A thought on how to create more income for SpeedGuide.net

[Norm]

How does Speedguide create an income for itself?
Ads?
How does that work?
People visit SG and click on an ad, SG makes some money, right?

So, the more people visiting, the greater the potential for someone to click an ad, and make SG a bit of coin, right?
Regular members tend to block ads, or don't click them, so the majority of income comes from 'non-members' visiting, and clicking ads, right?
Stop me if I'm wrong here. (I'm not really sure how it all works)

More new visiters = potentially more money

IMHO SG should be taking advantage of the fact that 2 of SG's long term members have been hand chosen by Microsoft as available, helpful, and knowledgeable with MS products. (As well as the fact there are many others in the forums who are just as, if not more, helpful and knowledgeable)

SpeedGuide is well known for tweaking an internet connection, but wouldn't it be of benefit if it was also known as the home of 2 recently awarded MVP's?
One Windows-IE, OE and
One Windows-shell user
Not to mention all the other talented individuals here at SG, in the networking forum, security, hardware, programming and all the other forums.

SG is a tech site. right?
People (average users) need tech advice, and help day in and day out. The cost of hiring a tech is out of this world to many PC users, so forums are the place they go when they need help.
MVP's are promoted by MS and a lot of other sites. If there was a page at SG dedicated to thier MVP's google would pick up on it, and bring in more hits.

Promoting SG members also promotes SG and will bring in more people to click on ads, and make SG some more coin.

Just a thought.

Do you agree?

[Philip]

How does Speedguide create an income for itself?
Ads?
How does that work?
People visit SG and click on an ad, SG makes some money, right?
Yes. Some ads are based on views, some on clicks, the general idea is correct. We make some money from the ads, and a small portion from the premium membership. There have been times a couple of years back where ad revenue couldn't cover server expenses, but we're in the green now (if you don't count our time).


So, the more people visiting, the greater the potential for someone to click an ad, and make SG a bit of coin, right?
Yes, definitely.

Regular members tend to block ads, or don't click them, so the majority of income comes from 'non-members' visiting, and clicking ads, right?
Stop me if I'm wrong here. (I'm not really sure how it all works)
Not that many people block ads (about 10% I'd say. The ones that do are evil because they eat away all websites' revenues... ;) JK, it's your choice).

The traffic is divided about evenly between the main site and forums, there are more regulars on the forums viewing more pages per visit than the main site... However, some of our members do understand that clicking on ads helps the site and do it, even buy stuff through clicking on ads. On the other hand, once a user sees a few of the same ads he is no longer likely to click that ad, and/or advertisers set a limit on how many times an ad can be shown to the same IP per day, so in theory there is a cap on how much a single user can contribute. Other than that I can't say much about what percentage of the ads revenue is generated by regulars and what by non-members.


More new visiters = potentially more money
Yes, definitely. The more unique IPs that visit per month, the higher the potential ad revenue. Of course it depends on many other factors as well, for example whether and how much of the ad space can be sold directly vs. through Ad Agencies, etc.


IMHO SG should be taking advantage of the fact that 2 of SG's long term members have been hand chosen by Microsoft as available, helpful, and knowledgeable with MS products. (As well as the fact there are many others in the forums who are just as, if not more, helpful and knowledgeable)
Agreed. There are a lot of people with MS, Technical and Networking certifications and degrees here that are of value to the site and make the forums what they are as well.


SpeedGuide is well known for tweaking an internet connection, but wouldn't it be of benefit if it was also known as the home of 2 recently awarded MVP's?
One Windows-IE, OE and
One Windows-shell user
Not to mention all the other talented individuals here at SG, in the networking forum, security, hardware, programming and all the other forums.
We did stick a couple of threads and posted the news to the main site :) We do value the fact you guys got the awards, it was great news to hear you were recognized for all your help.


