Christian Forums

We haven't started promoting the Kabbalah have we?

I've already sent Lee a notification on it via. PM.  It bugs me being there as well.  Anyway we can ditch these ads in the first place?  How much revenue can they possibly be bringing in? 

Don't expect Lee to ditch the ads, since they network us into many sites. Thats where we get all the traffic from.

I ran Adwords for my business through Google, it costs money to get a listing at every single place it shows up in, I doubt the revenue generated from being paid to display them here pais for it.  Adwords are not a very effective way to market regardless.  They are helpful if you are initially promoting a web site, but natural search engine placement is where you ultimately get your traffic from.  Intermeterary (if that's a word) steps are to exchange links with similar web sites, those are typically free, just with some sights, it takes persistance, ie. a brand new web site that gets little traffic would not be deemed very valuable of a recipical link exchange with GC since GC has alot of regular traffic already established so that small site will find it naturally harder to get listings from those other places.

I did notice an ad or two that are no longer showing up here thanks to members pointing them out to him in the past, so I don't see why this would be any different..

Charles, we don't get any traffic from that. GCM gets some income from those, but not traffic. Traffic is generated naturally via search engines and word of mouth.

I have to filter out ads that show up that we don't like or are offensive. The only problem is that they have to show up before I know about them.

QuoteAdwords are not a very effective way to market regardless.

Hmmm...I know a few of us internet marketers who would strongly disagree with you.

I ran a $35000 Google adword campaign a couple of years ago, apparently the $300.00 I initially put into the kittie served zero purpose.  My site simply was not at the front page of Google under the relavent keywords.  Once I upped it to 35k, I started getting traffic all right, worthless traffic, hits from fake, made up sites who's only content was google ads, hits on the weekends, where I rarely get any before, I'm talking really odd numbers going on everywhere.  I crossreferenced this with my own visitor tracking system, this from the accumuldated total of the previous year, just to double check algorythms.  The two did not jive at all, I even have a few people fill out the contact/order form, not one single sale or lead came from that campaign.

My billing cycle was monthly, then out of the blue, they started taking money out of my account weekly, sometimes daily, thus going back on the original agreement.  I stopped the campaign on week two, looked at the bogus results and figured out exactly who's making money here, it's Google, it's not the people that pay for the adwords.

Now, here's the deal, once you get locked into thinking you must rely upon adwords, you are in a constant guessing game and viscious cycle, continueing the pay for traffic you should be getting through other means. 

Yahoo seemed to be more gentle with their apporoach, sure, it's less coverage, but I was at least getting placement at relatively acceptable costs, yet again, it was entirely to get the main site with my main operation noticed right off the bat, knowing it takes time to get noticed and spidered in. Yet, if you haven't noticed, yahoo got in trouble abusing it, paying people to click, just as Google does, yet google is getting away with it because they likely are paying off someone in the process.  For me, it was quite clear what the game was and it was an expensive lesson learned, save yourself some dough and heed my advice in this area.  I'm also an internet marketer, in fact, I was one of the people to help form what we see now as internet Guerilla marketing tactics.  I don't require the latter any more since I have enough sites getting regular traffic and spidering that I can simply link to/from to tag along the next time the spiders do their thing.

What's funny, I run another forum, I spent zero time marketing it, I exchanged no links, and right off the bat, I already got spidered in, I guess someone else must have linked to me or something, but it's doing it all on it's own without my intervention.  The board is about a hobby of mine, just FYI, I have no competing christian board, and if I did opt to start my own in that venue, it would remain private, so no need to bother with marketing it, for I prefer it stay off of the search engines, which is kind of funny, since I'll be anti marketing it, ie. password protecting the place, blockind the spiders, etc.

Something to also keep in mind, I get a decent amount of highly targeted traffic when ever I sold related wares on Ebay, I made sure to make it easy to find my site through the about me section in my profile, I also was sure to plug in the name of my company and I made sure that the sales@ email address was in place, just to further allow people to put two and two together.  What you are doing is piggie backing upon ebay's natural system they have in place for top front page positions in all of the major search engines, so kind of cheating ina  way, just another way to market many overlook, and it's alot cheaper then adwords.

