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- Dec 8, 1999
Im sure youre all wondering why youre now seeing ads on NikeTalk. (and if youre not seeing them yet, you will soon.) As most of you know, weve worked our hardest to keep ads from appearing on NikeTalk for over six years. So, what gives?
NO, we havent sold out. As it stands, our staff wont receive one cent of ad revenue. Right now, were just trying to stay online.
Allow me to explain. For those cursed with short attention spans, just read the BIG, BOLD text.... slowly.
Without ads, we cant afford to stay online.
Recently, NikeTalk has become so popular that we simply cannot continue operating without a steady source of revenue.
In other words, without these ads wed have to take NikeTalk offline.
NikeTalk costs tens of thousands of dollars simply to HOST.
Some of you have been incredibly generous in donating to NikeTalk over the past six years, but unfortunately its just not enough anymore and its not fair to ask a few of you to pay for the 100,000 people who view NikeTalk each day.
In the past 12 months, we received a little over $2,000 via user donations. We can barely afford a single month of hosting for that amount.
Ads will allow us to add new features to NikeTalk.
Dont look at this as a negative, though. Since NikeTalk has grown so large, advertising can - and, with your support, WILL - be a TREMENDOUS positive for our community.
For starters, once the ads start running well be able to offer ALL of our users FREE UNLIMITED page views.
You may have noticed that we no longer have a community chest. We have removed the chest because we no longer want our members to pay a single cent for NikeTalks hosting. Save your money. Let the advertisers pay for it.
Not only will ads allow us to continue running NikeTalk, but theyll also allow us to bring you a host of new and exciting features in the months to come.
This fall, NikeTalk will run on an entirely new platform: Yuku.
You can check it out here: www.yuku.com/
Once we move to Yuku, youll have picture hosting, an enhanced profile with your own blog, and much more. Youll be able to upload your own pictures in one click, drag and drop pictures right into NikeTalk posts, and start your own user groups. The site will load faster and the search engine (goodness willing) will actually WORK WELL.
We'll be telling you more about Yuku, and our upcoming transition, in the weeks and months to come. You don't need to wait until the fall to experience the benefit of advertising, though.
Ads will allow us to give back to the community.
Using all of the remaining funds in our community chest, we extended our ezboard community gold subscription until June 18th. As such, we've decided that until June 18th, 100% of the amount we raise from advertising will be donated to charity.
After June 18th, were going to use ad revenue to pay for our hosting costs first and foremost. If we have anything left over, were going to donate it to charities and well keep everyone updated on exactly how much were able to donate each month. You can help us decide where that money goes, after all youre a part of the community.
We should also be able to hold contests and giveaways in the future, using our ad revenue and sponsorship arrangements to obtain prizes for our members. It may take us awhile to get something like that off the ground due to the organization involved, but I'd love to be able to give sneakers away every month if possible. Successful ads will allow us to make that happen.
For the next few weeks, we'll be testing different types of ads in various locations throughout NikeTalk. These will all be text ads running on Google AdSense. I'm sure you've all seen these types of ads before.
If you come across ANY inappropriate ads, (counterfeit sneaker sellers, "adult" content, etc.) PLEASE report them to our staff immediately and we'll have them removed as soon as we possibly can. Let us know the site's web address and we'll have it filtered out.
Feel free to share your feedback with us. Let us know what ad locations you feel HURT the site and which ones you're ok with.
The last thing we want to do is damage your experience here on NikeTalk, so we'll have to work together to find ad locations that you'll support with your clicks rather than simply ignore. Otherwise, we won't be able to pay our bills and stay online.
This has been a difficult decision for our staff, but embracing advertising is the only way for us to continue offering NikeTalk for free. We've reached the limit to what we could accomplish without outside funding.
By taking this step, though, the possibilities are now limitless.
Ads offer us a way for us to make this community a better place through enhanced features and performance while allowing us to do our small part in making this world a better place through charitable donations. I'll describe these contributions in more detail within the next post for those interested.
