This is one of the best webmaster forum out there. It is also very popular. My question is
How can a site as big as this survive with no advert? Webhostingtalk.com can make
good money by placing Pay Per action banners on this forum! I wonder why they have not done it
by now.

The server and the bandwdith is all donated, so no no money is made, but no money is lost either.

only thing gained is knowledge :)
usually through either a problem, solution, or argument :stickout

Paid advertising would destroy the objectivity of the board in my opinion.

When I see advertising on a so-called resource site I immediately question the validity of the information provided. Particularly if the advertising is related to the topic at hand.

Banner ads also slow down the loading of the sites and can cause browser errors.

If a site has value it tends to find its own audience over time and word of mouth is still the most powerful & credible form of advertising available.

This forum strikes the right balance by offering the advertising thread and allowing members to opt out of direct marketing efforts.

I tend to think of this forum as a very sensitive and unique ecosystem and as such any small disturbance or toxin would radically alter or even destroy it.


Franc

geekwannabe you are missing the point! Why would anyone spend time building a site when there is no profit for them? Some one must pay for the work being put to maintain and promote this site.
Honestly I dont see why adding a banner on this forum could lessen its quality.

Originally posted by kickster
geekwannabe you are missing the point! Why would anyone spend time building a site when there is no profit for them? Some one must pay for the work being put to maintain and promote this site.
Honestly I dont see why adding a banner on this forum could lessen its quality.

Profit does not have to be narrowly defined in terms of money or return on investment.

People profit from experience. They profit from helping others. They profit from building things well.

In this sense, I think that this forum returns a tremendous profit to its members. This forum is successful precisely because it serves its members so well. It has clear rules and a clear mandate and that is what attracts my interests as well as the interests of those who post.

The fact that they don't take money is precisely the reason I trust this board.

Profit in the money sense can distort priorities and alter the basic mission of the service.

Perhaps the mods might like to offer their perspective on this topic.


Franc


:)

To a certain degree geekwanabee is right, consider this, the person who owns this board, i believe mattf correct me if im wrong, is very well known in the community for this board that alone can bring him more wealth than advertising, IE if he wants a free dedicated server or wants to get a job with one of us, hes going to be able to without a problem because of his status from this board. That alone is worth more than money.

I have to admit i was wondering the same thing too when i notice there was no advertising on this board. I must give props for whoever started this forum. I learned a lot about reselling and general webhosting. I almost went with ***** if it wasn't for this board :)

Matt also owns www.hostinvestigator.com, which has been closed down temporarily while it is re-written. I'm sure it must benfit from its close association. ;)

Originally posted by kickster
geekwannabe you are missing the point! Why would anyone spend time building a site when there is no profit for them? Some one must pay for the work being put to maintain and promote this site.
Honestly I dont see why adding a banner on this forum could lessen its quality.
You haven't been around the Web much, have you? If you had you would have seen lots of excellent sites that do not generate income.

There are lots of reasons put the time and effort (and expense) into creating a site that others will enjoy. Wanting to help others ia a big reason, and one of the chief motivating factors behind my diving site. Sharing a common interest is another. There are some outstanding sites by Star Trek fans on various aspects of the Star Trek universe.

An outstanding site on astronomy and the oceans is J.D. Knights' Sea and Sky http://www.seasky.org . You won't see an ad banner on site and is it clear a lot of work is going into the site. The bandwidth costs were getting to him and I helped by telling him about some high bandwidth allowance hosts I became familiar with here. He switched to one of them a few months ago and is able to manage the expense much easier once again. You don't get devotion and passion like that for pay.

To reduce every effort by people to the profit motive diminishes us all and indicates a lack of familiarity with our species. There is nothig wrong with making a profit, though there are far more meaningful reasons behind many web sites.

This one is one of that loftier class.

Adding ad banners can raise questions of bias.

