All sports teams make money. The Bulls have been one of the most profitable sports franchises since MJeff donned his cape and flew into town. Colleges make money and players get a paid for education as well as exposure to professional leagues where they can earn a living.
I understand that stadiums need to be built, jersey's need to be sewn, and then arenas need to be cleaned afterward.
At what point do YOU as a fan just want to sit, relax, talk with your fellow crazies and not be hasseled to buy something.
All I see now is how WU-YISOURCE is a great diet to make my heart race into explosion, how the latest ringtones can be on my phone if I click here, how gambling is a good way to get my fix and addiction started, how I can buy a signed jersey and how target has more for less!!!
Add in the fact that everytime I have to find somewhere new to discuss something chicago related I get more signs, more signs....
Signs that point me eyes down and then left, right... left, right, left.... right.
I end in a sigh and wonder if there are any true sports fans out there that have the ability to just love what they do and not try to stick their hand in my pocket.
DISCUSSION ON BULLS FORUM ADVERTISMENTS
Moderators: HomoSapien, AshyLarrysDiaper, coldfish, Payt10, Ice Man, dougthonus, Michael Jackson, Tommy Udo 6 , kulaz3000, fleet, DASMACKDOWN, GimmeDat, RedBulls23
DISCUSSION ON BULLS FORUM ADVERTISMENTS
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GRADEN
- Head Coach
- Posts: 6,468
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- Joined: Jun 08, 2002
- Location: Chicago
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coldfish
- Forum Mod - Bulls
- Posts: 60,545
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- Joined: Jun 11, 2004
- Location: Right in the middle
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Is advertising just an annoying thing we deal with? Or is it something that in a place like this we shouldn't have to deal with?
I don't know if you are referring to realgm or not.
What it comes down to is that people do not want to pay for places like this. Because of that, a third party has to pay the bills. It can be irritating, but I would rather have a bunch of free sports sites than have to pay every one of them I look at for access.
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coldfish
- Forum Mod - Bulls
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- Location: Right in the middle
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I don't know the details. The moderators are not paid. My wife does enough web work to give me some insight into the costs.
A lot of it is just based on traffic. A very low volume forum is easy to create and extremely cheap to maintain. You just rent space on a server and can get a small number of hits for low cost. You can have sites for less than $100 per year.
Realgm is ultra high volume and as such, probably has its own servers, possibly a T1 line and has to be supported. I would not be surprised if realgm's operating costs were 10's of thousands of dollars per year.
A lot of it is just based on traffic. A very low volume forum is easy to create and extremely cheap to maintain. You just rent space on a server and can get a small number of hits for low cost. You can have sites for less than $100 per year.
Realgm is ultra high volume and as such, probably has its own servers, possibly a T1 line and has to be supported. I would not be surprised if realgm's operating costs were 10's of thousands of dollars per year.
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TB#1
- Banned User
- Posts: 17,483
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- Joined: Jun 18, 2003
- Location: Wossamotta U
I don't know the business affairs of RealGM. Its not my affair, nor is it yours. I can share with you what I know about running a board from personal knowledge.
I was previously an administrator of a faily large board. We spent quite a long time paying server costs out of our own pocket. The bigger we grew, the more server space we needed to keep the board running smoothly and not crash at peak times. We finally got enough advertising to be self sustaining and we were mighty glad to have it. Then we were able to start paying back some of the out of pocket expenditures. Then we actually started making a few dollars. It was a hell of a lot of work to get to that point. Truly a labor of love. It was not a ton of money. It was never about the money, but getting some money sure felt nice. Made it seem more worthwhile, given the countless hours I poured in -- and my co-admins as well. You wouldn't believe how much work and aggravation can be involved. But we did it there -- and we do it here (where I am, of course, just a mod, not an administrator or owner) because of a love for the community. We want a good place to hang out and talk about basketball and are willing to put in the hard work to make it so.
