Advertising on Sir-Toby.Com

General discussion about anything on Sir-Toby.Com that isn't covered by another forum.

Moderator: Extend-A-Story Moderators

What do you think of advertising on Sir-Toby.Com?

I hate advertising. If you put ads on Sir-Toby.Com I will leave the site and never return.
0
No votes
I would rather see no advertising and instead have the option to donate to the site via PayPal to cover costs.
0
No votes
If you do add advertising, I would like to have an option to pay a subscription fee via PayPal to eliminate ads.
1
9%
As long as the ads aren't annoying, I am fine with you adding ads to Sir-Toby.Com.
6
55%
Ads don't bug me. Feel free to add whatever type of ads you want.
3
27%
I use AdBlock (or equivalent) so I won't see any ads anyways and don't really care what you do.
1
9%
 
Total votes: 11

Noise Tank
Posts: 227
Joined: Sat Feb 28, 2004 4:04 am
Location: Minnesota

Post by Noise Tank »

If it takes adds to make this site even better, do you what you have to do.
Execute Order 66
Anableps
Posts: 164
Joined: Sat Apr 26, 2003 4:52 pm
Contact:

Ideas for the site

Post by Anableps »

Sir Toby siad:

You (and others) have pointed out they like the look and feel of the site. I respect that. The site is simple and usable. However, I also see in Google Analytics a number of people that visit one page on the site and then leave. I have to wonder how many of these visitors are turned off by the look and feel of the site. My hope is that there are some changes I can make to the site that will attract more visitors, without losing those aspects that we love about the site.

I was wondering if it would be possible to get the best of both worlds by testing the innovations in the Beta Test story, and then applying them to Black Void, but not the NEQ? That way, the people that are attracted by fancy graphics and have bandwidth to burn would be happy, and would contribute, and those who like the simplicity of the NEQ could still enjoy that. It might also bring a little more life to the Black Void.

Another idea for feature additions would be to have a method to post illustrations with the story. Not that I would use it very often, but perhaps there are some authors that might like to try their hand at illustrating an episode with supporting materials such as pictures or maps. I have seen that done on some of the author's web sites, and this would just place these directly in the story. If that feature ever came about, there would need to be a moderation stage in all probability, to prevent spam and inappropriate material from being posted.

One of the other thoughts that I had was that if the site traffic increased by a factor of ten or so, it might outgrow the moderation system that it has now. In some ways, the number of authors currently active at any one time may be at the appropriate level for one moderator. JH does a good job of keeping the junk off the site, and the authors who hang around generally seem to know, or find out quickly, what is acceptable and what is not.

One last thought - if you do try to get more traffic into this site, it might be useful to upgrade the guidelines for writing good stories. The present guidelines are good, as far as they go, but there are a number of things that work well when an author is writing a story solo and off by himself that do not work so well in a story that is collaborative and being worked out over time. If I get some inspiration, I might post some ideas on that point.
JH
Posts: 1048
Joined: Sat Apr 26, 2003 4:31 pm
Location: UK
Contact:

Post by JH »

Regarding illustrations, it would be nice if - as a minimum - one could include links in the text of the story. At the moment, not only can one not have proper links but even if one includes a URL it usually has to be split by spaces to get over the "no word longer that 30 characters" rule.

I agree that if the level of use of the site greatly increased, then moderation might become too much for one person. But we can probably cross that bridge when we come to it.
JH
Post Reply