Thoughts on Sir-Toby.Com
Posted: Mon Aug 25, 2008 9:44 pm
Everyone,
I've recently been inspired to put more effort into the Sir-Toby.Com web site. I've been paying attention to the forum a bit more lately and have been responding to posts. I've also started to play catch up with some long overdue tasks (such as deleting 231 spammer accounts from the forums).
To make a long story short, I have been having a conversation with a friend who runs a very large and active web site community. Years ago, he quit his day job to focus entirely on his web site community and is living off of the advertising revenue generated from it. I'm working with him to build up a web site community for playing pinball. As part of our discussions, I showed him Sir-Toby.Com and he indicated that there may be some possibility for generating advertising revenue from it.
If you are anything like me, the idea of putting advertising on Sir-Toby.Com at a minimum leaves a bad taste in your mouth. I have never before considered placing advertising on Sir-Toby.Com. For me it has been a labor of love that I have been happy to provide to anyone wanting to enjoy it. Of course, jobs and other activities have always kept me from really focusing on Sir-Toby.Com and my activity level with the site has been sporadic, at best.
There are a great deal of things I would like to do with Sir-Toby.Com. Updating the site design to something that doesn't look like it was created in the 90's. Updating horribly out of date web pages. Growing the community. Adding features to Extend-A-Story. Adding completely new features to the site. Upgrading the server hardware and operating system.
All of these things take time, and in the case of some of them, will take money. Frankly, I suck at web site design, so I would want to pay someone to do that for me. Growing the community will likely entail paying for some form of advertising. Server hardware doesn't grow on trees. It is difficult for me to justify spending time and money on Sir-Toby.Com when it has been primarily a time and money sink and my focus is elsewhere.
This brings me back to considering adding advertising to Sir-Toby.Com. If Sir-Toby.Com becomes a source of revenue, it becomes much easier to justify spending time and money on the site, as it directly corresponds to increased revenue. If it generates enough revenue, I can focus on Sir-Toby.Com entirely.
I have briefly discussed these thoughts with JH over email and we both felt it was appropriate to start a discussion on the forums to get the input of the larger community. While I will start additional topics concerning specific areas I want to discuss, I think this will provide a good place to start a more general discussion.
One of the first questions that came up with my email discussion with JH is whether there is even enough traffic to the site to generate advertising revenue in the first place. That is the question I am going to look at first. I've had two people now recommend that I use Google Analytics to analyze the traffic to the site. I have done some research into it and it looks like a good place to start. I will start by adding Google Analytics to the Beta Test Story as a test to see how it works out. If it works well, I will add it to the more heavily used parts of the site. You should see very little impact on your experience with the site as a result of this, but if you see anything amiss, don't hesitate to say something.
I've recently been inspired to put more effort into the Sir-Toby.Com web site. I've been paying attention to the forum a bit more lately and have been responding to posts. I've also started to play catch up with some long overdue tasks (such as deleting 231 spammer accounts from the forums).
To make a long story short, I have been having a conversation with a friend who runs a very large and active web site community. Years ago, he quit his day job to focus entirely on his web site community and is living off of the advertising revenue generated from it. I'm working with him to build up a web site community for playing pinball. As part of our discussions, I showed him Sir-Toby.Com and he indicated that there may be some possibility for generating advertising revenue from it.
If you are anything like me, the idea of putting advertising on Sir-Toby.Com at a minimum leaves a bad taste in your mouth. I have never before considered placing advertising on Sir-Toby.Com. For me it has been a labor of love that I have been happy to provide to anyone wanting to enjoy it. Of course, jobs and other activities have always kept me from really focusing on Sir-Toby.Com and my activity level with the site has been sporadic, at best.
There are a great deal of things I would like to do with Sir-Toby.Com. Updating the site design to something that doesn't look like it was created in the 90's. Updating horribly out of date web pages. Growing the community. Adding features to Extend-A-Story. Adding completely new features to the site. Upgrading the server hardware and operating system.
All of these things take time, and in the case of some of them, will take money. Frankly, I suck at web site design, so I would want to pay someone to do that for me. Growing the community will likely entail paying for some form of advertising. Server hardware doesn't grow on trees. It is difficult for me to justify spending time and money on Sir-Toby.Com when it has been primarily a time and money sink and my focus is elsewhere.
This brings me back to considering adding advertising to Sir-Toby.Com. If Sir-Toby.Com becomes a source of revenue, it becomes much easier to justify spending time and money on the site, as it directly corresponds to increased revenue. If it generates enough revenue, I can focus on Sir-Toby.Com entirely.
I have briefly discussed these thoughts with JH over email and we both felt it was appropriate to start a discussion on the forums to get the input of the larger community. While I will start additional topics concerning specific areas I want to discuss, I think this will provide a good place to start a more general discussion.
One of the first questions that came up with my email discussion with JH is whether there is even enough traffic to the site to generate advertising revenue in the first place. That is the question I am going to look at first. I've had two people now recommend that I use Google Analytics to analyze the traffic to the site. I have done some research into it and it looks like a good place to start. I will start by adding Google Analytics to the Beta Test Story as a test to see how it works out. If it works well, I will add it to the more heavily used parts of the site. You should see very little impact on your experience with the site as a result of this, but if you see anything amiss, don't hesitate to say something.