Quote from: admin on Wed Feb 20, 2008 - 20:16:40
Charles, we don't get any traffic from that. GCM gets some income from those, but not traffic. Traffic is generated naturally via search engines and word of mouth.

I have to filter out ads that show up that we don't like or are offensive. The only problem is that they have to show up before I know about them.

Too bad, I was hoping the ads served more purpose than mammon and annoyance.

Your board isn't exactly ad free Charles.

Quote from: John 1:1 on Wed Feb 20, 2008 - 22:08:03
Your board isn't exactly ad free Charles.

Trust me, it was when I started it.

Mine remains ad free, it will never have them on it, at least how it's done traditionally, I'll expand the buy and sell sections for vendor's if they opt to climb on board, this means they also have to show some support through it, they typically pay 300-400 a month with that venue, not likely going to get that from here though.  If my members decide they want to have some ads on there to generate revenue so I can buy prizes, or cash give aways for them, that's where it will come from.  I don't mind carrying it, it's really not alot of money to host and register a domain name, so no need for them myself  personally.

I have no choice, its either keep the ads or pay 4.95/month to have them removed. And since I could just as easily pay 5.00 a month to host my own forum with support, I will certainly not fall for their scam. I just think it was a ploy to get people to host their boards with them so they could then flood them with ads. Underhanded technique if you ask me.

I am considering moving the board to an ad free domain in the future.

I highly reccomend getting a dedicated domain name and hosting, I do have a couple of boxes I host with, they allow for unlimited domain names on the same account.  I pay 20.00 a month for one, around 10.00 a month for the other, both have been really good, yet have different features, ie. I like my cpanel, over the other one that's plesk.  Phpbb is pretty easy to install as well, the time consuming part is modifying the layout after the fact, I'd likely go with the 2.0 version, set everything up since there are ample templates to allow you to remain more hands off, then upgrade to the lastest version, 3.0, of which doesn't have much external toys since it's a relatively new version.  You'll be happier not being at the mercy of that old box/server and it's obvious the game they are playing.  I thought you were getting compensated with that ad you have on yours, I guess not.  Do they at least let you back up and save your database?

John 1:1,
I think the key is to not put your ad on the ad network that sends your ad to sites using the adwords campaign, but rather only have your ad displayed on the Google search engine. I can tell you without any doubt that it is the best 'bang for the buck' advertising I have ever done and my traffic is highly targeted to my product. Google advertising allowed me to go from a hobby site to a full-time business.

Barry

I only have one site that's a hobby site, the one I take seriously, $4500 is the average transaction of which I deal with.  My field is very highly competitive, some of my competitors even pay off some of the Google geeks through bribery, I have confirmation of that one.  I used to chase google around in the early days, they kept changing everything over and over again, I eventually gave up using it as a search engine since I was getting garbage results in my own quests.

If it works for you, in your specialized field, great, but wouldn't it be better to get natural search engine listings without having to pay for them?  Those are what I go after above all else, knowing full well, it's free advertisment at that point.

FWIW, I'm also getting a lot of banners of Herbert W Armstrong.

And today I also got an ad for a buy-a-bride from China, or Taiwan, or someplace.

Make sure to display a link so that it can be filtered out.

Mail-Order Brides?

Quote from: janine on Sun Feb 24, 2008 - 18:41:17
Mail-Order Brides?

It could be a personals ad - I can't really read the oriental lettering on the ad.  But it has pictures of several attractive asian girls, and beside each one is what clearly looks to be statistics like height, weight...

Quote from: Wycliffes_Shillelagh on Tue Feb 26, 2008 - 17:56:59

Quote from: janine on Sun Feb 24, 2008 - 18:41:17
Mail-Order Brides?

It could be a personals ad - I can't really read the oriental lettering on the ad.  But it has pictures of several attractive asian girls, and beside each one is what clearly looks to be statistics like height, weight...

Yep, I saw that ad too.  He's not making it up.  It was pretty obvious what it was.

I found it, checked it out, had to sign up for an account there to see what it was.  It's a dating website, they have a little money to be made there since they charge you for conciere services, but it's just a dating web site from what I've seen, and in fact, not a bad one if it's legit.  On the other hand, the whole thing could be made up entirely to get people to sign up and there being no real legit members on the opposite side of this coin.  If you join, be skeptical, all I gotta say, it could, or could not be legit, if it is, I'd say it's actually a good thing, the values being shown from these ladies in their profiles are admirable and humble, alot of American women could learn something from them in that regard, and I know for a fact, there are a ton of very nice guys that are tired of being treated the way they normally do on the dating scene, so this might just be the break they need.  Just word of advice from what I'm seeing guys if you want to go that route, better learn a little Chinese, you are gonna need it !!! :)

Apparently the oriental letters were supplied by my imagination:

Possibly, not sure, a little more on what I'm reading their, they all are looking for marriage, which is probably one of the reasons it's allowed to show up here and why it was termed earlier as a mail order bride type of system. It's funny how they have this system, where you are paying to send a message, it's then relayed to someone that calls the gal up and translates it for her and she's supposed to write back, and apparently, it's translated back to english.  Definoutly, you gotta learn some Chinese here, I'd hate to have a marriage where you need a translator, it would kind of stifle the relationship, don't you think.

Quote from: Charles Sloan on Wed Feb 20, 2008 - 23:19:28
I have no choice, its either keep the ads or pay 4.95/month to have them removed. And since I could just as easily pay 5.00 a month to host my own forum with support, I will certainly not fall for their scam. I just think it was a ploy to get people to host their boards with them so they could then flood them with ads. Underhanded technique if you ask me.

I am considering moving the board to an ad free domain in the future.

So your mammon and annoyance comment was .... uncalled for?

http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/imgad?id=CLuNncmUqZCQlwEQ2AUYTzIIK3b-YAM4keY

Quote from: zoonance on Wed Feb 27, 2008 - 17:09:36

Quote from: Charles Sloan on Wed Feb 20, 2008 - 23:19:28
I have no choice, its either keep the ads or pay 4.95/month to have them removed. And since I could just as easily pay 5.00 a month to host my own forum with support, I will certainly not fall for their scam. I just think it was a ploy to get people to host their boards with them so they could then flood them with ads. Underhanded technique if you ask me.

I am considering moving the board to an ad free domain in the future.

So your mammon and annoyance comment was .... uncalled for?

Maybe you don't understand, I didn't agree to placing any ads on my site.

But if you feel my comments are uncalled for, thanks for sharing.

Charlies board is on a free server so they force those ads on you, they have the option to remove them here, so your argument has some validity Charles.  I'm trying to give these guys options, such as a donation button and/or getting some direct commercial elements that will benifet this place fiscally, that's all.  I would like to see this place not only be self sufficient, I'd like it not to be exploited by what ever Google deems appriate to force us to look at.

I not only shortened the link, I deleted it.

An ad that should never be here, the diet one is here now yet again, I complained about it earlier,...  There iis a good reason I turned off my TV, it's trash like that we find acceptable, it's not to me, especially when I come here to try and hang with others that are into the word and God, instead of sin and corruption.  These ads by google are corruption at this point here obviously Lee.  Talk to us here, what is it we need to do to get rid of them here???  They are promoting adultery at this point.

That Chinese site, it's a scam BTW, not real, it's a money maker though, it's playing upon the lonely and desperate, a very objectional operation there.  I investigated it extensively, it's not what it seems or is implying at all.  Yes, another one that needs to go away here.........

Quote from: Wycliffes_Shillelagh on Sun Feb 24, 2008 - 17:58:36
FWIW, I'm also getting a lot of banners of Herbert W Armstrong.

And today I also got an ad for a buy-a-bride from China, or Taiwan, or someplace.

Would a moderator please shorten the link in post #27?

Did something happen with the banners?

Today I got an ad to help me find Lesbian Singles, and another offering me a Horoscope Reading.  I'm not particularly interested in either.

Maybe if they could find me a Single Lesbian who also reads horoscopes...nah, still probably not.

Jarrod

QuoteMaybe if they could find me a Single Lesbian who also reads horoscopes...nah, still probably not.

Now that is funny