I think I might have found a solution to the problem of paying for the server on a regular basis. As you might have noticed I've been testing the Google Adwords banners this week. I mainly wanted to get an idea of how many page views the site got per day and the types of ads that google would give the site. So far the site has been regularly getting around 45000 views a day. This is great because it means that we could easily pay for the server (and even get a better server) with the revenue from these ads alone.
The only down side is that we'd have to move the ads from the bottom of the page (where we've been getting about a 0.02% click through rate) to somewhere in the middle of the page. As an example I've added one ad to [this page on the dev site]. As you can see it's in a place where many more people would see it, but I think it's really not all the intrusive or ugly. What do you think?
Of course I've already made a script that will suppress ads for members of the Caedes Cadre, so that's just one more way for use to thank those contributers to the site. Now if I could only stop thinking about how to make money for the site (I'm starting to feel all dirty like a businessman ;-).
The only down side is that we'd have to move the ads from the bottom of the page (where we've been getting about a 0.02% click through rate) to somewhere in the middle of the page. As an example I've added one ad to [this page on the dev site]. As you can see it's in a place where many more people would see it, but I think it's really not all the intrusive or ugly. What do you think?
Of course I've already made a script that will suppress ads for members of the Caedes Cadre, so that's just one more way for use to thank those contributers to the site. Now if I could only stop thinking about how to make money for the site (I'm starting to feel all dirty like a businessman ;-).