You are comparing apples and oranges. Fan sites are different than commercial sites. Webhostingtalk has commercial value and is not a hobby/fan site.

by the way, since this site is not reviewing any host and all opinions are based on users experience then
how can Adding ad banners can raise questions of bias?

Originally posted by kickster
You are comparing apples and oranges. Fan sites are different than commercial sites. Webhostingtalk has commercial value and is not a hobby/fan site.
Not at all. You have completely missed the point. Many enthusiasts' sites do have commercial value. The distinction between commercial and non commercial on the Internet is greatly blurred from traditional definitions.

For one thing, any high traffic site has potential value as an advertising medium simply from the amount of visitors it gets. The Sea and Sky site I mentioned is an immensely popular site and J.D. could easily have ad banners all over the place. They could cover the operating costs and even generate a profit.

However, making money is not his motivation and he doesn't want to.

My own site about scuba diving is similar in that respect. It is much more popular than many of the commercial sites, including that of the oldest diving magazine. You won't see an ad banner or affiliate program anywhere on site.

The site does generate some income from the links I charge businesses to be linked from the site. However, that is not the motivating factor behind the site. I charge businesses because I feel that if they are going to benefit (and many have, even tremedously), they should pay a modest fee for the privilege and help support my efforts. The commercial links sections are separated from the others and there has never been a question of bias towards businesses on my site, or the information being compromised in any way. Indeed, in that respect, my site enjoys a certain respect that no other popular site about diving does.

Nothing would change about the site I did away with the commercial links or charging for them as profit is not what drives the effort put into it.


by the way, since this site is not reviewing any host and all opinions are based on users experience then
how can Adding ad banners can raise questions of bias?
Despite the truth of what you say, for some people, there's always the perception of bias.

Originally posted by kickster
You are comparing apples and oranges. Fan sites are different than commercial sites. Webhostingtalk has commercial value and is not a hobby/fan site.

by the way, since this site is not reviewing any host and all opinions are based on users experience then
how can Adding ad banners can raise questions of bias?

The best things on the Net are free :)


Adding ad banners of hosts will provoke some other hosts to complain that they are being favored over themselves and reduce the perception of impartiality on the forums.

WHT is an informational resource first of all, and it will remain that way. Yes, we could earn loads of money, but then it would wreck it for everyone. I've been keeping track of our statistics, and the last month has been the best for WHT ever with well over 4500 posts and over 120 new members per month. We stick to a successful formula :)

I know it sounds a bit like comparing apples and oranges, but if you consider WHT to be a commercial resource, then you might as well call all open-source/GPL/Linux/etc. efforts a commercial effort.

However, open-source programs aren't earning the authors any profit - they're doing it for the benefit of the rest of the Internet community. That's what we're doing here at WHT.

Sites like this one and all the other informational resources out there, along with open source projects and programs, allow some of the best traits of humanity to be displayed. People help each other because they can.

You can't accurately say that it has less merit (or no merit at all) because you can't put a price tag on it.

Kickster, I think affliateship and banners are in your blood, do not forget all the worlds top sites are informational sites, I am new to WHT, and I was never a big forum fan, but WHT has changed my attitude towards forums, This site ll about information and learning, when you get money changing hands in educational issues, the level of education starts deteriorating. I have the the upmost respect for the individual behind this site.

Originally posted by Duster


My own site about scuba diving is similar in that respect. It is much more popular than many of the commercial sites, including that of the oldest diving magazine. You won't see an ad banner or affiliate program anywhere on site.


My brother has his Dive Master certification and is passionate about diving. He has completed dives in Australia, Bali, Guam, and most of the Caribbean.

Would you mind posting a link to your site so that I can pass it on to him.

Thanks,
Franc
:blush:

It's Diverlink, at http://diverlink.com You can check out http://diverlink.com/files/rankings.htm for proof of what I said about popularity.

No need for proof.

