QCDN turned down by Kontera

S

Sculli

Guest
One more notch in the growing list of potential advertisers who don't want to deal with QCDN due to "Excessive profanity". I don't even bother to list the one's who just say "no" without an explanation, at about 12k pages indexed at google and given the QCDN stats, there are really very few reasons advertisers would turn down to put their ads here.

Today's entry: Kontera.com - which is an outfit similar to Google Adsense, delivering context based ads. I read they do a better job than Adsense to bring relevant ads to the page, though I now won't find out.
 
That's sort of silly. Trying to avoid profanity on the internet is like walking into a giant bird cage and trying to dodge the bird shit. It just doesn't work.

On another note, are there any other advertisements that aren't super flashy that you could put up? Perhaps not related to FFXI in specific, but maybe games in general (console games, other PC games, etc).
 
Well fuck, I just got this from Vibrant Media:

I have reviewed your site, and unfortunately we did not find it suitable for out advertisers at this time.Our current advertising categories are:-* Automotive* Finance* Computing* Consumer Electronics* Sport* Womens/Mens Interest* Health and Fitness* Home and Garden* Entertainment* Food and Drink* Video Games
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That's two in one day, good grief.
 
Lecan said:
On another note, are there any other advertisements that aren't super flashy that you could put up? Perhaps not related to FFXI in specific, but maybe games in general (console games, other PC games, etc).
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Monetizing a forum like this is tricky. Many users are savy and block ads to begin with, others are not savy and have Norton Internet Security installed with blocks all ads everywhere by default.

In addition the assumed demographics suggest to advertisers that MMO players are not people who have disposable income, so many "pay per impression" campagins want nothing to do with a site like QCDN.

That leaves the pay-per-click people, and the pay-per-action people. GKWorld is one of the pay-per-action ones, where the only way they pay me is if you pay them.

The key is to find pay-per-action advertisers that provide a good value to QCDN Users, and are actually being used.
 
Thats why some boards have a filter.. which gets REALLY humorous if the mods don't like things being said.. one made the word 'hug' into something a lill moe fun... point is this is kinda sad..
Sad that you got turned down based on profanity, and sad this site displays so much as to be noticed for that.
 
The flameboard is our most popular feature by far (which is a shame really..). I mean, if potential advertisers came to QCDN and saw the amount of posts the FB gets, that would probably be the first place they visit.

Unfortunately, I'm willing to bet that would be their last visit to QCDN
and they would probably end up recinding any offers (which sort of seems to be what's happening).

So, you can either remove the flameboard entirely, or just try to find advertisers who don't mind profanity being thrown around a lot.
 
Fuck em.

I mean, are you still in the red on maintaining this site?
how much does it cost to keep it up for 1 year?

Hell, if you were to setup a paypal account, I'd throw $10 your way to help keep this site up. This place is my main source of entertainment at work. Not to mention the amount of quests I've finished by scheduling events here. I enjoy this site just about as much as I enjoy FFXI. I'm sure others do too.

We had talked about collecting donations, but you tried out adsense first. I think you shuold try collecting donations and see how far you get with that. If you can't pay for the upkeep that way, then go back to adsense.
 
Sculli have you read my pm i sent to you the other day? That should sort out money troubles
 
Yeah, I mean I am not going to bow to some advertisers and change QCDN around for them.

As far as finances go, currently I am even, I paid myself back for the vB license, for the hosting incurred so far, and the last contest round paid out. I do have enough to cover the current contest cost as well, and that is is for now.

I am a bit hestiant to discuss specifics on the adsense as they are very finnicky about dropping people from their program if there is any irregularity, and Adsense is currently the fraying lifeline of QCDN. Fraying in a sense that it may not cover next months hosting.

Luckily I found a sponsor for next months contest, so that's covered.
I really want to improve the contest prizes. I mean $30 here, $10 there is nice, but doesn't really generate a whole lot of enthusiasm. I am talking like iPod Nano and XBOX360 kind of contests. I believe that's a goal that can be achieved, if the day just had more hours, lol.

Anyway, things are not bad, they are just not good either.

I will try to add some sort of QCDN subscription thing before March1st so that those who do donate some get some benefits above the stuff regular members get. Will see how that goes.

The whole thread wasn't meant to be a whine, as more a puzzled reaction. Flamers spend money too! Heh, or some do anyway.
 
Flymop said:
Sculli have you read my pm i sent to you the other day? That should sort out money troubles
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Unless it said "You were awarded 1M ...YEN!" I haven't.
Just kidding, I have, and it's in my queue of PMs to reply to. I made excellent progress on that queue tonight, some 20-ish lengthy replies along with setting up a couple LS forums, but I am going to bed now. Have to be back at work in about 5 hours.

Your's is almost next up, expect a response by end of business tomorrow. And as always, thanks for writing. ;)
 
thanks for that LS forum set up :P I just need to put the info in it but ya.. sleepy XD
 
What about making the flame board only viewable to members and not to any and every guest that pops onto the site, kind of like Linkshell forums? I know other sites that have done that. Probably wouldn't help since the cursing is used quite liberally in all forums though.
 
QCDN is what it is, most people seem to like it that way, it's part of the appeal in a way. Making the FB members only is certainly an option, that is the way it has been in the not so distant past. Open access to the FB brings in more members though, and that is really my primary concern. I will make the financial side work out somehow, it always does. I don't want to do anything that would result in fewer registrations.

I don't know how many players there are on Quetz, but I want all of them (perhaps less those who speak zero English) on this board! That's not an unreasonable goal, is it? ;)
 
Trippyhippy said:
Hell, if you were to setup a paypal account, I'd throw $10 your way to help keep this site up.
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I've sent a couple donations via paypal and it seemed to work fine. I hope it got to the right person. Now I'm worried some kid thought it was an early Christmas.
 
Problem is, QCDN can only get so big with how our server is in terms of accomplishments, and what kind of conent we bring to the table for other FFXI players. Flameboard brings alot of people here, but it also deters many as well. So right there we won't get all the english speaking people here from Quetz, which by design is limited by how may actually play.

Then theres the people that may come for info on ffxi n such. Theres a few really big forums like theorderls.com, allakhazam.com, and KI.com, but they bring people in for ffxi stuff. Alla and KI offer a rather large database of FFXI information, like quests, missions. KI also has a rather immense number of threads varying from one for every job, gen. discussions, individual servers, etc.

Theorderls.com has somthing that the other two dont have that kind of bring more of the endgame players to them, which is a large base of hardcore players that are on top of things the moment they come out. Case in point, within a few hours of the update, there was already pages talking about strats for the new avatar fights, and even people first trying the final avatar fight and eventually winning it. All within a short time. Which is great to look at and get ideas on how to do things yourself. Only deterent is some of them are complete douchebags and specific server drama, much like ours that I just ignore.

I'm not saying any of these are perfect, or we should become any of these, since QCDN is at a more tight knit level than these others, and not quite as cluttered. Just kinda throwing out there what some of the other large forums have going for them.
 
I'll gladly send some gil your way for running this site. You could then sell what enough of us put together and use that to support this site. I'm not a fan of gil selling, but if it helped you cover your costs I'd happily look the other way.
 
Update 03/22/06
QCDN turned down by Yahoo Publisher Network.

Yahoo said:
yadda yadda yadda, you are not approved, yadda yadda yadda, you can try again later, yadda yadda yadda [...] To maximize your chances for approval, please make sure:
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eh ...
 
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