Why not let users buy that ad space, for what you need to run the site divided by the time the add occupies that spot?

That's an interesting idea. I think JGO does thinks like that, not sure.

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They need to add this link in small text under the banner ad on every page. I definitely would agree with community sourced ads, more Amazon book ads (those ones often are useful), the GDConf ads, and so on. For awhile, GDNet was running SlickEdit ads, which were funny and actually something that I looked into.

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They need to add this link in small text under the banner ad on every page. I definitely would agree with community sourced ads, more Amazon book ads (those ones often are useful), the GDConf ads, and so on. For awhile, GDNet was running SlickEdit ads, which were funny and actually something that I looked into.

That's not much of a tool, though... All it is, is an e-mail address, and with no notion of pricing or anything like that.

Ideally there would just be somewhere we can upload an image, and buy a plan to get in the ad rotation.

Blindly e-mailing with no idea of price, and going through all of that trouble... it's quite a barrier. And particularly the human effort apparently involved in discussing the advertisement, duration, etc. I don't know if it would be worth what I'd want to pay at that point, with the number of ads they'd need. It'd be a nightmare for them to keep up with so many small accounts.

I was thinking maybe it would be easier to just charge a flat $100 to advertise on the site. Then if there are n advertisers you get 1/n of the total time and we would cap n. How does that sound?

The ad sales via email aren't so much for the small sale, but for the large companies that we work with from time to time.

I was thinking maybe it would be easier to just charge a flat $100 to advertise on the site. Then if there are n advertisers you get 1/n of the total time and we would cap n. How does that sound?

The ad sales via email aren't so much for the small sale, but for the large companies that we work with from time to time.

Flat fees are easy, but they don't feel very fair since the time could vary a lot and it's rather unpredictable.

But here's a very different idea which would be easy:

Give the space to all the GDNet+ subscribers.

Just have somewhere they can upload a banner, and then divide the time among them.

I doubt there are many members who wouldn't want to advertise their projects or wares/services.

AND, if you want to encourage more activity, weight that time a little bit based on their activity and contributions to the site.

You already have the systems in place to measure all of that stuff.

So, if somebody wants more time up on the banner, they just have to be more active on the forum, or contribute articles, etc.

Although, a lot of things have to be fixed in regards to measuring activity (like not giving activity points for spammy articles, and only value them when they're uprated).

I was thinking maybe it would be easier to just charge a flat $100 to advertise on the site. Then if there are n advertisers you get 1/n of the total time and we would cap n. How does that sound?

The ad sales via email aren't so much for the small sale, but for the large companies that we work with from time to time.

Flat fees are easy, but they don't feel very fair since the time could vary a lot and it's rather unpredictable.

But here's a very different idea which would be easy:

Give the space to all the GDNet+ subscribers.

Just have somewhere they can upload a banner, and then divide the time among them.

I doubt there are many members who wouldn't want to advertise their projects or wares/services.

AND, if you want to encourage more activity, weight that time a little bit based on their activity and contributions to the site.

You already have the systems in place to measure all of that stuff.

So, if somebody wants more time up on the banner, they just have to be more active on the forum, or contribute articles, etc.

Although, a lot of things have to be fixed in regards to measuring activity (like not giving activity points for spammy articles, and only value them when they're uprated).

This is an interesting idea and gives a tangible reason to get gdnet+.. I'm not sure it would be enough to support the site but it would be cool to try with the holidays coming up. It even couples well with the idea of allowing others to gift a gdnet+ membership to someone for helping them.

Let's say you are an indie who makes a tool, would it be possible to improve your timeshare in any other way? It also would be interesting to work out a fair way to divide time.. Hodman has a rating of about 30,000 while I have a significantly smaller rating score of about 5,000. We'd have to work out a reasonable way to divvy up the time so 1 person can't dominate too much of the space.

Let's say you are an indie who makes a tool, would it be possible to improve your timeshare in any other way? It also would be interesting to work out a fair way to divide time.. Hodman has a rating of about 30,000 while I have a significantly smaller rating score of about 5,000. We'd have to work out a reasonable way to divvy up the time so 1 person can't dominate too much of the space.

No, I don't mean total rating; that definitely wouldn't be fair, and wouldn't encourage new members. Based on activity, like change in rating over time; current participation level.

Like if you did it monthly: http://www.gamedev.net/sm/#participation

Hmm, the link didn't encode that. Click on "month" there.

Although it could be factored in monthly, weekly, and daily, weighting each one a little bit.

So, if you have a new project you want to advertise, you'd participate more, make some posts, get some upvotes, be generally helpful for a few days to get a bigger share of ad rotation.

Particularly useful for people who swing by and post in the classifieds, or for people who swing by to post announcements. Now this would really motivate them to both get a + membership, and participate more at the same time.

I was thinking maybe it would be easier to just charge a flat $100 to advertise on the site. Then if there are n advertisers you get 1/n of the total time and we would cap n. How does that sound?

The ad sales via email aren't so much for the small sale, but for the large companies that we work with from time to time.

Flat fees are easy, but they don't feel very fair since the time could vary a lot and it's rather unpredictable.

But here's a very different idea which would be easy:

Give the space to all the GDNet+ subscribers.

Just have somewhere they can upload a banner, and then divide the time among them.

I doubt there are many members who wouldn't want to advertise their projects or wares/services.


AND, if you want to encourage more activity, weight that time a little bit based on their activity and contributions to the site.

You already have the systems in place to measure all of that stuff.

So, if somebody wants more time up on the banner, they just have to be more active on the forum, or contribute articles, etc.

Although, a lot of things have to be fixed in regards to measuring activity (like not giving activity points for spammy articles, and only value them when they're uprated).

This is an interesting idea and gives a tangible reason to get gdnet+.. I'm not sure it would be enough to support the site but it would be cool to try with the holidays coming up. It even couples well with the idea of allowing others to gift a gdnet+ membership to someone for helping them.

Let's say you are an indie who makes a tool, would it be possible to improve your timeshare in any other way? It also would be interesting to work out a fair way to divide time.. Hodman has a rating of about 30,000 while I have a significantly smaller rating score of about 5,000. We'd have to work out a reasonable way to divvy up the time so 1 person can't dominate too much of the space.

who says it needs to be one ad at a time, if anything that impersonating ad has created a nice format by which you could layer several ads in line with, simply have GD.Net+ members upload an image of that dimension+link, and bam they are in the rotation. there probably plenty of places you could toss similarly sized ads, underneath the IOTD pic would be a good place for you to fill out the rest of the blank space going down to the bottom of the page with small similarly sized banners.

There are alot of folks in the your annoncments forums that would probably love a relatively cheap method to grow awareness across the site rather than being confined to a single sub-forum.

It seems like there would need to be a mix: $150 for showing your ad for a month ($250 for two months), shared with other current advertisers, and GD+ members get their ads showed in the rotation with other advertisers as long as they are still subscribing.

I was thinking maybe it would be easier to just charge a flat $100 to advertise on the site. Then if there are n advertisers you get 1/n of the total time and we would cap n. How does that sound?

That sounds interesting, and low enough to consider it. I know a $75 spend on AdWords vanishes too quickly.