Advanced warning: some NSC disruption likely in the short-medium term

[El Presidente]

The cuts are kicking in, the mods AGM at a poledancing club has been CANCELLED

 

[Bozza]

Bozza, is there an easy way to donate to NSC? Rather than clicking on the links?

Hi - we're not looking for donations. NSC is still quite flush, but I want to ensure that remains the case before funds diminish too far.

 

[drew]

Out of interest, do you earn money just for clicking on the links to Amazon or is only when a purchase is made. Also, roughly how many links need to be made to earn £500? I'm not suggesting we just start clicking for the hell of it but I hold my hand up and admit that up until now I have always gone to Amazon direct. Shall change this from now on.

 

[ngood77]

Bozza - presumably the improvements you had planned will go on hold until this is resolved ? Ta

 

[Bozza]

NSC earns money from 2 sources:

Google - the banner ad at the top right of every page. We earn money every time someone clicks on one of these ads. However the terms of this programme are such that I can not suggest people just click randomly and often as NSC would be removed from the programme which would be a disaster for us. By all means click when there is something of interest to you.

Amazon - to earn money from Amazon, a user has to click through from NSC and make a purchase. We earn c6% of every purchase up to a maximum of £7 per item. We earn nothing for a click through, only for subsequent purchases.

I would estimate 60% of our income comes from Google, evenly spread through the year, with 40% from Amazon which trickles in through the year with a massive spike leading up to Christmas.

 

[Bozza]

Bozza - presumably the improvements you had planned will go on hold until this is resolved ? Ta

Not necessarily - I just need some motivation!

 

[Acker79]

I saw on another teams board when linked on here recently that they ask users not to quote pictures and videos (i.e. remove the pictures or video when quoting another post), because it increases the bandwidth use. Perhaps that policy could be introduced here? I know it won't solve all the problems, but every little helps, right?

 

[hitony]

The cuts are kicking in, the mods AGM at a poledancing club has been CANCELLED

It gets worse mate, The Boss has just cancelled the free weekly sessions at "The Parlour" as well, how will we cope with stress now

It's all in this weeks copy of "Mods Weekly" read it for yourself........

 

[Beach Hut]

I really don't see that there should an issue with NSC being a payable website as I suspect if the good form we currently have on the pitch remains as we move on up then there will be many more people wanting to join NSC.

By being a payable site it would stop spammers, multi-named posters, moronic away fans and plenty of childish kids etc.

Surely we could all afford an annual fee of say £20 each to ensure we can stay in credit and also any surplus monies could be donated to a charity each year. I suppose the only contentious issue if this happened could be the rules and bans etc but perhaps a code of conduct could be drawn up you agree to on payment ?

 

[Kalimantan Gull]

I don't think you can make paying compulsory, this place would get emptier and lose a lot of its appeal, but a once-a-year call for donations will surely raise the amount needed to meet the gap between the total cost and the amazon/google revenue, and I'm sure most of us regular users would be happy to contribute

 

[Springal]

Bozza, look at vps.net, part of a big group (not some bedroom host, well invested etc) should work out cheaper than Rackspace, without much risk of drop in quality.

 

[RexCathedra]

I belong to a weather site that has no pictures displayed, just the url, unless you're a member. There may be a few quality-of-life things that a paying member could be granted access to, or the ability to use, that would leave the meat-and-potatoes of the board usable by those who were skint.

 

[Gary Leeds]

Google constantly coming on and trawling the posts wont help either. Could you not block the search engines from indexing certain forums with could reduce down the bandwidth.

Another thing that wont help is where a member types a long post (say 3000 letters long or approx 3kb) and 20 people quote it and their reply is just "this". Every time that thread is read the bandwidth will be getting eaten up. 20 people do this and that is 60kb, the tread is then viewed 1000 times which uses 60000kb or 60mb just on the pointless replies. Time for the "like" button I think

 

[Gazwag]

Can't see it mentioned but was there a particular reason why the cost was much more last month than it usually is

 

[Nottseagull]

Might need a drastic solution such as a small yearly donation from everyone.

Yes, and we could make the subscription proportionate to your ones count

 

[Cian]

I saw on another teams board when linked on here recently that they ask users not to quote pictures and videos (i.e. remove the pictures or video when quoting another post), because it increases the bandwidth use. Perhaps that policy could be introduced here? I know it won't solve all the problems, but every little helps, right?

Modern browsers only pull the image once and generally the images aren't stored on NSC's server so it wouldn't have any impact.


Bozza - is the main part of the bill from data or from CPU usage? I've found enabling zlib can cut data usage a lot on forums but it puts the CPU usage up...

 

[Djmiles]

Why?

Plenty of other boards are pay? its easy to pay now with paypal etc...

No pay no access, it don't seem so hard really, would just take time to set up.

Other forums I have been on allows you to donate, and for say £5 you get 60 days of extra features like signatures, different colour font etc etc.

The great thing about this, is that if you do pay you get recognition and features, but if you don't then your experience on NSC is still the same as before.

 

[Hiney]

By being a payable site it would stop spammers, multi-named posters, moronic away fans and plenty of childish kids etc.

It would also turn it into something of an elitist site, where only those prepared to pay for the privilege would allowed access.

This, IMO, would completely destroy what NSC has become, namely a very busy site full of literally all sorts of people.

Funding is clearly going to become an issue at some stage in the future. If people wanted to donate then they maybe should be allowed to do so, but as anonymously as possible. It's bad enough people demanding priority for tickets becuase they travel to Hartlepool every season, it would be carnage if posters demanded bannings because they haven't donated.

 

[Beach Hut]

It would also turn it into something of an elitist site, where only those prepared to pay for the privilege would allowed access.

This, IMO, would completely destroy what NSC has become, namely a very busy site full of literally all sorts of people.

Funding is clearly going to become an issue at some stage in the future. If people wanted to donate then they maybe should be allowed to do so, but as anonymously as possible. It's bad enough people demanding priority for tickets becuase they travel to Hartlepool every season, it would be carnage if posters demanded bannings because they haven't donated.

Fair point, could there be some system set where we donate via paypal ?

 

[Couldn't Be Hyypia]

Lots of sites have a donation button. No pressure, no variation in service, just a way for people who get a lot of use from a site to say thank you and to help support the site they like. Anonymous, easy - lucrative. But I'm sure Bozza has thought this through.

I quite like the idea of additional functionality for paid users - but free access for all if they prefer not to pay.