Important Announcement!

Heres the bottom Line plain and simple.

We Live in a world in which all of us are constantly bombarded from every angle, in every situation by media ads.

When was the last time you took a piss in a club without having to read a beer poster. When was the last time you recieved a "special offer" in your email inbox? How many commercials do you see a day? Ever listen to the radio without hearing a commercial? When was the last time you actually went for one day with reieving ANy sort of advertisement? How many commercials do you have to watch before seeing the movie you just payed 10 bucks for at the theater? Who here is afraid to give thier email adress to websites for fear of spam repercussions afterwards? How many people here have a "fake" email adress they use to avoid this. How many phone calls do you recieve at home from people trying to push a bunch of crap on you that you dont really need? How many saleseman visit your door? How many pops ups have jumped on to your desktop, only to start more pop ups upon closing them? How many virus like spyware programs constantly are trying to find a way to weasel onto your computer?


Who here PAYS for the internet?
Who here PAYS to watch cable?
Who here PAYS to see a movie?



I am sick a f**cking tired of PAYING to get advertisements shoved in front of my face everywhere I look!!! Thay have little or no effect on my purchase habits and only frustrate me, so your damn right If I there is a way for me to fight back....... I am going to use it. The internet should be friggin free to start with.....but hey:

WE ALL PAY FOR OUR BANDWIDTH TOO, AND MINE COSTS 50 BUCKS A MONTH FOR 6 GIGS OR LESS!!!! IF YOU THINK I AM GOING TO PAY TO SEE COMMERCIALS ON TOP OF THAT, IF YOU THINK I AM GOING TO SLOW MY BROWSER DOWN WITH LAME POP UPS....WHICH WASTE MY BANDWIDTH, YOUR ABSOLUTELY WRONG.

Sorry Adrian, I have liked your bios guide alot and this is a good site....but the bad guys here arent the people blocking your ads. Were fighting back and with good reason, If you want to help your site out, clcik on your own banner a hundred times a day, I am sure youll start to see how fun doing that over and over and over really is.Just so you know, I also clicked you pop up to help out, cuz I see this site as something worthwhile and saving....but you have to come up with a new revenue scheme:

Ill give you 5 bucks a year if you send me a monthly email with your bios guide and its updates in it.

But I am not PAYING for commercials if I can help it, and i think alot sooner than everyone thinks...as our world becomes more and more connected and computer centralized....people are going to have a hell of alot more control and education about these types of things, and all these marketing companies are going to go down in flames, and ill breath a sigh of relief!

 

This is my $0.02 -- You could add anti-ad-blocker to the site and add a subscription for for an ad-free version of the site. When the ad-blocking code finds that ads have been blocked (without a subscription), you could redirect them to a page that explains your position and encourages them to either disable the ad-blocker or purchase a subcription (of, of course, login using thier alerady purchased ID). That way you have the best of both worlds

 

Re-design

I did a quick search, it doesn't seem like anyone's mentioned switching to a table-less deign that makes use of CSS (something Wired News, Lycos, and Netscape DevEdge have done recently..).

and though I personally find them annoying, if you switch your external links from something like this:

[code:1:16ab8395d5]<a href="http://www.viperlair.com/articles/howto/7vmod.shtml" target="_blank">[/code:1:16ab8395d5]

to something like:
[code:1:16ab8395d5]<a href="out.asp?id=2353" target="_blank">[/code:1:16ab8395d5]

That'd save even more space.. Sure, it might hit the server a bit more to process the outgoing request, but most of those links are probably never even clicked on.

 

Adrian - Maybe a different analysis is needed?

I know you are trying to focus on how you can generate more revenue to match your costs. But I think one of the main problems here is that your costs are a bit on the excessive side.

Previously you stated that $100 / month was much less than you are currently paying. There are a number of top tier companies that can offer you much more competitive pricing.

For example: if you built your own server and had is Co-Located at ThePlanet (HardOCP's provider) it would be $100/month for 200GB
and 8 IP addresses.