SG is a tech site. right?
People (average users) need tech advice, and help day in and day out. The cost of hiring a tech is out of this world to many PC users, so forums are the place they go when they need help.
MVP's are promoted by MS and a lot of other sites. If there was a page at SG dedicated to thier MVP's google would pick up on it, and bring in more hits.
Well, yes and no. If you put "MVP" in your signature, in theory it will be on 100s of pages throughout the fourms that Google is going to pick up and give more weight than a single page on the main site. The average person looking for PC help might not know what it means... Still, there are a lot of people on this forums with a number of certifications, maybe if they all add them to their signatures Google will pick them up. However, it is not just the certifications/awards, rather the actual helpful relevant posts that are of value and have all the keywords that search engines pick up. There are 100s of thousands of pages on these forums, 1 page on the site would only be a drop in the bucket and would't make much difference IMHO.

I still think your awards are of great value and am not opposed to having something posted, probably in the site Awards page ?


Promoting SG members also promotes SG and will bring in more people to click on ads, and make SG some more coin.

Just a thought.

Do you agree?Somewhat, as explained above. I'd be happy to post something in the awards section of the site, let's discuss some details on what exactly you'd like to see.

Helpful articles, reviews, expanding our content and FAQs, answering people's questions is what is actually even more valuable to us and what will help us grow. People visit these forums looking for answers, and if they see helpful and entertaining crowd they tend to stick around. Write a few articles, share your expertise if you'd like to help the site.

We have developed a way for users to write articles/reviews/stories easily on their own and contribute to the database of information that makes SG. This has been up for almost a year with very limited response. I'd like to change that and encourage everyone to write their story, experiences or Networking / Broadband related article here: http://www.speedguide.net/submit.php If you'd like to discuss topics or help with it, just email/PM me. I'd like to see many more people involved in this program, it is a great tool for you to share your experiences and get considerable publicity (we serve 3.5 Million pages monthly to nearly 1 Million unique users !). We might give some premium membership as an incentive for contributing articles to the site.

[Norm]

hmmm, I had a look around and saw lots of things on SG that I hadn't noticed before. I didn't know there was an awards page either, till you mentioned it.

A small write up on the awards page about TonyT and myself being around for a few years, and getting the MVP award would be sufficient. Maybe include the MVP logo too, with a link to what the MVP programs is all about.
A note that the site forums are full of certified helpful (potential MVP's) would help as well I'm sure.

You're probably right about having MVP in my sig being of more benefit than one page on the site about the awards. Consider it done. It may bring in those who know what it is, who knows. I didn't know what an MVP was until I got a PM here from Brian Boston. :o

You are also right about written articles (faqs) etc being of benefit to SG, and the author(s) exposure. I have written quite a few posts that could be re-written into articles or faqs, and I could do more. Time is short these days, but I will make time for this, the articles list looks kinda bare.
My choice of what I write about? (technical, not religion :))
Do I create the article(s) in html to submit? The submit the html code?

I admit, I block ads, not because I hate ads, but because some of them cause my browser to hesitate while it waits for the ad server, sometimes timing out. The odd ad is too flashy as well, but I could live with that. I'll make an effort to click ads here every day too. I don't like the spyware aspect of the ads either.
Again, you are right. Ads help keep surfing FREE!
I shouldn't be so strict with them.

Money is tight here Phillip, if I had some to spare I would. I want to help out, and would be upset if SG went down due to finacial problems so I will do what I can to help keep funds rolling in by helping in the forums, and gettings some articles up. Not sure what yet.

Take care, and thanks for the reply.

Norm

[Philip]

I've posted the MVP info to the Awards page (http://www.speedguide.net/awards.php).

No worries about the ads or premium membership, I'm not trying to collect money here; just threw those in to explain the financial side :). This site's driving force has never been money, rather sharing information and helping people get the most out of their broadband & PCs.

As I tried to point out, we'd be glad to get people involved in contributing some content. It can be submited in basic HTML, text, or whatever is feasible, content is more important than formatting. If you do deside to write something more involved, you might want to run the topic / abstract by me in advance, but as long as it is well written and within the scope of the site we'll most likely publish it.