[Obsidian]

I logged in via my android and noticed an ad at the bottom? Trisphee has ads? :(
Or does my phone have some sort of ad-placement malware?

[Salone]

No no, no malware. They're experimenting with some unobtrusive ads at the bottom of the website to bring in some small income. Just trying to help offset hosting costs until we're fully up and running again I think.

[Tohopekaliga]

Yeah, I added that last month, just the one at the bottom. Figured I'd see how much it makes.

The answer: almost nothing. I'll probably remove it again after a while.

[Obsidian]

Ah, ok. Yeah, I don't whitelist any website (no offense to you, I just seriously loathe ads) so I have an AdBlock Plus extension on my Google Chrome. ._.

I have it because most ads are auto-play and that lags my computer all to hell and I already heavily multi-task as it were.

Thanks for letting me know!

[Tohopekaliga]

I'm not bothered by AdBlock. :) The ads are pay-per-click, and I am explicitly forbidden to encourage users to click on ads. It's supposed to be entirely because the user is interested in the content. If you block ads, well, you're clearly not interested.

Pay-per-(thousand-)view ads are those noisy, in your face, auto-play type ads, and I hate hate hate those. They'll not come here. (And if they DO, AdSense is fired immediately.)

[Obsidian]

That's good! I hated how GaiaOnline and SoliaOnline asks us to whitelist their sites. It always seemed so beggarish to me. Glad you guys didn't do that. ^-^

[Tohopekaliga]

Well, I can understand where they're coming from. It's super hard to have a profitable website. And it really gets harder once you pass a certain size threshold. Gaia has passed that point, definitely.

I'd rather get the income from user engagement and getting at least some people to buy runes and the like. Of course, the percentages on that are generally super low, too. It's an interesting challenge, finding a balance between making money and not coming off as a money-grubbing scumbag.

[Nightmare]

Gaia used to be a nice site, until they became money hungry. When you can say that having 1 BILLION of a currency is still too little, I feel like that's when a site start's having issues...

.. / end rant. lol

[Tohopekaliga]

It's hard to say exactly where they went wrong, but yeah, I'd say Gaia is not being very successful at the "making money while not looking like a money-gubber" balance.

[Obsidian]

Yeah, I agree about Gaia being money-hungry. I went into their Cash Shop last week out of curiosity and their highest priced item was about 900$ and I was like ......WTF!?!? Seriously??

I do like their subscription option... (when they had it... looks like they did away with it) Maybe you guys could think about that?

GaiaOnline used to have AutoCash with a tier of subscriptions. I can't find the info anymore... but what they did was depending on how much you donate.. Like their $10 sub gave you the normal 1,000 GaiaCash, plus 200 bonus GaiaCash. They also gave you a million GaiaGold and I can't remember what else they had. I think they also went up to $100 a month sub. It was pretty outrageous but the rewards were great, imo.

So maybe Trisphee can do something similar.
Since members already get 110 Runes for $10 donated, try to offer a bonus amount if they sign up for the monthly sub. Offer a special item a month just for subs, maybe? Maybe when the Anka eggs are released, the Anka mysteriously began to lay an extra egg which can only be opened by subs.

Just tossing ideas out. ^-^;

[Tohopekaliga]

I remember AutoCash...I actually subscribed to it for a few months, lol. $10/month or something.


A subscription thing would be nice to have, although I don't think we really have enough active users yet to warrant having such a thing available. Still...it's a possibility. :)

[Obsidian]

Yeah, I used to sub $10 a month too. The rewards for it were awesome! I'm not sure how to lure people in here without having to purchase ad space. However, there are other sites to which provides a list of sites, if anyone ever frequents them, they can put Trisphee upon that list.

For example, you guys are actually listed on Menewsha's post of avatar/pet sites! And surely there are other avatar sites with similar posts. Perhaps see about adding Trisphee there to get more clickers.
And doing a similar post in return?

[Tohopekaliga]

As it happens, I knew about that thread...because I have Google Analytics to tell me traffic trends, including where people come from. :P

[Obsidian]

Pfft, well fine, Mr. Know-It-All!

My forum has that option... However, that'll be offtopic, so I'll ask you in PM. ^-^;

[Glitch]

I dunno about you but I never noticed the ad before, however, when i scrolled down to look at it --- it thinks i need to meet me some fine asian women.

I wonder what that says about me ._.

xD

[Lucid:]

Oh...I have adblock so I didn't even know an ad got placed down there. But if it's PPC anyway, I don't feel so bad.