Once you put down the initial cost of the server. Many times the parts are willingly supplied by sponsors you'll find yourself saving a lot of money and having complete control over every aspect of your server.

If Co-Locating is what you're striving for there are still many cheap / reliable providers that can get you 200-400GB of bandwidth for $100-150 a month.

The problem of course is always finding a provider that can match your needs and that has their act together. Sadly, most don't. I would recommend using the WebHostingTalk Forum: http://webhostingtalk.com/


There's also a Slashdot discussion:
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/05/1257234&mode=thread

Another option is to sell the review products you get back using eBay, etc. There are plenty of ways to stretch your money during these tough times.



Hope that helps

~Pete
http://www.esheep.org

 

I use mozilla. Everything's set at default, except I enabled its popup blocker.

Ther eason I use it was because I'm *FED UP* with popups/popunders. Sorry, but they're just too annoying. And annoyed customers aren't what you want to attract. In fact, this may be a large reason why a large population don't view ads - since the majority of users use a lame browser (i.e., IE), they go and get so annoyed that they install an ad blocker. Yes, it kills popups, but it also kills the other ads.

For me, I see all the banner ads because they're relatively harmless. However, I block the popups because, like I said, they're a PITA.

Right now, I'm only tolerating the ads - Flash ads are so annoying, I'm considering uninstalling Flash because it consumes too much CPU, and brings my computer to a halt. (Not everyone can afford the latest Pentium 4 or Athlon, and have to make do with less). Animated GIFs are getting annoying, especially the flickering ones.

And that, is the problem.

Here are some solutions:
1) No popups, ever. They drive away more ads than they'll bring in due to people resorting to popup blockers that kill all ads.
2) Small ads. I'm on broadband, but I use dialup too. Some ads take forever to load and hold up the rest of the page.
3) Fast ads (similar to 2) - if an ad holds up the page, I'm gonna sit here hitting Refresh continually. And guess what? That consumes bandwidth! Just for an ad to load.
4) Find cheaper hosting. Yes, learn Linux if you must (it's not that hard these days, and it's well worth it to be able to actually maintain a secure, high-uptime server).
5) Let people subscribe to the BOG. It's updated quite often (I can't remember how often, but I suspect as often as NEDs are). Subscription gets you a nice PDF file you can print out and keep by your computer. If you were smart, you'd add the fields "Default: ________", "Current: _______", "Best: _______" and "Notes:" section to each setting. You see, having to wade through that document is a nightmare. Some of us also like having hardcopy printouts - so let them have a PDF, print it out, and record their settings in. They can toss it in their computer.

Also, sell customized versions - offer companies the ability to buy customized-for-their-bios versions to the board manufacturers. OEMs and whitebox manufacturers could possibly include such a booklet in their systems.

There's nothing wrong with that - remember, you're offering convenience of having an easily printable copy that's updated often (and users can purchase a single version, or subscribe to multiple updates (single copy, 3 updates, 5 updates, 10 updates, 1 year's worth of updates, etc). Heck, publish it into a book and sell it. You can make it a subscriber's "perk" if you want to allow subscriptions (subscribe for 1 year, get a copy of the BOG on paper, and free updates to the BOG as long as you're a subscriber). Or, do what Ars Tech does and offer better forum access...

 

Well I run www.own3d.com and run a dedicated server (1 box...) at www.rackshack.net

Nowadays I only use my server for a CS server, and use about 150GBs a month... I have access to 400GB, so I'm basically paying for and not using 250GB - now you seem to pay $5.50 for 1 GB over your alotted 100GB... I'm totally willing to give/sell you 150GB a month for $15 a month... Thats over 147GB free compared to your current host... and would help me out a bit too... I could easily make an account for you for all your images (*just an ex, since i doubt you'd wanna store asp stuff among multiple servers..*) and I believe your images take up the most bandwith anyways...(?) Also I can easilty make it so only requests from http://www.rojakpot.com/ and its ip are accepted etc etc... sorry if you think im a jerk or a--hole for making this message, was just a thought, I am not a host or ISP or anything just a guy with a dedicated server... if your interested email me at [email protected]

if not thats fine, hope you can get something sorted out, best of luck!

