$12256 / $11500
Hey folks.
If you've been around OGA for while, you may remember that we ran ads briefly in the past. The ads were through google adsense, and once I filtered out all of the skeezy ones, revenue dropped to about 60 cents per day. I figured it wasn't worth $20/month to have an ugly ad up on the main page, so I took it down.
It's several years later and we're getting 10 times the hits now, and we have a big enough presence that I think it's worth trying again. I know they're not pretty, but the nice thing about ads is that they do bring in revenue, which can go into commissiong art or putting bounties on code features to make OGA better. I'm currently running some test ads to figure out what the impression and click-through rates will look like, at which point I'll set a price. If it doesn't look like OGA will be able to make at least $300/month in ad revenue, I'll take them down again.
Anyway, I've talked with the community about this on IRC and people seem very supportive thus far. I'd be interested to hear some thoughts from people here on the forums too.
[Edit: If you're reading this because you're interested in buying ad space, email us at advertise@opengameart.org and we'll contact you as soon as space is available.]
[Edit again: I'm currently running 5 test ads. To minimize duplicates (and maximize per view ad performance) I'll need about 20 total. If you're interested in running a test ad for free, contact me on IRC. We'll probably be testing for 1 to 4 weeks.]
Here are some random thoughts and facts that I'm too lazy to make into paragraphs:
I'd be interested in hearing peoples' thoughts on all this.
Bart
This website's content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
No worries Bart, websites cost money.
Ditto what Kenney said. Gotta pay the bills somehow.
Gallery | Web | Models | Game Models
Both in the interests of the site being sustainable, and your personal sanity, I am very glad for any additional source of revenue, especially with the tasteful way that it's being handled here.
Another idea to generate some income would be affilate marketing. I.E. amazon. You get percentage cut on all sales and there are many things that should work here. Coding / art books, software, drawing tables etc..
That sounds like it could be useful. I'll look into it.
The big question is if OGA can generate revenue with it without there being a ton of links all over the place.
But i want my registry borker PRO!
Also shirts etc are how blender pays most there bills, if the ads dont work out thats another avenue.
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Full Steam Ahead! o/ <-- little ascii fist in the air holding a debugging hammer.
I would also considered Dwolla for payment processing. I doesn't allow credit cards so fees are really low. IIRC transfers less then $10 are free, all others are are $0.25 fee to the reciever. The only downside is that it is US only right now.
I'll check them out. :)
I absolutely approve of this level of advertising.
Usually it's possible to at least do damage control with ad service providers. I'm sure the respectable ones prohibit misleading ads too.
Project Wonderful (FreeGamer uses it) is kind of an auction house for ad space which you might want to use. The idea here is that you'd have to spend less time on this (only moderating ads, not having to take care of individual payments, contracts etc.
I disagree. But if you want to be as respectful as possible, I recommend enabling ads on artist's submission pages by default, allowing them to disable them in their settings. And as a precaution, you could disable ads for "not mine" and anonymous submissions.
Absolutely. Consider Skrill (Moneybookers), which Minecraft uses for payment for example.Would you consider implementing automated BitCoin processing?
You can have a "advertise with us" page anyways, which gives at least some info. Also, you could auction off the adspace.
A bit related: I would also approve of making all .mp3/.wav downloads for-pay (while having equal .ogg/.flac versions for free)
The project wonderful idea is prolly not a bad idea.
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Full Steam Ahead! o/ <-- little ascii fist in the air holding a debugging hammer.
+1 for Project Wonderful. They have options to only allow static ads on your ad boxes, and there are real people answering e-mail.
Also, I'd be fine with ads displayed alongside my submissions.
Maybe I can make ads by art submissions opt-in on a per artist basis. That shouldn't ruffle any feathers.
I'd definitely mark my art to allow ads. I support any (ethical, tactful) way of bringing in some more money to fuel OGA.
I've had nothing but good experiences with the ads by Project Wonderful. That might be a good platform to look into.
Botanic also noted that Blender does sell tshirts as part of their revenue. I wonder what it would take to do some sort of an "OGA tshirt contest." The only problem would be knowing if there would be enough demand. Maybe pre-orders? Note also how the noun project lets you pick nouns and turn them into shirts/iPhone cases/buttons/etc...
If you're selling ad space on Project Wonderful, how much on average does it pay per unit of traffic your site gets?
Several people have suggested that I look into them now.
Just an idea for razing revenue. Have a "Proud Users Of The Art Here" for games that use the stuff. The advantage for the buyer would be a link to their site.
For more game forums go to opengameforums.zxq.net and register today!
Project Wonderful operates on a bidding model, so revenue can vary a lot, depending on how many people are willing to bid for ad space on a gaming website, for example. But the time commitment to experiment with the platform is minimal, especially as a publisher. I say it's worth a try.
That said, I do have just such a website, with traffic well under 100 uniques per day (as registered by PW) and I've been earning just enough to reinvest in some ads of my own. YMMV.
Botanic, are you saying we should sell OGA shirts? ;)
for revenue you could always do something like what nehe did for awhile. They made a cd of all the website content that you could then buy. so instead of trying to download alot of stuff from oga you could buy a cd with all the 2d, 3d, and texture art on cd.
just thought id bring it up
@acorn: that is a good idea but the size of OGA might cause problems. Actually, now I am curious about the total size of all submissions.
There could be multiple CDs containing thematic selections of OGA content, much like those of Project Gutenberg.
T-shirts and other swag might just work too.
I just thought of another thing I could do for people paying to run ads:
On the front page, have a non prominent block that has links to all of the current OGA sponsors, and then have another page that has links to all current and former sponsors. That way you'll get a permanent link for buying ads once on OGA. This would mostly be to help increase page rank, since I doubt a lot of people will click on them.
I've looked into what sites with a similar number of hits to OGA are getting from Project Wonderful, and it just doesn't pay well enough for it to be worth it, unfortunately.
PW: I would still give it a try, this website is a site for content creators, not for webcomic readers. Being a website for production, the visitors are looking for solutions to problems, rather than entertainment. This makes it more interesting to advertise here.
The highest bid for a week on any similarly trafficked site was $30. It was a webcomic, but I'd have to see an example of some non-webcomic sites on PW.