinced of this idea because of the drama and inevitable rule-breaking that would occur, but I'd like to keep the idea on the table until something more concrete comes into play.

The last option would be either prohibiting guests from browsing the forum completely, or removing the ads from topics for guests and members without a first post. Both of these come with their own set of issues regarding activity, visibility, interest in the site for potential members, and ad revenue. I will be removing ad visibility in locked threads in the near future, though, regardless of the decision we need to make.

So I suppose I'll open the floor to any of you with ideas, questions, or suggestions.

Just a question, adsense has a problem with the profanity being used correct, so I assume it scans for these keywords?

Do these words still register if alt codes were used in the middle of word, such as you would do to bypass the filter?

If it does not register, would it be feasible to create a word filter where instead of replacing the word, it adds the alt codes into them and makes it not be picked up by adsense instead?

I'm doubting it would matter much. There is no direct "explicit" meaning with the word "spit" or "swallow" but we were still flagged for it.

So either their automated system can pick up the context and determine if a phrase is explicit, or they have actual people sifting through some of it. Maybe both (probably both). In any case, we should take care to at least keep the thread titles safe for work.

I'm okay with no Anarchy. Also, would putting more/different ads help?

I am trying out different ads, but so far they all fall impossibly short of Google.

It'd be nice if we could sell the ad space to a single company or product, because then we'd be able to do what we want to do and the advertiser would get a very specific niche audience.

Quote from: Cheat on October 14, 2014, 04:57:33 PM

Quote from: The Hån on October 14, 2014, 04:54:47 PM

I'm okay with no Anarchy. Also, would putting more/different ads help?

I am trying out different ads, but so far they all fall impossibly short of Google.

It'd be nice if we could sell the ad space to a single company or product, because then we'd be able to do what we want to do and the advertiser would get a very specific niche audience.

I'm not a web dev or anything but, is it possible to have both google and other ads?

also, i'll try to find a local business or company. i have a few ideas of people who may can help.

In most cases, yeah.

How come there's only one awesome ad service.

Same reason there's one awesome search engine.