To keep the Forums alive - change coming to Classifieds - Poll added, please vote!

[mgarro385]

43 minutes ago, Butterpuc said:

With regards to what kind of ads will be shown as banners, the forum may not get to choose what ads are shown... I don't know that, never researched it. 

 

Also, I don't know that many gun related businesses have a big budget for advertising.  We may see ads we don't want to see.

 

What kind of ads would you not want to see? I'm perfectly fine with strange banner ads if it means this platform keeps going.

[UpYoursPal]

Why not go the Patreon route?

[MikeyScuba]

You should see scubaboard.com, that's a hot mess of ads!  All scuba related.

[hello0o0o0o]

I’m sorry but this post and phrasing of this change and upkeep comes out of an old era.

Hosting the forum should be cheap and extremely sustainable as hosting online content has become increasingly affordable.
Especially with the amount of traffic this gets (relatively low).

If you were looking to “upgrade” you need to hire an engineer who can set you up with good hosting and cloud servers and switch you over to independent.

You would 100% be able to eat the cost, even if you’re retired. Seriously this will not be expensive.
However, to generate revenue, you can use a business model that the guy who made the Apollo reddit app used.
Very good app design (consider hiring to make something similar):
Free to download and browse.
One time paid version to post from the app.
Then a yearly fee which allows you to get instant notifications.

Obviously he makes a large profit on this business mode because his product is extremely successful and reddit is extremely high traffic.
But this forum, arguably has a accessibility problem and is convoluted to use when compared to other sites.
Though it would be an investment, long term you might make money off of this.


In short, there are ways to solve this problem. Hire someone who understands it and can set up the forum for you elsewhere.

I’m honestly shocked there’s no devs here that would be willing to contribute.

[Timido]

I could see paying like a $2 per classified add or $10 a year to view the forums 

[CHA-LEE]

Beggars can't be choosers......... I am fine with whatever the BE Forum team decides to deploy in order to make the forum financially solvent. I think its unrealistic and unneeded to poll the forum membership to "Approve" what you can or can't deploy from a monetization or advertising perspective. All it will do is create more butt hurt for the people that have no skin in the game. For what its worth I think that ClangClang's proposal above sounds like the best proposition so far.

 

This next comment may not be something people want to hear or accept but here it goes. Maybe the viable use case for forums like this is are over? Every tool or product has a viability life cycle. Maybe forums in general are ending their viable life cycle? I have noticed over the years on this forum and many others the gradual dilution of meaningful content produced by the membership. When I started frequenting this forum in 2008 there were a much higher percentage of members with a vested interest in producing solid content. That level of dedicated engagement and content creation has reduced considerably. These days members are too lazy to even use the search function to find answers to their questions. Then they get offended when you ask them if they even tried searching for their answer. I think this is due to the current societal expectation that everything should be spoon fed to people with very little effort invested for the person seeking the knowledge. To be totally honest, this ever growing "Spoon Feed Me" attitude is the primary reason why I have scaled back my engagement with this forum. I still do my best to provide meaningful content when I post. But the return on investment for those efforts is getting less and less. 

 

The depth of existing knowledge on this forum is vast and very helpful. It would be a shame to see all of that good content disappear. Maybe a "Cheaper" hosting solution would be to simply transition this content from a dynamic forum into a static searchable repository of information?  Essentially becoming a Practical Shooting Wikipedia type of website. Or just say f*#k it and flip the switch off and enjoy your retirement.

Edited March 19, 2020 by CHA-LEE

[Butterpuc]

33 minutes ago, mgarro385 said:

 

What kind of ads would you not want to see? I'm perfectly fine with strange banner ads if it means this platform keeps going.

 

Me personally... there are lots of ads I would not want to see, but I was thinking more along the lines of highly political ads.

 

I would hope that "whoever" is in charge of determining what ads this website would see, understands our demographic.

[CHA-LEE]

2 minutes ago, Butterpuc said:

 

Me personally... there are lots of ads I would not want to see, but I was thinking more along the lines of highly political ads.

 

I would hope that "whoever" is in charge of determining what ads this website would see, understands our demographic.

 

This response is exactly what I was pointing out in my prior post. Beggars can't be choosers. There is nothing "FREE" in this world, everything costs something. If the BE Forum decides on deploying ads, along with tiered paid membership levels that disables the ads at a certain level, then you can either choose to ignore whatever adds are displayed with your FREE membership or PAY for a higher level of membership that disables the adds.  

[B_RAD]

Adds. Who cares what for!

 

payed membership will cause a lot of food to leave. Just my opinion. 
 

the search function is somewhat unintuitive, IMO. Maybe it’s because I’m using my phone 100%?  Not to mention, searching thru results is a pain now that there’s way more results than there was 10 yrs ago. Not to disagree with the “spoon fed” comment but it’s not exactly easy. Maybe I don’t know how to use it properly?  Probably. But is there a list of instructions somewhere on how to maximize effective searches?   
 

 

[TheHooter]

Give us 2 options:

1) a forum with ads, that is FREE

2) a forum without ads, that has a yearly fee. I think this would be the best of both worlds. 

