• 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.

  • IMPORTANT! PLEASE READ!! About the Google Adsense ads being displayed

    =====================
    Posted 08/15/2025
    =====================


    Yeah, I know. They are a pain in the butt. But they pay the bills to keep my server running. Just a fact of life, I am afraid.

    Want to get rid of them? Simple. Just become a Contributor level member or above and they will be gone. -> Please click HERE."

    Is that too much for me to ask of you to keep this site running? Well, sorry about that. I too wish I could get everything for free. But alas.....

    =====================
    Addendum: 01/10/2026
    =====================


    Google Adsense ad revenue for December, 2025 was just $30 over the cost of the lease for the server running this site. So, in effect, the money providing the incentive for me to continue running this site is coming SOLELY from the paid memberships and sponsorships here. Which honestly ain't much....

Pop-up ads!

Effective today (06-25-2021) my programmer has installed code to eliminated the Google Adsense and the InfoLinks ads from all Contributor level members and above.

FYI, this is a trial period. If the only effect is that revenue from those two streams is significantly reduced, and there is not even a slight increase in paid memberships, it will obviously be foolish for me to continue with that exclusion.
 
WebSlave said:
Effective today (06-25-2021) my programmer has installed code to eliminated the Google Adsense and the InfoLinks ads from all Contributor level members and above.

FYI, this is a trial period. If the only effect is that revenue from those two streams is significantly reduced, and there is not even a slight increase in paid memberships, it will obviously be foolish for me to continue with that exclusion.
Click to expand...

Excellent. On at least two forums I frequent, paying members don't get inundated with ads.
 
Hi Rich (et al.), I'd like to offer some feedback on the pop-up ads and site membership issues, as I like using this site and want it to stay online permanently... if for no other reason so that all of the valuable info contained in the many, many threads is always available. So, like everyone in the universe, I am annoyed by pop-up ads and so after reading in the posts above that "contributing members" don't have to deal with them under the new scheme for this site, decided to look in to costs for "contributing membership". My search led me to want to pass along the 2 following observations... these are of course, just my opinion.

1) I found it more difficult to locate the info on what it would cost to become a "contributing member" than I expected. Perhaps this is just my disorganized way of searching but I can't be the only one. I'd strongly suggest that the words "Member" and "Membership" be made links (throughout the site) directly to the membership sign-up page. I would also suggest that a VERY VISIBLE AND SOMEWHAT LARGE box be added at the top level of the site so that everyone who visits your site is encouraged to become a contributing member (i.e., a hard to miss ad for membership).

2) It seems like it would be beneficial (and might help push for more paying members) to make a distinction (site-wide) between "Contributing Members" and "Registered Users". Currently, the language used on the site frequently refers to registered users who do not have perks, as "Members", which is a bit confusing.

Hope this is helpful. That is how it is meant :)
 
SnakeSmithS said:
Hi Rich (et al.), I'd like to offer some feedback on the pop-up ads and site membership issues, as I like using this site and want it to stay online permanently... if for no other reason so that all of the valuable info contained in the many, many threads is always available. So, like everyone in the universe, I am annoyed by pop-up ads and so after reading in the posts above that "contributing members" don't have to deal with them under the new scheme for this site, decided to look in to costs for "contributing membership". My search led me to want to pass along the 2 following observations... these are of course, just my opinion.

1) I found it more difficult to locate the info on what it would cost to become a "contributing member" than I expected. Perhaps this is just my disorganized way of searching but I can't be the only one. I'd strongly suggest that the words "Member" and "Membership" be made links (throughout the site) directly to the membership sign-up page. I would also suggest that a VERY VISIBLE AND SOMEWHAT LARGE box be added at the top level of the site so that everyone who visits your site is encouraged to become a contributing member (i.e., a hard to miss ad for membership).

2) It seems like it would be beneficial (and might help push for more paying members) to make a distinction (site-wide) between "Contributing Members" and "Registered Users". Currently, the language used on the site frequently refers to registered users who do not have perks, as "Members", which is a bit confusing.

Hope this is helpful. That is how it is meant :)
Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestions. But honestly, I feel that I could completely cover the site with banners, suggestions, and links about such things and most people here would still find a way to ignore them all. I believe most people coming here will just zero in on the classifieds forum(s) they are interested in, and have a bad case of tunnel vision concerning anything else not directly within their targeted interest zone. Google Adsense has a type of ad that they call "Vignette ads" that is pretty much a smack you in the face ad that takes over the entire screen. If I could duplicate the same effect with my own chosen ads, that would probably be the only effective way I could get my message across. Matter of fact, I may re-enable that type of ad here, since it may take a smack in the face to get non-paying members to look around for some way to disable it.

But my guess is that if it comes to a choice between paying $25 to eliminate those ads, or firing off a nasty gram to me about it, I am pretty sure I know what most will choose. :rolleyes:
 
Well, so far results seem to be OK with this plan of excluding paying members from having to view the Google Adsense and the InfoLinks ads. Not as many members signing up to become paying members as one could hope, but better than nothing I guess. Impact on the ad revenues seems to be tolerable, so I guess it is a wash.

Interestingly enough just today I had a member complaining about the speed of accessing this site and surmised that those ads might be slowing down the site quite a bit. I suggested that this was certainly a possibility, because any external calls to remote servers has to impact the throughput of pages here getting displayed on their browser. So he decided to become a Contributing member to see if it helps, and afterwards felt that the site was running at WARP SPEED now, comparatively. So I guess that could be considered as yet another perk to paying memberships.

I guess this will be much more noticeable to paying members when their subscription runs out than people who have never paid for a membership here recently and experienced the difference. Of course, many members will likely be comparing the days before those ads to what they see now, and likely just walk away from the site in disgust at the fact that I would have the audacity to try to make some money myself off of my own website.

Ah well, things could have been different if they hadn't gone the way they did over the past few years. :shrug01:

I am just doing what needs to be done to keep this site worth wrestling with.
 
Just a fyi for anyone interested enough to read this thread.

I completely disabled the InfoLinks ad campaign. The amount of money it was bringing in dropped so low that it was no longer worth the hassle readers would have to put up with in order to read the actual content here. The point of diminishing returns had been reached.

Of course, Google Adsense isn't really doing all that hot, neither, but I do need to keep some sort of revenue stream open to pay the bills around here. As I have mentioned many, many times in the past, if this site goes into the red, it goes bye-bye. My life is in enough of a turmoil now without adding a financial albatross to it.
 
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