*ps i used to run a heavily trafficed site, *15-25k unique hits a day* and dealt with many ad publishers, and I would highly suggest you take a look at fastclick.net - they are the best besides doubleclick *but dbleclick is way too selective and requires much more hits then you currently get...) In any event if you got accepted into FC they'll easily beat burst's banner CPM and popup CPM rates BY FAR *pop ups are single pop, and you can choose specific campaigns and frequency... etc)... and this could easily help you pay you're extra bills

*no i do not work for FC or anything, i was a publisher under them b4, but i didnt even give my referral id so this is indeed genuine and not some spam, again hope you work things out, peace

-Nuke

 

Ads, Spam, and Hosting.

I, too, am here compliments to my friends at [H]ard|OCP, and this is an issue near and dear to my heart.

If I screw up and improperly credit someone with something, or forget to mention the person who originated the idea in this forum, please forgive me, as there are days I can't even remember my own name!

Anyhow, here goes:

I hate popups and popunders, especially the malicious type that take over your browser and bring your computer to its knees. I hate animated ads that pop in front of what you want to read. I hate animated ads that suck so much bandwidth, it's not funny. And I'm on broadband that has a pipe the size of a large truck!! I also hate the ads that change the entire page, so if you try to use the Back button to see the previous page, you have to scroll back thru all the damned ads that popped up while you were reading (yes, this site is guilty as hell of that, even when my wireless access point apparently is blocking the ads--either that or my firewall, I'm not sure which. hell, it may be my cable provider for all know that's blocking your ads, but I"ll get to that in a moment).

THat said, I realize that y'all need to make your livings, and pay your fees. And so, ads do that, but do they have to be so damned annoying?? Thank you, I know y'all agree, despite the legions of id10ts out there who do'nt care we wo'nt ever come back. TOnite, I went to both Mapquest and Mapblast, and I wo'nt go back because of their damned popups.

The Internet is not "free", never was free, and the whole setup will change shortly. We WILL be paying some sort of usage fee, because the whole setup as it exists today is crashing badly, and we've yet to feel the repercussions of the dot-bomb.

So, I understand that y'all are having problems paying your hosting bills. There were alot of great suggestions by people who know a helluva lot more than I ever will about the business. HOnestly, being a
[H]ard|OCPer, I am rather biased by their methods, but then again, they tend to be very practical and considerate of their faithful readers, so they designed a nice, clean, minimalist site, with simple ads. Personally, I really thing y'all should consider having a long look at their site and perhaps borrow some ideas from them.

AS for feedback from me, an engineer whose specialty is ergonomics and human factors, I have a few suggestions:

*ditch the rotating, click-thru, separately hosted ads. THey suck. Bigtime. ANd they are annoying.

*simplify your graphics. Consider switching to GIF for the small stuff (nice info there, whoever y'all were who expressed it), and PNG for the larger stuff. Since that company in Austin, Texas has started suing everyone and his mother over licensing for JPEG, PNG is nice and free and simple and as good if not better than JPEG, so perhaps a switch to that will save future headaches.

*Move to a better host. THe Planet does sound good, especially if the [H] gang use it (so I'm biased--sue me).

*Win2K???? Hell, I'll bet you a dollar that M$ is the reason your bandwidth usage is so high!! We all know that Winblows is just a huge spyware program, and not much better than a virus. The obligatory Billbashing done, I think you'd be a while lot better off using Linux to do the dirty work. It's cleaner, more efficient, faster, better controlled, and much more reliable. And free. No fees, not licensing fees, and as someone mentioned, the tools for compressing the HTML and the forums is free as well. Nut it up, and use the real tools, stop being a slave to Redmond.

