Actually, I had already written that the ads wouldn’t be shown to active sponsors - so you’ll be fine
And my current idea is to show the ad for unregistered/logged-off users permanently while reducing it for logged on users to just come up every once in a while.
You’re right about the funding bar. I’ve tried to set it appropriately, but the costs keep up rising (mainly due to the rising traffic and load on the server) and I don’t want to alter the target all the time. I feel it would look like a scam to pull the money out of people’s pocket by always pushing the 100% target a little bit further out, if you know what I mean. But I probably should have done it anyway.
I’d be fine with the proposal you’re describing. I cannot appreciate enough the effort, time and money you put in to keeping this website running smoothly, and I totally understand that there’s a cost tagged behind it. As long as it’s as you stated, just a non-intrusive static banner, it should be fairly harmless and a small concession for us to take.
I just can’t take those ridiculous spams that would pop out left and right all over the screen… lol
Tbh, I think it’s fairest to move the funding goal regularity, like every month.
If you’re worried about people thinking it’s a scam, what about just publicly posting the bills? (Maybe this is something that is done for subscribers? I’ve been lean on money, so i’ven’t gotten to it yet.)
People tend to be more comfortable with smaller regular increases, than big ones, especially if you align them directly to your costs.
As for ads, banner ads are definitely reasonable, but please no ads popping up over the site.
First of all, thank you for opening this for debate. I really appreciate how open you are to the community. This seems to be a very intricate decision, one with no right answer, so I hope we can all help.
To be honest, I dislike banners in general. Even if you don’t click on them or try to ignore them they are still disruptive since they usually don’t blend very well with the sites’ design. To that I’d like to add that I’ve seen the GH banners in other sites and they’re specially hard to miss.
That said, this is my favorite site in the whole internet and I really want to help. And since I can’t contribute with money, I think I will contribute with my support to all the decisions that shall keep this place running So If you think this will help, I’m all in. Also, seeing how much it’s hurting you to consider this idea I’m sure you’ve contemplated other options first.
On minor details, I find that the idea of the banner not connecting to the GH server helps. Also, I know that I’m the least qualified to say this but stretching the Sponsus gauge seems like something that could work. Maybe some more people would decide to become a sponsor seeing that the site is not reaching 100%.
Once again, thank you for your transparency. Whichever you end up deciding it will be OK and we’ll learn to live with it.
I don’t have a problem with this. You shouldn’t have to bear the load on your own. If a corporate sponsor wants to advertise on your terms, then I say go for it.
Visiting this site for story updates has basically become a daily ritual for me and unfortunatly i have very little means to help support the site financially… so in a way this would allow people like me to be able to contribute.
I dunno if many people also feel that way, but I’m all for it.
Do it up! This is one of the few places left for gay hypnosis stories on the Internet. If it means continued longevity of the website, do whatever it takes to keep it going for years to come.
Just increase the sponsus amount, why do you need ads? They’re notoriously under-performing for paying site owners, generally you have to sign up for multiple ad buys to even cover some of your hosting costs.
So if it’s a shortfall, ask users for more rather than bring in advertising. It’s a blight on modern life and nowhere near as lucrative or stable income as it is presented.
It takes money to do most anything, that’s a fact. When we get our paychecks, we like that someone pays us for what we do.
As the streaming model shows us, we have two choices: pay or take ads. GSS is not a small site that can be hosted for free, the readers and authors have asked for things.
You are offering the best that is possible: if you want to read for free, you are welcome to. Look at the ad, pass it by if you are not interested. If you don’t like ads, take the advertisers place in funding, and no ads.
If I take you out to dinner, I get to choose the restaurant. If you want to choose, you can pay. If Martin supplies great (hot) stories for you to enjoy, Martin gets to select how he pays for it.
The people who tried to guilt you over this were being incredibly petty
Feedback is feedback. If you’re going to downplay those that give you feedback you don’t want to hear, why ask for it?
There’s not much point waiting to hear opinions on this, especially here on the forum. For one, it’s a forum. If you’d asked this on the Discord you’d have gotten more responses but…well.
Second, the forum has a small group of regulars who are all friends, which makes it an echo chamber and a difficult place to voice dissent, no matter how “invited” it is.
Third, probably most importantly, you’re not going see the real reactions to it until you do it. Ads are seldom a problem…at first. It’s where it progresses to that it becomes a serious problem. Introducing a profit motive has a toxic effect on every site overtime, but there’s little no reason to even bother talking people out of it because…its profit.
My opinion is don’t do it, but I also haven’t supported the site in a long while for personal reasons, so it’s moot. Just do it and let the card fall where they may.
All I’ll ask is, are the people reviewing stories getting paid? Because it seems like they’re putting in the work and should get some of that profit.
