• Posted 12/19/2024.
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    I am still waiting on my developer to finish up on the Classifieds Control Panel so I can use it to encourage members into becoming paying members. Google Adsense has become a real burden on the viewing of this site, but honestly it is the ONLY source of income now that keeps it afloat. I tried offering disabling the ads being viewed by paying members, but apparently that is not enough incentive. Quite frankly, Google Adsense has dropped down to where it barely brings in enough daily to match even a single paid member per day. But it still gets the bills paid. But at what cost?

    So even without the classifieds control panel being complete, I believe I am going to have to disable those Google ads completely and likely disable some options here that have been free since going to the new platform. Like classified ad bumping, member name changes, and anything else I can use to encourage this site to be supported by the members instead of the Google Adsense ads.

    But there is risk involved. I will not pay out of pocket for very long during this last ditch experimental effort. If I find that the membership does not want to support this site with memberships, then I cannot support your being able to post your classified ads here for free. No, I am not intending to start charging for your posting ads here. I will just shut the site down and that will be it. I will be done with FaunaClassifieds. I certainly don't need this, and can live the rest of my life just fine without it. If I see that no one else really wants it to survive neither, then so be it. It goes away and you all can just go elsewhere to advertise your animals and merchandise.

    Not sure when this will take place, and I don't intend to give any further warning concerning the disabling of the Google Adsense. Just as there probably won't be any warning if I decide to close down this site. You will just come here and there will be some sort of message that the site is gone, and you have a nice day.

    I have been trying to make a go of this site for a very long time. And quite frankly, I am just tired of trying. I had hoped that enough people would be willing to help me help you all have a free outlet to offer your stuff for sale. But every year I see less and less people coming to this site, much less supporting it financially. That is fine. I tried. I retired the SerpenCo business about 14 years ago, so retiring out of this business completely is not that big if a step for me, nor will it be especially painful to do. When I was in Thailand, I did not check in here for three weeks. I didn't miss it even a little bit. So if you all want it to remain, it will be in your hands. I really don't care either way.

    =====================
    Some people have indicated that finding the method to contribute is rather difficult. And I have to admit, that it is not all that obvious. So to help, here is a thread to help as a quide. How to become a contributing member of FaunaClassifieds.

    And for the record, I will be shutting down the Google Adsense ads on January 1, 2025.
  • Responding to email notices you receive.
    **************************************************
    In short, DON'T! Email notices are to ONLY alert you of a reply to your private message or your ad on this site. Replying to the email just wastes your time as it goes NOWHERE, and probably pisses off the person you thought you replied to when they think you just ignored them. So instead of complaining to me about your messages not being replied to from this site via email, please READ that email notice that plainly states what you need to do in order to reply to who you are trying to converse with.

Change to mobile device appearance/format?

WebSlave said:
Did something happen here to make it difficult for new members to post? In less than a week, we have had 100 new registered members and only one (1) of them has made even a single post on the site.

That is just real unusual, so I'm wondering if something happened that I need to be aware of. :shrug01:
Click to expand...

Of course, I can't speak for others, but I lurked for several months after I registered. Mostly, I was just trying to get a feel for the site and its members, and what the general culture was like. With the BOI gone, maybe folks joined just to view/post classifieds, and may never feel the need to post.
 
Insomniac101 said:
Of course, I can't speak for others, but I lurked for several months after I registered. Mostly, I was just trying to get a feel for the site and its members, and what the general culture was like. With the BOI gone, maybe folks joined just to view/post classifieds, and may never feel the need to post.
Click to expand...

Well, sounds like a good theory, so I went through and did some spot checks of various periods of new registrations in the past to check where those people were posting, and I would have to say that 99% of them posted in the classifieds section, whether responding to an existing ad, or starting one of their own. And those areas I checked were AFTER the BOI had been closed.

So I tend to think that the closing of the BOI has nothing to do with this recent phenomenon.

BTW, I was talking about posting on the entire site, which does include the classifieds sections. Basically zip for postings from those new registrations.
 
FYI, I asked my programmer to remove the Adsense Auto-ads code, as I think it may have been chasing people away with the intrusive ads. But I intent to monitor things to see how it goes. If it doesn't make any difference in traffic either way, but knocks back the income from the Adsense ads substantially, then I will ask my programmer to re-implement it.

