Sponserships in classifieds

Sorry, but no, I am not going to do it the way you want. I won't do the legwork necessary for what you suggest, and certainly I am not going to ask the mods to do that neither.

Seriously, I would really like to take your money so you could be a sponsor, but I have to look at the big picture and make decisions that I feel are reasonable and prudent with as much considered as possible. Quite frankly, although it would certainly be in my best interests to just allow unlimited sponsor links for whoever wants them, and just grab the money, but I just do not think it would be in the best interests of those people actually trying to VIEW those forums to get to the actual meat they are there looking for. If I had 100 sponsors for the Bearded Dragon classifieds forum, do you think people having to scroll through all 100 sponsor links just to get to see the first actual ad might find this just a bit tiresome?

So I set the limit at 20. I took money from those sponsors who paid for their link to be there for 1 year. So the link stays, no matter what they do on their end of the deal. Within reason, of course. Someone decides to link their domain to a porno site or some such, then no, that will not be permitted. But otherwise, I'm sorry, but that's just going to have to be the way it is.

Originally Posted by Uluru

Someone could contact them from fauna.

The mods here have enough work as is, without having to click on every sponsor link once a month or so to see if they're all working, then having to dig threw each one to find the email address, email them, then wait for a response.

And the refunds could be pro rated. If they paid lets say $100 for ten months and thier site went down after three they would get $70 back. And its not like fauna would be out a lot of money, that spot would be available again for purchase.

Automatic refunds, means extra programming, which in turn, means out of pocket money for Rich. You're also assuming that the spots will fill up right away. He might have 15 empty spots just sitting there, wasting space for months until someone else decides to purchase a spot.

And it would make it look better to have working sponsered sites vs non functioning ones.The examples in the dragon classifieds have not worked for months. Ive tried going to thier sites numerous times and they dont work or dont exsist anymore.

Statistically, 2 out of 20 isn't all that bad. It's damn good, actually. So as for "looking better" I don't think so. fixing 2 links won't change much of an opinion.

Fair enough, I dint start this thread to want to change a bunch of stuff on fauna or make more work for the mods, just something I noticed that I thought might have been overlooked.

One question, Rich - is the classifieds sponsorship set up for automatic renewal?
If somebody has to manually renew, it is less likely that inactive members will retain those spots (working, or not).

Originally Posted by hhmoore

One question, Rich - is the classifieds sponsorship set up for automatic renewal?
If somebody has to manually renew, it is less likely that inactive members will retain those spots (working, or not).

I believe they are now, but weren't in the beginning. Actually the reason I made them recurring subscriptions was because otherwise it was rather difficult trying to determine who had let their subscription lapse. Oftentimes there is absolutely no directly linking info between what they might have in their sponsorship text and link and what their member name is here. So figuring out WHO actually has the sponsorship can sometimes be a challenge. So I figured that when they cancelled their subscription, that this would be an easy flag for me to pick up to figure that out.

Of course, that didn't work out well, neither, as some members will cancel the automated subscription immediately. So I STILL have to manually audit the sponsorships to try to figure out which ones have actually expired. Which, honestly, I don't have on the top of my list of things I find fun to do. So yeah, someone might actually have a sponsorship link up for months after it has expired. That's the breaks, I guess, and since it's really me that takes the hit when that happens, no big deal. I don't really lose any sleep over that at all. If someone gets some free time with a sponsor link, then good for them. Everyone likes to get a freebie now and again.

I actually thought about setting up ALL of the forum sponsorships much like I have it set up in the Board Of Inquiry forum, with the little 120x60 mini banners. Possibly I could allow more sponsors that way, but it might be a tossup as to which method is better with bandwidth and loading on a viewer's browser, so I haven't seen any pressing reason to pursue it much.