Post by shaxper on Mar 31, 2017 8:28:45 GMT -5
A quick update on the financial side of the CCF:
What has gone before:
It used to be cost neutral to run the CCF. We spent nothing to run the site, utilizing free software from proboards, and we earned no revenue either. Advertisements were provided by proboards, and that was how they were able to provide their services to us for free.
As the community continued to grow, it became necessary last year to get the shortened url address of classiccomics.org, as this improved search results tremendously and also gave us an address that was easier for members to remember. This custom url costs us $40 a year ($20 to have it, $20 for proboards to link to it). In an effort, to recoup those costs, it was decided that The CCF should take control of its own advertising. We paid $48 a month to proboards for the right to use our own advertising and earn revenue off of that. In our first months, we were earning slightly less than we were spending, but, by December last year, our earnings were suddenly very very good. Then they dropped off in January and haven't recovered since, even while number of visits to the site and number of advertisement views have increased tremendously. This happens because, while proboards charges a fixed cost for us to provide our own advertisement space, google adsense (the company that hosts and pays us for our advertisement space) does not have a fixed rate of pay. Each month, ad views are worth what advertisers are willing to pay. Advertisers pay a premium before the holidays in November and December, but it appears that, for the rest of the year, we cannot earn enough from advertisements to cover proboards' charge for us to run our own advertisements.
What's happening now:
So the logical solution is to run proboards' ads for ten months of the year and then pay to run our own advertising space in November and December. Hopefully, earnings from those month alone will offset the cost of our custom url and money lost on advertising over the past few months (which only adds up to about $15). The goal is to continue to provide a higher level of service through our custom url while remaining cost neutral.
How this actually affects you:
The only change in your user experience will be that we can no longer block disruptive advertisements. We can send a complaint to proboards, but we have no direct control over the situation. If this ends up being your reason for reactivating a pop-up blocker (and I hope you won't), please do remember that, in November and December, we will be back in control of ads and will be counting on those ads to cover our expenses for the entire year.
Proboards is an amazing software tool and a great team of people who provide us with stellar support. I hope you'll continue to support them supporting us by viewing their advertisements.
Thanks!
What has gone before:
It used to be cost neutral to run the CCF. We spent nothing to run the site, utilizing free software from proboards, and we earned no revenue either. Advertisements were provided by proboards, and that was how they were able to provide their services to us for free.
As the community continued to grow, it became necessary last year to get the shortened url address of classiccomics.org, as this improved search results tremendously and also gave us an address that was easier for members to remember. This custom url costs us $40 a year ($20 to have it, $20 for proboards to link to it). In an effort, to recoup those costs, it was decided that The CCF should take control of its own advertising. We paid $48 a month to proboards for the right to use our own advertising and earn revenue off of that. In our first months, we were earning slightly less than we were spending, but, by December last year, our earnings were suddenly very very good. Then they dropped off in January and haven't recovered since, even while number of visits to the site and number of advertisement views have increased tremendously. This happens because, while proboards charges a fixed cost for us to provide our own advertisement space, google adsense (the company that hosts and pays us for our advertisement space) does not have a fixed rate of pay. Each month, ad views are worth what advertisers are willing to pay. Advertisers pay a premium before the holidays in November and December, but it appears that, for the rest of the year, we cannot earn enough from advertisements to cover proboards' charge for us to run our own advertisements.
What's happening now:
So the logical solution is to run proboards' ads for ten months of the year and then pay to run our own advertising space in November and December. Hopefully, earnings from those month alone will offset the cost of our custom url and money lost on advertising over the past few months (which only adds up to about $15). The goal is to continue to provide a higher level of service through our custom url while remaining cost neutral.
How this actually affects you:
The only change in your user experience will be that we can no longer block disruptive advertisements. We can send a complaint to proboards, but we have no direct control over the situation. If this ends up being your reason for reactivating a pop-up blocker (and I hope you won't), please do remember that, in November and December, we will be back in control of ads and will be counting on those ads to cover our expenses for the entire year.
Proboards is an amazing software tool and a great team of people who provide us with stellar support. I hope you'll continue to support them supporting us by viewing their advertisements.
Thanks!