You are the George Washington of posters.

franc

;)

The links I supplied were for the benefit of kickster and others. The information on them show both an indication of the effort that goes into many sites with no profit in mind, at least not as the primary factor, and the results of some of those efforts. With only word of mouth advertising, my diving site has eclipsed many that spend money on advertising and promotion, including some big commercial enterprises.

There are many sites that have done the same thing, owing to their quality and content (and quality of content) and often a community atmosphere.

The lack of commercialism does not detract from the effort that goes into such sites. In many cases, it enhances them.

Anyone can find out the relative popularity of many sites by following the simple instructions on the rankings link, another reason I posted it.

See guys I was right. You guys said WHT would never go commercial and I said NO way. When it comes to predictions and Business planing I am the king :)

Hmmm, do you rent out the crystal ball, or is it just for private use ;)

Hummm, is $10 per hour a fair deal? :D

Sounds fair, can you Fedex it to me if I let you have my account number?

For all of you that are going on about how advertisiments are wrong and it destroys this and that, well I for one would like to personally thank each and every one of you for your donation to keep this site advert free. After all if you are complaining that much you must be sending them money to keep it ad free. Ofcourse it could be on of those things it doesn't take much to do this, blah, blah, blah, just do not ask me to do it. :smokin:

Whose complaining?

I started this topic by stating why WHT is not using this great forum as a commercial tool? Every one started saying that it will always stays a non banner or commercial free site. It did not make any sense to me and I dropped the matter. Few days ago I saw the ads and I laughed at all those people who made those comments :)

There is nothing wrong with trying to make some money.

I had a feeling one of these threads would come back to bite us in the donkey :D

I think you are missing the point of why the banners are here now. To me, it is for personal financial reasons rather than commerical financial reasons. Maybe there isn't a difference, but I see one.

Just to compare it to Sitepoint... The forums there are a commerical forum, a resource of course, but with a commercial motive for the company. This is not bad, not at all, just different than WHT and the philosophy behind this site.

Matt and the other moderators, for a long time, had absolutely no commercial insterests in providing the site and helping people. Only recently has Kunal coded and released his help desk. We don't sell t-shirts (even though people want them, go figure), design sites for money, nor have any commercial interest.

One day I might be able to make a few bucks from all the moderation, or get some money back from the %$^%#& digichat, but if not that's ok too. I like to read and discuss this stuff, and bs with all of you. It gives me something to do, and I try to help whenever I can. I'm happy if I can solve a problem here or there or give an opinion on something when asked.

The only thing I *hope* to receive is some feed back and help if I have a problem, from someone who feels the same way :D

Chicken, I am surprised you still havn't been knighted by our gracious queen, for all the hard work you have put into modding on here :)

i dont have a problem with advertising on the site as long as they dont use pop up's and pop unders...

What I cant understand is the removal of avatars and then sig files as self promotion tools, and then propose essentially charging for the same thing in the form of a 468x60 banner?

I agree the site shouldnt be regarded as a free resource, the cost money and time to maintain. But their were better ways it could have been handled.

I have recently been building a links site up and I'm sick of the amount of ads I've had to put up with recently while visiting sites. I'm glad the arse has fallen out of internet advertising lately, it can only improve the quality of the internet.

One of the reasons I like this site so much is its virtually non commercial status, that means what you see is what you get, a rare thing on the internet these days. Someone mentioned pop ups and pop unders, these should carry the death penalty in my opinion. All the over advertising is ruining the internet.

Dont get me wrong, theres nothing wrong with making money, its the how that makes the difference.

Originally posted by multipleimage
i dont have a problem with advertising on the site as long as they dont use pop up's and pop unders...

amen to that

My employer currently has 5 sites. 4 designed to sell our software & training
and 1 that just provides information for people in our industry or students.
We mention related products, but we don't sell anything through that
site.

I have 1 word to describe how WHT does it:

Viral-Marketing (or is that 2 words? :D)

Also Word-Of-Mouth is big here... :spiny: