[supersloth]

Chris wants to install intllitxt (demo here http://www.intellitx...oducts_01.html# ) on the site, its used on some sites like IGN and Neowin, what do you think?

[skyhawk133]

See, no where in there does it mention that it generates revenue for the publisher, but it does and it's unobtrusive. 5 keywords on a page full of content for a few extra bucks is worth it. Do you not browse neowin because of the orange links? Didn't think so.

I don't plan on implementing it right away unless it's some spectacular deal.

[illustrain]

Thats the shit that highlights all the random keywords orange and makes them links? FOHK THAT.

[supersloth]

yeah, thats the one. and don't forget we are primarily a forum, so it will highlight and link words within posts so it will be harder to tell what was meant to be linked and what was advertiser-linked.

[MrRibbitt]

Sloth has a good point. That could getreally annoying after a while.

[SoLi]

if it was my forum, i'd do it.

[skyhawk133]

supersloth, on Dec 13 2004, 08:49 PM, said:

yeah, thats the one. and don't forget we are primarily a forum, so it will highlight and link words within posts so it will be harder to tell what was meant to be linked and what was advertiser-linked.

I'm not trying to defend this, but the links from intellitxt are double underlined and green (usually) and you can't click them, you hover over them and they display a little box with the advertiser text and a link.

There should be no confusion between our links and highlighted words. Also, it would only highlight 5 words max on any page.

I spoke with the sales rep today and they told me on average it should generate 420 bucks a month, I would imagine it would be closer to half that... so 210 + the google adsense is a healthy chunk of cash each month.

I don't know, we are getting a TON of guest traffic lately, something I could easily do is exclude the links from members or something, but I'm really getting tired of running a money pit for a web site.

I don't want to force something upon members that REQUIRES everyone to pay, and I don't want to jam banner ads and flashy shit down your throats. I'm trying to find advertisements that fit nicely in to the content and don't take up space or take away from the focus of the site. We are doing around 0.5% CTR (Click Through Rate) with google adsense right now which is really good, I doubt many actual members have clicked on any of the ad links, but it appears guests are.

I'm not really sure what having a few words highlighted on a page would detract from the site. I could be like flashkit and put 800x200 size flash banners that could give someone a seizure. And yes, you're right, I could just leave the ads off the site. I've done hella good for 3 years with minimal and no ads, but I just feel like I should get something out of the time and effort I put in to this beast. *shrugs* just my $0.02, even though it's my site, it's your site too (by your I mean all the members)

[illustrain]

You wear your member title well!

[supersloth]

I see it from a different light. Every site I've been to actively using intellitxt has another major deterrent besides actually highlighting links, loading. The way it works is it loads the page, then the javascript kicks in and it RELOADS the page you just loaded. this is so it can grab the content and then decide what to highlight. Between the downloading of new info and parsing this usually adds 8-10 seconds PER PAGE of extra time. Honestly thats unacceptable, and I can say without a doubt in my mind it is one of the major reasons I no longer check neowin unless directly linked to it and avoid 90% of articles from IGN that aren't directly involved with media (images, movies, etc)

Now, as you saw nobody complained about the adsense because it was barely noticeable, google has a plain intuitive add system that doesnt detract from the userability of the webpage. Intellitxt will have the exact opposite affect.

Before even beginning to consider intellitxt i think a much healtheir option would be to actually put content the premium members were promised up for them. You could simultaneously keep the agreement you made with those members, as well as have content that all these clicks adsense is generating sign up as well.

Given the choice between keeping the community alive and vibrant or becoming another corporate manequin I lean towards the community every time. If you choose otherwise then that is your perogative but i believe the users have a right to know and at least voice their opinions which they were not given the chance the last two times new marketing and advertisting was thrust upon them.

[skyhawk133]

I wasn't aware intelitxt reloaded the page, I thought it made a call to their server and loaded div tags in to the source code on the fly after the page was loaded, I notice on neowin the page continues to load, but all the content loads.

The code from intelitxt goes at the end of the page so it's the last thing to load, the links do show up several seconds after the main content which is a little weird, but it doesn't seem to impact the page itself.

I would agree that providing specialized content to premium members is something I would like to focus on, but deciding on content and developing it has been difficult. The premium membership didn't work exactly the way I had planned, but I still want to provide some sort of premium avenue for members who wish to directly support the site.

I would like to work with you, Josh, to develop tutorials for the ColdFusion area, as well as any C++ information you could share. The problem is taking the time to write and come up with quality content. I've tried to ramp up how much I help lately and have noticed several other members doing the same thing. It's nice to see.

We are converting many of the guests in to members on a more consistent basis. I think having a larger signup form on the homepage would help this.

Also, I enabled letting members see signatures, avatars, and images (used to just show the image link) so guests see better content. We do not resrict anything except searching I believe... and posting of course.

The resources area of the site draws an incredible amount of traffic, some of the sites in there have several thousand hits.

Today alone we hit a new 6 month high for page views (11,754 and counting) and an 18 month high for members online (52 at 9:00AM this morning)

Once I get the go ahead from the folks at Klipsch I will be launching that new contest which should attract some new members and also generate new content.

I think the direction of the site is solid and things are on the up swing, it's definitley been more active around here and we are generating new active members on a daily basis. I also see more and more return members who registered 1 year+ ago. This is an excellent sign.

[skyhawk133]

Also, you'll notice I have focused less on using the site to promo my hosting business and more to promo content and generate revenue directly.

[supersloth]

I think this is inherintly where the problem lies, your skirting the issue again, statistics from the last month are irrelevant, its the fact that a new advertising push was ready to go against members without the facts of how the system worked nor how it would impact the users. THAT and the lack of premium content are the critical issues here and the reason for the poll, we cannot keep a thriving community when serious issues are responded to with page views. And while those statistics are promising, as a respected community member once said its easy to see how the site is being munchausen by proxied to death.

[skyhawk133]

I use statisctics to measure the success of the site, because we don't advertise, having content that is spidered and members signing up is a good measure of how the site is doing. Also, I look at how many non-regular members names appear on the homepage each day, this has increased 3-fold over the past month or 2.

I'm not denying the fact that the premium member area is lacking. I would also point out that I removed several 'crappy' tutorials that I put up originally to fill a void. There is a new void that I want to replace with quality tutorials.

I would like to build up a little revenue to actually spend $500 bucks on a gigantic ad package from inetinteractive and run 5,000,000 RON (Run of network) ads. Not expecting to generate any of that money back in any other way than ad revenue. Whilst the premium membership area is neat, it's really for the hardcore members that want to support the site.

I guess I'm torn between providing all the content 100% free and not keeping any information from all the members, and providing content to the few folks that have taken the time and money to help us out. I think this comes from having an open source background but a capitalistic mind set.

[Trakker]

i'm all for the generating revenue part.

all i know is that when i'm browsing sites like neowin and tomshardware it pisses me off when i'm reading.

but if you're just in it for the money then hell go for it.

[skyhawk133]

Do the links piss you off? Or how they are implemented? Like... color, underlines, etc. etc.