If you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer them here, via private message, or email. (a link is in my signature)
Thank you all for your continued support of the NikeTalk community!
NO, we havent sold out. As it stands, our staff wont receive one cent of ad revenue. Right now, were just trying to stay online.
Allow me to explain. For those cursed with short attention spans, just read the BIG, BOLD text.... slowly.
Without ads, we cant afford to stay online.
Recently, NikeTalk has become so popular that we simply cannot continue operating without a steady source of revenue.
In other words, without these ads wed have to take NikeTalk offline.
NikeTalk costs tens of thousands of dollars simply to HOST.
Some of you have been incredibly generous in donating to NikeTalk over the past six years, but unfortunately its just not enough anymore and its not fair to ask a few of you to pay for the 100,000 people who view NikeTalk each day.
In the past 12 months, we received a little over $2,000 via user donations. We can barely afford a single month of hosting for that amount.
Ads will allow us to add new features to NikeTalk.
Dont look at this as a negative, though. Since NikeTalk has grown so large, advertising can - and, with your support, WILL - be a TREMENDOUS positive for our community.
For starters, once the ads start running well be able to offer ALL of our users FREE UNLIMITED page views.
You may have noticed that we no longer have a community chest. We have removed the chest because we no longer want our members to pay a single cent for NikeTalks hosting. Save your money. Let the advertisers pay for it.
Not only will ads allow us to continue running NikeTalk, but theyll also allow us to bring you a host of new and exciting features in the months to come.
This fall, NikeTalk will run on an entirely new platform: Yuku.
You can check it out here: www.yuku.com/
Once we move to Yuku, youll have picture hosting, an enhanced profile with your own blog, and much more. Youll be able to upload your own pictures in one click, drag and drop pictures right into NikeTalk posts, and start your own user groups. The site will load faster and the search engine (goodness willing) will actually WORK WELL.
We'll be telling you more about Yuku, and our upcoming transition, in the weeks and months to come. You don't need to wait until the fall to experience the benefit of advertising, though.
Ads will allow us to give back to the community.
Using all of the remaining funds in our community chest, we extended our ezboard community gold subscription until June 18th. As such, we've decided that until June 18th, 100% of the amount we raise from advertising will be donated to charity.
After June 18th, were going to use ad revenue to pay for our hosting costs first and foremost. If we have anything left over, were going to donate it to charities and well keep everyone updated on exactly how much were able to donate each month. You can help us decide where that money goes, after all youre a part of the community.
We should also be able to hold contests and giveaways in the future, using our ad revenue and sponsorship arrangements to obtain prizes for our members. It may take us awhile to get something like that off the ground due to the organization involved, but I'd love to be able to give sneakers away every month if possible. Successful ads will allow us to make that happen.
For the next few weeks, we'll be testing different types of ads in various locations throughout NikeTalk. These will all be text ads running on Google AdSense. I'm sure you've all seen these types of ads before.
If you come across ANY inappropriate ads, (counterfeit sneaker sellers, "adult" content, etc.) PLEASE report them to our staff immediately and we'll have them removed as soon as we possibly can. Let us know the site's web address and we'll have it filtered out.
Feel free to share your feedback with us. Let us know what ad locations you feel HURT the site and which ones you're ok with.
The last thing we want to do is damage your experience here on NikeTalk, so we'll have to work together to find ad locations that you'll support with your clicks rather than simply ignore. Otherwise, we won't be able to pay our bills and stay online.
This has been a difficult decision for our staff, but embracing advertising is the only way for us to continue offering NikeTalk for free. We've reached the limit to what we could accomplish without outside funding.
By taking this step, though, the possibilities are now limitless.
Ads offer us a way for us to make this community a better place through enhanced features and performance while allowing us to do our small part in making this world a better place through charitable donations. I'll describe these contributions in more detail within the next post for those interested.
If you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer them here, via private message, or email. (a link is in my signature)
Thank you all for your continued support of the NikeTalk community!