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Subject: Advertising News Posted by: Guru - [330592710] Mon, Feb 19, 16:58 Bummer. I just lost my advertising contract with ValueClick. They deemed my site clicking activity to be "incentivized", and therefore in violation of my contract. While I tried hard to ensure that any "incentives" were slight, I realize that most of the clicking activity from my site was not a result of true interest in the underlying advertisers. As such, it is hard to imagine that our clicks represented good value to the advertisers, on average. That is the stance of ValueClick. I'm already convinced that without continual prompting, click rates at this site would be negligible. Been there, done that. And with advertisers clamping down on incentives, and rates declining, I'm not at all convinced that pursuing alternative advertising avenues isn't ultimately a losers game. As it was, I've been recently spending much more time administering and monitoring advertising activity, and frankly, that isn't very enjoyable. And with Market Madness and baseball coming up, I have plenty to do already. So, rather than immediately starting to beat the bushes for more advertising sources (which might be fruitless anyway), I'm going to take a few weeks to rethink the whole financial framework of rotoguru.com. As I mentioned in my "State of" message, my servers are paid up through next fall, so I don't have any imminent decisions to make. I still have advertising relationships with a couple of firms (Commission Junction and Linkshare), and will continue to show their ads on many of my pages for the time being. A great many of these ads are commission based, rather than click based, and the average revenue per ad exposure is not very lucrative. Thus, for the time being, my advice is that if you see something of interest, by all means check it out, but don't bother clicking just for the sake of clicking. | ||||||
| 1 | StLCards ID: 2504849 Mon, Feb 19, 17:20 |
Total Bummer :( Even though the site may have been "incentivized", I still found many sites through my clicking that interested me, that I would have never visited otherwise. I think they really just don't get it. It's easy to see why the whole online ad revenue approach is hurting. It would be a real shame to see this site end after baseball. Hopefully you'll come up with a viable solution to keep going. I guess you could always try to strike a deal with SW, but I personally would rather pay a subscription fee than see this become like the old SW boards. Hope it all works out! | |||||
| 2 | ProudestMonkey ID: 3311561610 Mon, Feb 19, 17:20 | I can't believe I'm saying this, but I agree with Lou's response in the Hoops Forum. I know this would take time and effort to get underway, but from reading some of the posts in Forum Developments, I'm sure that there is a market for Rotoguru.com products. I think this is also a good way to increase word of mouth advertising. If people are wearing Rotoguru gear, it might get the name out there. There are positives and negatives to that, but I won't go there. Anyway, I just thought I'd go on the record as saying that I'd love to support the site by buying some gear! | |||||
| 3 | Perm Dude ID: 331181719 Mon, Feb 19, 17:28 |
Also, I'm sure that some would be more than happy to drop a couple of bucks your way as a direct way of giving back. Maybe you could take out a PO Box, and post something small on your sponsor site for direct donations? Certainly an understated message, but I'm sure there are some people here who are quite willing to throw in a couple of bucks if only they had a means to do so. pd | |||||
| 4 | StLCards ID: 2504849 Mon, Feb 19, 17:57 | I think I should add that now that I know what RotoGuru is all about I would gladly pay to be part of it. I would most likely have not been willing to pay without knowing what this site was all about. Point being that a pay service most likely puts a real damper on growth. May not even keep up with attrition. I have no clue what it costs to run your site and whether subscription service would work or not. Only option my feeble mind can come up with. I would also being willing to make a small donation but don't know how effective that is long term either. Again, Good Luck. | |||||
| 5 | Madman ID: 146191423 Mon, Feb 19, 18:12 |
This is indeed bad news. Just some random thoughts: a) Given the light click-through rates historically, I'm dubious that the gurupies could all get together and volunteer enough cash to buy server space for a year. Maybe once or twice, but altruism in such a framework is difficult to sustain without some mechanism in place to give people incentives. Not trying to say we're bad people, but it's a natural human instinct to underpay for public goods. b) I wonder if there would be ways to "lighten" the server-side loads so that a dedicated server wouldn't be quite as necessary? This is a tough give and take, because many of the server-side scripts and things are also what makes this site so unique (thread sorting, sortable stats, etc.). c) What about designing your own game? You do this for Football Pickoff and Market Madness already. Is there a way to get some revenues from these? Especially if the goal is to only gain enough revenue to offset site costs, then it's feasible that such games might be less expensive and better-run than the other on-line counterparts. d) Along the lines of server loads, it's hard for us outsiders to know exactly how many server-side resources we use. If you have to go back to a cheaper server source, perhaps there is some way to encourage more efficient use of the resources from our perspective? e) What about game-related product sales? Richard, QB, myself and a number of people have created support spreadsheets and software programs. What about a "shareware" $5 buck or whatever per download? Personally, I'd be willing to donate any products I develop and/or revenue from them to rotoguru.com, and I'm sure many others would, as well. Heck, we already give them away for free . . . And if I knew that they would help rotoguru.com, I might actually be MORE apt to develop them . . . Just some brainstorm ideas . . . | |||||
| 6 | Perm Dude ID: 331181719 Mon, Feb 19, 18:28 |
Also, it seems to me that ESPN's March Madness game is awfully similar to yours. Perhaps intellectual property revenue streams might be addressed as well. I'd be happy to put you in touch with some sharks, er, IP lawyers, of your own. I think a membership in which a CD-ROM of some of these statistical tools in one place might be kind of cool (along with a RotoGuru.com tee-shirt, also available as a stand-alone product). pd | |||||
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