Ad-blockers, subscriptions and money? ATS is worth $2 million and makes $466,920 a year

a reply to: schuyler

IMO if ATS wants to charge, then they need to provide something for it. For example, if you "donate," i.e.: Contribute to this profit-making corporation's coffers, then you get an ad-free user experience. That would be a fair trade. It is also the kind of thing other forums on other topics will do to raise revenue. It's a model that has been successfully implemented elsewhere.

Exactly! But they won´t do that. From a business point of view, you can´t milk that enough. If you are ad free after a donation, for the people that do this (active ones), ATS would loose money on them because after a while, the ads would have generated more revenue. Of course if everyone uses adblockers instead, the point is moot.

I personally have zero remorse using an adblocker for said reasons. I donated, I provided extensive help with code so I feel it´s ok to have adblock running. Another thing is, if the ads were not mostly scams that insults our intelligence but rather ads like they were just 10 years ago. Ads for a real product that got your interest. But nowadays it´s just scamms to lure guilible people in.

I could live with normal ads but not the ones that are floating around currently.

Like I said in another thread.

A website that calls its staff "the best staff on the internet" should at least be bug free. To get the idea that a unfinished buggy product (the platform itself), you need to have a high opinion of your own skills. And staff is not only mod for me, but also the admin and developer.

a reply to: Tiamat384

Besides what is the harm in letting us know the financial state?

Do you walk into a privately owned family business and demand to see their books? What harm can there be; how about giving your competitors "strategic info". You and I may be no-bodies, and yet do we publish our financials on ATS even though we may considers ourselves "ATS family"?

Lets be real here folks

a reply to: TheConstruKctionofLight

You are right. I don't think people should look at a contribution as some ability to run the site. However ATS doesnt really provide anything. The comparisons being used are completely wrong. ATS is like a bar with nothing but a BYOB (bring your own booze) policy. They tried to sell their own booze (Above Network,NLBS, this disinfo endeavor) but no one is buying.

originally posted by: blupblup

originally posted by: schuyler



IMO if ATS wants to charge, then they need to provide something for it. For example, if you "donate," i.e.: Contribute to this profit-making corporation's coffers, then you get an ad-free user experience. That would be a fair trade. It is also the kind of thing other forums on other topics will do to raise revenue. It's a model that has been successfully implemented elsewhere.

You do realise that this is exactly what SO has proposed, right?)

And I'm in agreement with it. I did not suggest otherwise.

a reply to: blupblup

No it´s not. A donation and a monthly subscription is a bit different. If he wanted to reward donations, he could have done that in the beginning of 2015, when the donation topic came up. I donated and still have ads.
Look at my post before why he wont do that.

a reply to: schuyler


Ahhh ok, sounds like you were proposing it as some new idea.

My mistake.

originally posted by: verschickter
a reply to: blupblup

No it´s not. A donation and a monthly subscription is a bit different. If he wanted to reward donations, he could have done that in the beginning of 2015, when the donation topic came up. I donated and still have ads.
Look at my post before why he wont do that.

The point was paying money to not see ads, that was what I was saying.
I'm not getting into semantics and I'm not arguing for the charge, I was merely replying to the other member.

a reply to: blupblup
My fault! But still it´s a bit different then semantics, I want add.
Because there is a difference between a donation and a monthly payment.
And there is a difference between naming the exact practice and making a general statement about payments.

In the end, it is just a forum. Why not go to reddit? haha. There will be people donating though.

a reply to: verschickter


Of course it's different... I think you either do one or the other personally, either have a monthly subscription fee or ask for donations. I think many saw the donations as the prelude to this and finally to pay to post/read.

I have no idea where this will all end to be honest as it's all just conjecture at the moment and everything is up in the air.
I was actively posting in the other two threads but I'm kinda just kidding around in this one.

Que Sera Sera....

a reply to: daaskapital

Many companies have annual reports which detail expenditures.

Public Companies - not Pty Ltd or LLCs, even with Ltd Co only give consolidated figures, ever tried to go to an Annual GM of shareholders and asked how many toilets rolls they provided their 20,000 workers worldwide? Seriously?
SOs thread stated where the problems arise from, I'm sure you've read it - I dont need to know if SO drives a Hyundai or Lexus. In fact I would be more worried if he drove a broken down beat up Hyundai.

originally posted by: blupblup
Que Sera Sera....

Look at you trying to be all smart and stuff showing off your Spanish.

well i wont be here if you have to pay

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

Que te ame mucho tiempo

a reply to: blupblup
That´s where we have to take into consideration, that back then in december 2014, there was not one word of any benefits like removing the ads for the users who donated. SO mentioned it in the current thread on a sidenote but it seems after the poll thread, this is from the table. Because you can´t milk it enough. It´s an unlogic thing to do from a financial viewpoint (see 1. post in this page)

a reply to: blupblup

I cant stop looking.

a reply to: verschickter


Na man I get it, I hear all the arguments and I am very wary about the whole thing.
But these threads have been going on for some time.
If SO and ATS want to do something, they do it... that's it, end of.

So you may as well kick back and enjoy the ride and see what happens, not worth stressing about mate.

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus


What this old thing...? *giggles*

It's just something I threw together...

originally posted by: hopenotfeariswhatweneed
a reply to: daaskapital

Is it really any of our business how much money the site makes ?..... I can tell you as a person who has ran a few businesses that as soon as the employees get an inkling of how much money the boss makes they start to make demands of their own, lets just say it complicates things....in my opinion the employee has no rights to be privy to such information....in our case here on ats i guess we are clients of the business ...still that does not give us rights to dictate to the business how where and when money gets spent or for that matter how the business is run.....

The thing about giving money to any website is that you're not an employee of that website; you essentially become a silent partner (without the benefits), and deserve to have that financial transparency. Running an ad-based, or donation based, website is essentially a socialist ideology. Funded by the people, for the people.

a reply to: blupblup

Haha, I´m not stressing myself :-). I´m just OCD when it comes to unfixed bugs and sometimes other things. I know I can be annoying at times (or not be annoying at times ;-), depends on how perceive/interpret my texts).

Seldom I´m really an asshole, more of the times I am simply missunderstood.
That this is mostly my fault, does not make it better, I know

Like others said, there will be opportunities to build a new community if day X comes. If that day comes and I´m still around, I´ll just move with the wind and probably try help building the site.

And finally, I have no problem spending 12$ a year if, yeah if (but never will happen as of how it looks now) the site is as usable as any comparable other website, when it comes to nasty bugs.

Namaste

edit: ironically, after editing my post, I ran into the editing bug. Seems the next post will go to the next page.