*BOG: excellent guide, except from a usability POV. It's a bitch to use, and I am just not going to dig into it, or read it from top to bottom, in the format you've got it set up. If I ever have a problem, I may dig into it (IF I can get to a computer that's working to look it up), but to be honest I doubt it, becasue Ido'nt have the patience to read each and every thing to find waht I need to find. I agree with the poster that said publishing your guide is a bad idea because of the lag time, and the publishers' trying to screw you. Forget the traditional method, and set up a subscription service (which I would use, if the interface is improved), as well as offer to sell it as either a PDF or a searchable CD. You *can* do that, and even protect it, if you work at it hard enough. It's wonderful that you are sharing this information, but I think it needs to be easier to use for the average user.

AS for what I would prefer for ads?? Simple, static or gently-changing ads, from people I would actually either visit or purchase from, and ads that don't annoy me or pop up or under and jsut turn the expereince into a trip to hell.

Thank you for addressing this issue, someone needed to.

Good luck, hope y'all can find a place where you can stay open and actually turn a profit.

Tex.

ps: At this point, I would not pay for a full-site subscription. I come here typically because I follow a link on the [H]. I've not used the BOG yet, because I haven't had an issue that needed it, but I keep you bookmarked, just in case.

Again, good luck.

ta

 

Bandwidth troubles

I also have a server with rackshack.net, their bandwidth is very good for the price, currently I have a dedicated p4 2ghz 1gb RAM and an 80gb HD w/ 400gb transfer/month. it only costs $149/mo for this server, I can give you hosting on my server if you dont want to pay the full $149/mo. I already make money every month on my server. so I would be willing to host your site for $10-15/mo

 

re:

Thanks for the information about EXIF data, Rikki. I always thought it only applied to pictures taken by digital cameras. Will have to look into it.

Hey... that blur trick could be useful too! I usually sharpen the pictures... That could be the reason for the larger size...

---

Hi,

EXIF data usually is only added by digicams but I noticed that some of the shots you take are of the computer screen so assumed you were using a digital camera aimed at your monitor.

Photoshop 7 also has a nasty habit of adding an XML chunk of rubbish to every JPG it saves, which again adds unneeded baggage to the filesize, something the two programs I mentioned remove quite well.

The blurring idea is quite a good one. Heres an example :

http://www.strathycruise.com/pics/test-1.jpg - 77k - Original photo
http://www.strathycruise.com/pics/test-2.jpg - 93k - Original photo sharpened
http://www.strathycruise.com/pics/test-3.jpg - 69k - Original photo sharpened then background blurred

http://www.strathycruise.com/pics/test-1.jpg - 69k - Original photo with EXIF data removed
http://www.strathycruise.com/pics/test-2.jpg - 86k - Original photo sharpened with EXIF data removed
http://www.strathycruise.com/pics/test-3.jpg - 61k - Original photo sharpened then background blurred and EXIF data removed

So taking it from an original image of 74k and actually improving the quality by sharpening it we reduce the overall size by 16k. Not bad

-Rikki

 

OK, personally, I've never been directly to this site before, and I've only seen the BOG a couple times by following links. But I registered just to participate in this thread, since it's so important.

I read all the comments above, and the whole time going through my head was "come on people, we all hate ads, but it's life, so loosen up your ad-blockers and keep what little money's left flowing to the content authors you utilize". I felt happy that at least I was putting another penny in your pocket to support your work. Then I looked at the top of the page, and lo and behold, THE AD WAS NOT THERE!!!

Apparently, I installed Kazaa Lite a while ago, and I used the hosts list they provide to eliminate common ad sources. I do remember doing that now, but what I really wanted to communicate to you, is that I almost never have the ads blocked on most websites. I'm not a webmaster, or in the hosting business, so I have no idea what the main difference is or how to work around it, but my guess is that something about your setup or providers is being a much better victim to ad blocking than most other people. Like I said, I just assumed that the hosts file only blocked the most malicious, sleazy ad companies, but most of the legit ones still got through, since I never saw a banner or pop-up actually disappear... until I looked at the top of this page.

