We have started to show google adsense ads in this forum from today on as a small experiment.
Plan is to invest what we get from the ads here into our own ads, so we’re spamming the world with Renoise in countermove.
We’ll see how well this works and if these ads are more annoying than “helpful”. Right now it seems that the google content parser fails at some point and shows ads about ireland vacations or “Body Drench and Supre Hempz”. When reading topics it seems to work better though.
We also have to try out in the next days which is the best way to show them. We could use the right panel of this forum also for other stuff like a tutorial search box, latest song entry submissions and so on…
I have already tried adsense. Make my site look ugly and I felt like I was compromising my ethics, which I was. After about 6 months I had earned 2c. I obviously have lower traffic than Renoise.com
For me this is not conducive to the Renoise mission. It’s ethically dubious, although I can image some people making a case to the contrary.
I’m sure the dev team can make money in other ways more direct to the cause. Perhaps a little positive brainstorming will provide some ideas.
Do whatever keeps renoise-development going on. For me adsense doesn’t matter anyway because of a cool browser with a neat plugin that blocks everything
So, you’re saying we’ll whore out to anything with compromised ethics just to keep all this going? You wouldn’t be able to sleep at night. It would be about as good as saying you care for animals while eating a meat pie.
One of the things that has made Renoise so attractive is that it’s stayed pure to the purposes of making the best software ever for a dying tracking community. Anyone who has been around this scene long enough will remember many major sites and projects dying out, usually in their final stages desperately doing banner ads and the like. Things died because no one was willing to address the core problems. No amount of compromised money was ever going to save them.
Software doesn’t make money. THIS community is an asset. Use it. Accept donations.
I couldn’t see what you were talking about at first, then I noticed that the ads are only visible on the “renoise3” board theme, but not the other 2 (I personally prefer the IPB default theme). So if you decide to keep the ads, don’t forget to include them on all 3 themes.
As for the ethics involved, well, nobody likes ads, especially not me, but at least AdSense is slightly less intrusive than everything else. Ultimately, if it helps the survival of Renoise, then sobeit.
Google actually states that they may cancel accounts if they detect there has been any kind of tampering with the stats, especially if they see people repeatedly clicking on the ads to try and boost the money generated for a website.
So, my advice to everyone would be to not try this too much.
Yeah. That is true. But don’t you feel a Dry Skin from time to time? I do! Apparently google knows how to fix it! On closer inspection it appears they want money to fix my skin, but nobody forbids me to check if they maybe have free samplers of skin moisturizers.
But losing the money for too many clicks originating from the same IP’s can lose your money really quickly. Google holds some statistics how many page views lead to clicks and how often people click on banners anyway. Doing hundred clicks by one user definitely sets up their red alarm.
Totally agree. I really liked that renoise was one of the few ad-free zones on the web. We are bombarded with ads everywhere while life as we know it - and possibly the survival of the species - is thretened due to excessive consumerism (and extremely dangerous nuclear weapons policies).
Didn’t even notice the ads until just now… Well, if it brings in much needed cash, go for it! But there are more socially accepted ways of making money, like smuggling, prostitution, slavetrade…
Seriously, I agree with Foo, there ought to be other, better ways
to generate more cash if that is what Renoise needs to stay alive.
Still, I don’t care much for ads, don’t mind them either! So yeah, go for it!
Yeah, the adsense ads are not really intrusive. You may or may not want to add an option somewhere to disable them with the text: “If you want to make the devs starve, then check this button”.
So much, in fact, that I don’t notice them anymore, It’ll just take a few views before I stop noticing that this board is lacking an inch or two on the right side of my screen.
I don’t mind the ads, but why not accept donations too?
But if that is what donators want to do, why not let them? Just make it clear that donating gives you no privileges or benefits, that giving Renoise as a gift is often better than making a donation etc… why not? Everybody using paypal is over 18 and should be knowing what they’re doing, right?