Thank you @maxrpotter and all the other guys who shared your opinion in this thread.
It’s really encouraging to hear all your input which is 100% positive and constructive. Amazing, really, I couldn’t be any happier.
I’ll go forward with this. No idea what comes out of it, but I expect this target-group-specific advertisement to be a bit more successful than @Nipstug predicted. But it can turn out that he’s right. Let’s see.
In any case, as promised, paying Sponsors won’t see any ads at all. Logged-on users will get to see some, but much less frequently. Only guests will get an ad all the time.
And, as promised, there will be no tracking whatsoever. Everything is served from our own server.
It might take a couple of days to get this implemented.
@bak2jak2, your message came in just as I was writing my posting above. I was actually expecting you to write, and I knew you’d be skeptical. And honestly, I appreciate that.
You might have realized that I left Discord a couple of weeks ago. After I left, I’ve taken a peek into the server previously known as GSS from time to time, and each time my heart started racing and I got really upset when reading what has been written about me and what awful things I would now allow to happen to the sites (including the “P”-word). So in the end, leaving was actually the best thing I could do, and I’m not planning on ever returning. It’s just way too toxic, like huge parts of the internet, and I don’t want that to taint my personal life.
That’s why I’ve posted the link to this discussion in the newsflash on the main page. So every user of the sites is seeing that and can read about the plans. That’s actually WAY more representative than Discord - because frankly, Discord is just used by a small fraction of the users of GSS. As a matter of fact, only a very small group of people are active on BOTH the sites AND Discord. Most are using either one OR the other.
You know that GSS was never about profit. I’d be more than happy if I could get the money back I’ve invested into the sites over the years. But again, I always paid because I wanted to, it’s a hobby, I’m not complaining.
Thank you for your candid opinion.
No. Just as Hugh or I didn’t get paid for implementing all the stuff of the site. You realize that all of it is hand-coded, don’t you? No WordPress framework or any other kind of out-of-the-box content management system in the background.
I appreciate everyone who’s helping me, and in return, the reviewers get the same privileges as paying Sponsors and even a bit more.
I really don’t want to get into an argument, but I do want to make a point: someone has to pay for the services. Martin has offered up his own money for years. Some (and I am not in the number) sponser the site to help with the bills. If Martin’s personal budget no longer allowed him to pay, what would you do to have GSS back?
What happened to the discord is what happens to every discord created for a website: the discord takes on a life of its own and you wind up with many (even a majority) of users who no longer use the website, or use it only infrequently, but who are on the discord regularly.
That’s exactly what happened with the GSS discord and it is absolutely not more representative of site users than this forum.
That’s not to say most of the site users are here on the forum - the vast majority do not visit the forum. But since the forum is part of the website, it is a better sampling of site users.
It always bugged me that things like voting for story contest themes were handled on the discord. I look forward to that no longer being the case.
A banner ad is only inconvenient for users for the two seconds they glance at it. If it means supporting the site and keeping GSS on the internet, then the answer looks crystal clear to me.
Ok, I’ve just uploaded a new version of the site which includes banner ads for GayHarem. Let’s see how people accept this change and if it does generate any money.
Here some details:
As promised, there is no tracking. The ads are served from our own server, with no hidden tracking pixels, no scripts connecting to another server behind your back, no ad tracking cookies, or any other of the usual bad stuff used on modern internet ad networks.
Sponsoring users won’t get to see any ads whatsoever. So if you want to get rid of the banners, the best and fairest way would be to start at least a 1$ sponsorship.
On wide screens (PCs), the space left and right of the actual page content is used, that way no actual content is obscured. On smaller screens and mobile devices, the banner will be fixed at the bottom of the screen.
You can dismiss the ads with a close (x) button, which will remove them from all pages - for a while at least (see below).
Depending on whether you use an account, the ads will appear later, more rarely, and will stay away for a longer time:
Account
Shows up after
can be dismissed for
none (guest)
right away
15 minutes
standard user
5 minutes
30 minutes
authors
30 minutes
2 hours
sponsors
never
-
I hope you can all live that implementation. Feel free to comment, also and especially if you have issues. Also, it’s a bit hard to test it all, so in case it doesn’t seem to work properly like described above, please let me know.
And, if you want to support our sites and prefer to play a free-to-play game with hot yaoi and bara guys and loads of juicy sex scenes instead of just paying for a monthly donation, you can always consider playing GayHarem. Just make sure to connect by clicking on the banners on our sites, only that way we’d get a bit of the money from them.
So If you think this will help, I’m all in. Also, seeing how much it’s hurting you to consider this idea I’m sure you’ve contemplated other options first.