So if anyone has any comments pro, con, or neutral about this stuff, please chime in here. I would rather make decisions based on some input, but wouldn't be the first time I have just bitten the bullet to see what happens.
 
I don't have a computer, only an iPad and I hate it 😂😂😂. "Request desktop site" only stays active for a short period of time. It has been really cumbersome for me to be on, I understand that it's my choice to not buy/use a computer.
 
Beyond GenetiX said:
I don't have a computer, only an iPad and I hate it ������. "Request desktop site" only stays active for a short period of time. It has been really cumbersome for me to be on, I understand that it's my choice to not buy/use a computer.
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So what exactly do you hate? Was it better here before the mod was done to try to make this site more "mobile friendly", or the site in general from the very beginning accessing it via your mobile device?

Personally I just hate accessing the internet at all via my smart phone, but that is just me. So I just don't do it. At all.
 
Beyond GenetiX said:
I don't have a computer, only an iPad and I hate it 😂😂😂. "Request desktop site" only stays active for a short period of time. It has been really cumbersome for me to be on, I understand that it's my choice to not buy/use a computer.
Click to expand...
For ipad, mobile skin isn't suppose to kick in. I tweaked it a little, please check now.
 
WebSlave said:
So what exactly do you hate? Was it better here before the mod was done to try to make this site more "mobile friendly", or the site in general from the very beginning accessing it via your mobile device?

Personally I just hate accessing the internet at all via my smart phone, but that is just me. So I just don't do it. At all.
Click to expand...


The mobile skin on iPad, every second reply in the thread was an ad or blank for the most of the page, then another reply.


Logician said:
For ipad, mobile skin isn't suppose to kick in. I tweaked it a little, please check now.
Click to expand...

This is much better now, makes me feel like I'm home again. I know I'm not the only user but it was rough for me.
 
It seems much better for me too. I was having the same issues as Jason was, but on my phone, not an iPad.

It was getting annoying to be bounced back to the "mobile" log-in page every time I clicked on any thread. Sometimes, I would click on a thread, and would get a full-page ad. But mostly, it would direct me back to the mobile version log-in screen.

Thanks for looking into it, and making some adjustments. Much better; for me, anyway. :)
 
WebSlave said:
FYI, I asked my programmer to remove the Adsense Auto-ads code, as I think it may have been chasing people away with the intrusive ads. But I intent to monitor things to see how it goes. If it doesn't make any difference in traffic either way, but knocks back the income from the Adsense ads substantially, then I will ask my programmer to re-implement it.

So if anyone has any comments pro, con, or neutral about this stuff, please chime in here. I would rather make decisions based on some input, but wouldn't be the first time I have just bitten the bullet to see what happens.
Click to expand...

Well, FYI, things have really nosedived with the Google Adsense income after my programmer disabled the autoads thing, so I have asked him to re-enable it. Income is less than a third of what it was prior. :ack2:

This might not be the entire reason for the significant drop in Adsense revenue, though, as quite likely this COVID-19 issue is also taking it's toll here in a number of ways. As people lose their jobs, or the fear thereof, paid memberships and paying advertisers will certainly drop like a rock. Even general participation here will likely drop off substantially as I believe many people tend to use the networks where they work for a substantial portion of their internet browsing. And are people really going to be interested in viewing ads of animals and products that they can not really afford to invest in right now?

So it behooves me, I believe, to not disable anything that might bring in even a little bit of extra income for this site for as long as it works as it was designed. I apologize if this causes people heartburn with their viewing this site on their mobile devices. I wish the world were just perfect for everyone, but obviously that is not the case. So I just have to make the best decisions I can, with everything I can think of in mind.
 
FYI, I asked my programmer to disable all Google Adsense ads for all paid levels of memberships, which should include Sponsors too. This was done about a week ago, but I wanted to monitor the revenue change in Adsense to make sure this is a reasonable thing for me to do, before making a public announcement about it.

There wasn't too big of a change in revenue, so I'm hoping that this might spur more members into becoming paying members to compensate for the minor loss this will cost me.

Unfortunately I forgot to ask him to disable the ads for me........ :face_palm_02:

But I guess I should monitor them anyway, so what the heck. Doesn't seem to kick in much with my desktop computer viewing anyway.
 
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