Advertising on TAY: your ideas wanted

I think advertisement would be fine. It would support a valuable web site that we all use. The human brain is expert at tuning out unwanted stimuli and I think most users not interested in the advertisement content would quickly learn to see past the ads. I look at TTips occasionally and dont think I have ever clicked on an ad.

Sorry Charles, I guess you misunderstood me on my ideas for raising monies. I was talking about me as a personal member of TAY not as a business. I had hoped to talk more about this at the get together on Sunday, sorry you weren't able to attend. I was looking forward to meeting you and it was a good time. From my observations of the people yesterday they liked the idea of just doing donations. I saw a $20 bill as the donation of choice and hope there where plenty in there to help. I think events like yesterday are a great way for people to meet and money could be raised to help this forum go on without a lot of ads and sponcership. Backcountry skiing is a sport that is usually done in very small groups but it is fun to get together and meet each other and have a few laughs.

I want to thank you, Charles for conceiving and managing this great resource.  This site is my primary resource for bc ski information in WA.  I support whatever is required to keep it running.  Putting all the ads in one place is a brilliant idea.  If that's what is necessary to keep TAY going, then so be it.

I also support a user donation system or party, to which I would happily attend and/or contribute. 

Thanks!
Jon Ambrose

I used the link to buy some ski boots from REI.com. I don't know how that works, but hopefully you will get credit for it!

JPH, yes, it looks like this did show up - there are three REI purchases, and one is large enough to be substantial boots (can't tell exactly what items were purchased). Thanks!

wapiti_bob, sorry I could not make it to Crystal Fest. I know it would have been a good time to talk to people, often easier to have a real discussion than here. Chris has told me that donations in excess of beer costs were $314, which is very generous of the people donating. Thank you everyone! I think I understood your sponsorship idea, that you were referring to a local gear manufacturer or retailer, not your business.

I have been talking to people at some of the local retailers to see if they have an interest in some kind of presence here, and they do. The big question is how to implement this. From my point of view, with the intent to keep the current look and feel of TAY, it would be nice to have all advertiser presence confined to the new "Shop for Gear" board. I've added a few affiliate advertisers to this board. These are pay-per-performance, where TAY gets a commission as a percentage of the sales. Some people have used the links provided to make purchases and TAY seems to be getting commission credits. The remaining question is how it could be arranged for local shops to also have a presence within this "segregated advertising" scheme. This will require more discussion. I consider the Shop for Gear board experimental. If it turns out that for whatever reason the board ends up not seeming to be a good idea, then it can be deleted with just one click. If it needs to be altered or adjusted, that's easy too.

Like juan, I really like the idea of keeping all advertising segregated. If local shops can be somehow integrated into this, then it seems to me that TAY would be doing its part to help level the playing field between small local and larger national retailers, and at the same time hopefully achieving the goal of providing the revenue that TAY needs to remain a business in the eyes of the IRS.

Charles, thank you for Turns-All-Year, and for taking the time to hear our minds.

I am generally against ads on the site, and I appreciate the fact that my favorite web site is one that I can view with out advertisements.

Restating what Jack L said about possibly lowering costs, I am going to guess that one of the major operating expenses for Turns-All-Year is paying for web hosting. This brings me to my question. What kind of web hosting plan does Turns-All-Year currently have and how much does it cost? From my research it appears that this site is hosted with Dream Host, and from what I see on there home page they appear reasonable. However, I do want to throw the idea of self hosting the site out there since that is where my area of expertise is. There are numerous advantages to hosting a web site yourself, but I won't get into all of that and instead just break it down for you. With a good Internet connection (high upload speed) and a decent computer, you could host a web site like this easily. You would have to compare the cost of a years worth of paying your web host to the estimated cost of the electricity it takes to power a computer (web server) 24/7. Also factor in the cost of a years worth of the Internet connection, but you would most likely have this anyway. Since I setup and configure web servers, all Turns-All-Year would need is a donated computer that a member might have laying around, and I would donate the little time it would take me to setup the web server. Moving the site to your own server would be relatively painless as well.
As an example, my personal web site (mostly static pages) and several others (dynamic pages) are all hosted on the same computer I use for day-to-day tasks. (i.e. typing this message). I also use the same computer as my Email server and have VoIP software (MagicJack) on it that I use for making phone calls. None of the server software on my setup effects my daily tasks, but the sites I am serving do not get as much traffic as Tuns-All-Year.

Now imagine a dedicated server just for Turns-All-Year. The site would run extremely smooth, and hopefully be cheap to operate.