Hey All,
As a result of this thread, there has been a nice spike in the number of donations. This is very good (thank you to all who recently and generously donated!), but we also need something that will be there every month (7, 8, 9 months from now).
I am happy that all of you have come up with many suggestions. After looking through them all and contemplating what could be the best solution, I came up with this idea.
The one thing that costs the site the most by far is local downloads. The download system currently works slightly differently for donators and non-donators. Whenever a donator goes to download a local video, the download start immediately for them from the local video download page. Whenever a non-donator goes to download a local video, they must sit at the local video download page for 10 seconds looking at a message saying, “Your download will start in 10 seconds...” before the download actually starts. This was originally meant to be something that would encourage non-donators to donate.
What I have come up with is a slight tweak to just that one single local download page. For donators, the page will look and act exactly as it does now. However for non-donators, the new setup will have them looking at paid ads along with the “your download will start...” message. This would passively generate some revenue from non-donators without them having to do a single thing in order to help pay for bandwidth. If the page can generate a mere $15 of additional revenue per day on top of regular donations, it would easily cover the cost of the additional bandwidth. Anyone who donates would not see the ads.
I’m not a big fan of useless ads. The ads here would be targeted from companies who provide anime, music, and video related items, which are hopefully things that interest members of this site. The page will not have ads for pr0n, bootlegs, booze, popups, trackers, or any other kinda crap ads things. I want to have nice, pleasant, useful, targeted ads that will hopefully be useful to some people. There would be no paid ads on any other page of the site, just the local download page for non-donators. The current banner ad contest will continue exactly as it is now.
Of all the suggestions given, this seems to be the most likely to continuously generate revenue, have the least amount of impact on the server and members, and is easiest to implement.
So the question comes to this: Would paid ads on just the local video download page for non-donators be a good idea in order to get revenue from members who are just leeching bandwidth and not giving anything back?
Remember, this is just a proposal. Constructive feedback is encouraged.
Phade.