So basically, I was blocking your ads even though I didn't know it. Maybe there is a better solution for providing your ads, which is more common and less vulnerable to blocking. My gut feeling is that, even for hardware enthusiasts, there's no way that 90% of the users have aggressive banner blocking. That's just too high a number.

While I'm already ranting, my attitude is that popups are pure evil, and I'd love to find some way to make advertisers pay dearly every time one popped up. Actually, I think those flash thingies that fill up and cover the page you're looking at are even worse -- at least I can find the close button on a window. I don't know what's worse than pure evil (maybe impure evil?), but that's what they are. I'm also growing very sick and tired of animated banners. They are usually lame, consume bandwidth, and they *really* slow a remote desktop connection to a crawl. I would only actively support static, single-shot banner ads, which I find harmless and a good medium for advertising.

Just looking in from the outside, I would highly recommend you enable anti-ad-blocking just for your BOG. Like you said, it's your bread and butter in terms of hits, and since you don't want to shamelessly make money on it, the least users can do it selectively enable ads on that page. Believe me, anyone who actually needs to use the guide WILL go through the 30secs of effort to see it if they need it. Anyone who can't be bothered to do that, isn't very interested anyway, and doesn't deserve to have you fund their boredom.

Of course, I think you have the webmasters make sure the BOG is only accessible through a portal page, where you explain your reasoning. If any logical person saw your explanation, I think they would understand and let the ads through.

So the short suggestion: find a more robust way to deliver your ads, because I think you are currently easy prey, and prohibit ad blocking on the BOG so you can at least break even for providing it for free.

Thanks for listening. I can write you a check for the 1K of useless text I just dumped

 

I have a problem with banners. It is not the flashy pictures or the ads that bug me, it is the internal capabilities that web code allows banners.

I hate having web services like Doubleclick add a cookie to my machine (or even a trojan program) that tracks my web usage even after I leave the website. These companies then sell my information to other companies and I get spam. Since I started using add blockers and popup blockers the spam I receive has decreased.

If websites would force advertisers to follow certain rules, I wouldn't have a problem. As it is right now, banner space is basically a section on a web page that allows any webcode, so advertisers can do what they want to an unsuspecting visitor to a website that is not their own.

If you want people to stop blocking ads, prevent those advertisers from placing any cookies or tracking devices on a client and limit the size of the download. Just allow them to send display code, and maybe even a small flash or java app that is used solely for pretty pictures. You can track the number of viewers of an ad in less intrusive than cookies. I only want to have a relationship with an advertiser that offers something I want, and I usually click on those ads. I don't want a relationship with an advertiser under the radar.

Advertisers don't play nice, so to heck with them.

 

I have experienced the same phenomenon. Ad-blockers may not be your problem, at least not for all. After all, 90% of visitors using ad blockers seems high. A different type of ad would seem to be your only solution. I still see the ads on a lot of sites, but no popups.

 

The centerpiece and jewel of your site is the BOG. Any solution for income should probably exploit the BOG's value.

Ars Technica and Ace's Hardware both have technical reference articles on their sites. What they do is present the articles online in an ad supported manner, then sell the ad free PDFs to the public.

Why not talk to the people at Ace's Hardware and at Ars Technica, and see how well this model serves them for income?

Another strategy might be to keep an older version of the BOG on the website, and keep the current BOG as a PDF for sale. That way you cover the basics for people for free, but if people want the latest and greatest, they need to pony up.

Combine that with less expensive hosting, and it could help a lot.

 

i think that is possible. contact me and i can discuss that with you.
my ICQ UIN is in your pm box.

i wonder why is it not possible to build your own server and co-lo it..afterall malaysia do have NOCs around. and no, we dont live on trees.

 

well, just get in touch with me, i have a proposition for you. then you'll know the whole story.