Thoughts on Advertising
 

Ok guys, some have brought up advertising but I haven't wanted to because, well, it seemed like it would irritate users. However, costs are now at a point that they warrant the discussion. Server and backup costs are now $420/month, or $5,040/year and growing monthly.

What are your thoughts? Would people find it less irritating if advertising came from the gun/film community as opposed to simply running random banner or google ads? Are there any in the imfdb user base interested in advertising? Does anyone know what the advertising rates of other gun forums or sites are?

As long as we get no pop ups, I am cool with seeing ads on the sides of the windows, I think this site should be advertised. Is this site on gun websites? Other forums? Places were we can put more interests. I like to see the possiblity to turning this place into something of a different color and design that a basic wiki look.

I don't think advertising would irritate users too much. I do agree that it would be preferable if we could find sponsors within the gun-owning community. I would avoid film advertisers for now, because if you've seen ads for films these days, they tend to be very graphics/sound-intensive; I hate when I run into them on IMDB.

Your best bet is to start with sites like GunsAmerica, AuctionArms, and ArmsList. I've seen their banners on many forums I visit. If we want, all of us admins can start emailing major sites/chains and ask about it.

I don't see any problem with adds down the right hand side. The only security problem you would have is with bots overwriting the pages since non registered users can still modify the page. It happen on a wiki that I was a Administrator on and fixed it by only registered users can edit the page. Then we had no other problems.

Our Main Page is already set so that only those with Sysops status can edit anything on it.

That reminds me...is Cinema Weaponry ever going to get its own site?

As I had originally suggested, I still think advertizing is a great idea for the site, I can imaging keeping it running costs lots of money.

And I changed the main page to Sysop only because I figured only the Admins. should need to edit the page and no one else. Even registered users can be potential trolls/spammers.

And I agree with Jacen, we should make the site a little less wiki. But nothing too crazy, major change can be annoying.

I think it would be a good idea. Places like Impact guns or shooting supply stores, but it cant get carried away like IMDB

The problem we had was non registered user would make a new page or mod a current page to have Ad links. That is why we made so you would have to register to create or modify pages. That ended the problem with unwanted mods.

As for CW I don't think that will happen at all.

Ah, OK, I see. Of course, then this brings up the age-old debate about whether or not we should close out anonymous users from editing. I have mixed feelings about it, but would accept the outcome either way if we all vote on it.

I agree with Excalibur; as long as there are no pop-ups, I'm fine with whatever you decide. But I think gun- and film-related advertisements would be more in line with the purpose of IMFDB.