 

 

[zhunter]

I have been around for a long time, some on and off, but in total since about 2004.  Back in the day there were a lot of high level shooters that shared a LOT of info, over time they gravitated towards monetizing their knowledge on other platforms.  Benos is still a great site for gear info and idea exchanging, but it seems the high level shooting stuff has gone by the wayside.  It is still there if you want to search for the old stuff, drills and technique are still similar today.

 

Sadly, I can see the end in sight.

 

Ads in the future?  I use an Ad Blocking browser so I don’t see ads and I am not tracked for spam stuff so have at it.

[lfine]

I'd be happy to go with a paid without ads and a non-paid with ads.  

[124gr9mm]

Some things I've seen on other firearms forums:

 

- Commercial sellers must have a paid commercial account.  This doesn't necessarily mean a retailer, but includes people who are obviously making an income selling here (should be easy to determine based on forum stat's)

 

- Non-commercial sellers can register to post in classified if they pay.  For example:

*$20 for a year

*$5 for a 3 month window

*$3 per month

etc, etc

 

- Ad's in place in Classified forum only to support the site

 

[Mcfoto]

So far, I’ve only been a buyer in the classifieds. I’m willing to pay a small monthly fee if enos goes paywall.

[caspian guy]

I'd be willing to pay something either not to see ads (if we go to banners) I kinda like that approach as it makes it free for new users or casual users, or monthly/yearly basis if that's what was decided.

[usmc1974]

I pretty much agree with everybody else like, I said earlier if you want $20 a year or so that's fine. I don't use the internet very much I go a few places maybe a little eBay, for some gun parts or GunBroker for some gun parts but mostly Brian Eno's forum.

 

 

 

 

Boy you sure have to watch talk to text, cuz you will say tomato, and it will say f*** off loser

Edited March 19, 2020 by usmc1974

[louu]

I don't know where you guys are getting $20 a year from, he said $15 a month

[orangeman711]

I would be more than happy to pay $20-$25 a year for all I get out of this forum.

[Balakay]

5 hours ago, Butterpuc said:

...  We may see ads we don't want to see....

I don't think I've ever been on a free site that has shown an ad that I actually wanted to see.  thankfully, we can scroll past them all

Edited March 19, 2020 by Balakay

[Racinready300ex]

31 minutes ago, louu said:

I don't know where you guys are getting $20 a year from, he said $15 a month

 

I think they are saying they wont pay $15 a month for the classifieds, but if $20/year for the forum would be okay. 

 

No one knows the numbers, but most likely everyone paying 15-20 is going to be more money then just the few who sell things paying monthly.

[Racinready300ex]

I use the classified a bit, if it was 15-20 a month I'd probably just collect things I want to sell and put them all up in the same month so I'd only be paying 15 for the year anyway.

 

A potential problem is if less people put stuff FS in the classified to avoid the fee. Then over time less people will look to the classifieds for deals. If less people are looking at the classified it'll be harder to sell things. If it's harder to sell things the fee will be harder to justify. Then less people pay the fee. You end up in the same place later, you just kick the can down the road a bit. 

 

Small fee for everyone may have the same pitfall and just take longer. But, it may also be sustainable as there is quite a bit of information here who knows. 

[Joe4d]

Not so much the content, its the style of adds which turn people off, popups, auto load videos, that type of things.
I dont think the forum has changed much though Cha-Lee... I think some of us have just matured. I recall people have always not searched, asked for load data rather than buy a manual, ask for the SAME load data thats been posted thousands of times... I mean good grief how many 9mm 147 gr tightgroup postings can there be ?

Not my page, I do enjoy it, but not so much I would pay a subscription, nor would I tolerate intrusive adds. I suspect I represent the vast majority of users.

[benos]

A few comments... Setting the Classifieds to pay per ad is not an option. Nor is a pay for the percentage of the sale.

We (or I) did not consider a yearly fee just to be a member of the Forums.

I'm not interested in banner ads.

I could easily walk away from it, having been out of it for 20 years.

I would  be interested in selling them, but doubt if that would work out.

[a matt]

Walk away and enjoy your life. We appreciate the forum and all you have contributed to shooting,  Thank you. Or charge what you need or want for a yearly subscription. I’m sure most of us will pay $20 to $25 a year for the content and classifieds if not then they didn’t need to be here to start with. 

34 minutes ago, benos said:

A few comments... Setting the Classifieds to pay per ad is not an option. Nor is a pay for the percentage of the sale.

We (or I) did not consider a yearly fee just to be a member of the Forums.

I'm not interested in banner ads.

I could easily walk away from it, having been out of it for 20 years.

I would  be interested in selling them, but doubt if that would work out.

You need to do what’s right for you.  You don’t owe any of us anything you have already done plenty. 

[Paul-the new guy]

I feel this will turn into a private chat room with no new input with any kind of subscription charge.

 

I have been here for a bit, since Brian stepped back a little and other moderators took a more active role the forums have changed significantly for the worse.  The mods are ROUGH and in my opinion abuse their power.  The classifieds were a huge draw for the forums and are no where near what they were in the past.  The amount of really good content  has declined as really experienced shooters have stopped coming here after being bullied for trying to sell something they picked up off a prize table.   FYI a lot of good shooters are not great communicators so what they think is meaningful content may not make the cut...