RealGM provides a great place to hang out. It is a huge place with enormous traffic, so there must be some substantial overhead involved. That has to be paid for, whether it is buying server time or maintaining servers. This site costs you nothing. If the powers that be can keep this place up and running and a free place to hang out, and make some coin in the process, I have no problem with that whatsoever.
This must be an important topic to you, since you bumped your own thread. I hope we've satisfied your curiosity.
I was previously an administrator of a faily large board. We spent quite a long time paying server costs out of our own pocket. The bigger we grew, the more server space we needed to keep the board running smoothly and not crash at peak times. We finally got enough advertising to be self sustaining and we were mighty glad to have it. Then we were able to start paying back some of the out of pocket expenditures. Then we actually started making a few dollars. It was a hell of a lot of work to get to that point. Truly a labor of love. It was not a ton of money. It was never about the money, but getting some money sure felt nice. Made it seem more worthwhile, given the countless hours I poured in -- and my co-admins as well. You wouldn't believe how much work and aggravation can be involved. But we did it there -- and we do it here (where I am, of course, just a mod, not an administrator or owner) because of a love for the community. We want a good place to hang out and talk about basketball and are willing to put in the hard work to make it so.
RealGM provides a great place to hang out. It is a huge place with enormous traffic, so there must be some substantial overhead involved. That has to be paid for, whether it is buying server time or maintaining servers. This site costs you nothing. If the powers that be can keep this place up and running and a free place to hang out, and make some coin in the process, I have no problem with that whatsoever.
This must be an important topic to you, since you bumped your own thread. I hope we've satisfied your curiosity.
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GRADEN
- Head Coach
- Posts: 6,468
- And1: 148
- Joined: Jun 08, 2002
- Location: Chicago
I do not have a problem with securing the overhead and placing a free site. I love it in fact as do we all.
I am just peaved by some of the choices made and who to allow in. I don't agree with those and as such will shut my mouth bc it will only get me banned here.
I do not like how the board has changed to a little hypocritical though.
My bears thread was hijacked and you can't even move it for me. Yet there is an OT board and still there are many many many OT threads here about commercials etc...
Should threads about Nene be only on the general board or nugs board???
My point is simple: I place things here bc i like, respect, and know its users. When everything (esp. chicago related, i understand movie stuff etc...) gets moved and no one i know gets to see it, then it irks me.
As a business, it is SMART to have me clicking through page after page of new ads to find what i want, bring up new browses and continuing to go back and forth.
It used to not be this way. The traffic I understand, but I also notice all my old posters here from back in the day have left.
I am just peaved by some of the choices made and who to allow in. I don't agree with those and as such will shut my mouth bc it will only get me banned here.
I do not like how the board has changed to a little hypocritical though.
My bears thread was hijacked and you can't even move it for me. Yet there is an OT board and still there are many many many OT threads here about commercials etc...
Should threads about Nene be only on the general board or nugs board???
My point is simple: I place things here bc i like, respect, and know its users. When everything (esp. chicago related, i understand movie stuff etc...) gets moved and no one i know gets to see it, then it irks me.
As a business, it is SMART to have me clicking through page after page of new ads to find what i want, bring up new browses and continuing to go back and forth.
It used to not be this way. The traffic I understand, but I also notice all my old posters here from back in the day have left.
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Action Paxson
- Head Coach
- Posts: 6,311
- And1: 63
- Joined: Jun 22, 2004
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I know I'm not a person of any significance but GRADEN times change and as this board continues to get bigger by the day the greater for the need for advertisers and if you don't like the choice of the ads that is understandable but really shouldn't be a big deal about whether or not you post here.
This seems to be more about the changing of the board and IMO they are doing the right thing. Your post about the Bears was locked and rightfully so because there is a Bears forum in its infancy and in order for it to grow there should not be heavy discussion regarding the Bears on the this forum. RealGM is trying to get to the point of an ESPN where they cover multiple sports with different forms of media and making money is a priority for them. If you don't like it post somewhere else but I can't find a better board on the web.
This seems to be more about the changing of the board and IMO they are doing the right thing. Your post about the Bears was locked and rightfully so because there is a Bears forum in its infancy and in order for it to grow there should not be heavy discussion regarding the Bears on the this forum. RealGM is trying to get to the point of an ESPN where they cover multiple sports with different forms of media and making money is a priority for them. If you don't like it post somewhere else but I can't find a better board on the web.
Chaos isn't a pit. Chaos is a ladder.
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coldfish
- Forum Mod - Bulls
- Posts: 60,545
- And1: 37,782
- Joined: Jun 11, 2004
- Location: Right in the middle
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Graden: I don't know what happened with the Bears thread, so I can't comment on it.
In general, making decisions on what stays, what gets moved and who gets disciplined is very difficult and always a judgment call. For example, trade threads. We tried to consolidate them, but people keep making them and often complain when they get locked or merged. They also generally get a lot of hits and replies. However, other people complain when these type of threads push unique ones off the board.
Regarding off topic threads, I specifically had an announcement this offseason that we were going to allow more during the offseason than during the season.
Basically, we have a problem where people are creating more threads than can be displayed easily and for a reasonable amount of time.
Personally, I would like to see sub forums for the Bulls board like what Toronto has. That isn't going to happen soon, but may in the long term.
I think that having quick links on the top of the Bulls board to:
- Chicago off topic
- Bulls trades
- Cubs
- White Sox
- Bears
Boards, it would help a lot.
My point is simple: I place things here bc i like, respect, and know its users. When everything (esp. chicago related, i understand movie stuff etc...) gets moved and no one i know gets to see it, then it irks me.
In general, making decisions on what stays, what gets moved and who gets disciplined is very difficult and always a judgment call. For example, trade threads. We tried to consolidate them, but people keep making them and often complain when they get locked or merged. They also generally get a lot of hits and replies. However, other people complain when these type of threads push unique ones off the board.
Regarding off topic threads, I specifically had an announcement this offseason that we were going to allow more during the offseason than during the season.
Basically, we have a problem where people are creating more threads than can be displayed easily and for a reasonable amount of time.
Personally, I would like to see sub forums for the Bulls board like what Toronto has. That isn't going to happen soon, but may in the long term.
I think that having quick links on the top of the Bulls board to:
- Chicago off topic
- Bulls trades
- Cubs
- White Sox
- Bears
Boards, it would help a lot.
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Three34
- Retired Mod
- Posts: 36,406
- And1: 123
- Joined: Sep 18, 2002
a site like shamsports has no ads is my point
It doesn't have any traffic, either. And it costs pittance to run small sites. RealGM, meanwhile, is the biggst such site in its field, and them bills gotta be paid.
No one likes adverts, not even the people who put them there. But if they get enough money to keep the site running from our occasional misclicks onto adverts, then so be it.
They do have a no pop-ups policy here. It's just that, because a third party handles what ads get put on the site, ones occasionally slip through the net. They do their best.
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TB#1
- Banned User
- Posts: 17,483
- And1: 9
- Joined: Jun 18, 2003
- Location: Wossamotta U
I don't know who locked the Bears thread. My personal preference for handling such things is to move it and leave a redirect. But mods calls 'em as they sees 'em and get it right more than wrong. C'est la Vie.
Find a site that has high traffic, free access and no advertising. They are few and far between, and to the extent they exist, they are fueled by some other money making venture. Welcome to America. Merry New Year.
With that, I think the opportunity to vent on ads has been served and questions answered. I'm locking up.
Any further Q's, please PM an admin, or PM one of us and we can pass the question along.
Find a site that has high traffic, free access and no advertising. They are few and far between, and to the extent they exist, they are fueled by some other money making venture. Welcome to America. Merry New Year.
With that, I think the opportunity to vent on ads has been served and questions answered. I'm locking up.
Any further Q's, please PM an admin, or PM one of us and we can pass the question along.