Hello everyone,
After feeling very humbled by your generosity in the recent funding drive, I have been reviewing where and how revenue is generated on CycleChat to adapt the model so that we can be more self-funding as we go forwards.
Changes in the internet landscape in recent years mean that we can’t rely on guests to fund CC in the way that we used to, so I have developed a slightly different approach that I have tested on the new forums and will be applying to CycleChat shortly.
The first part was to enable shopping links for selected merchants, which has helped – thank you. The second part is enabling a banner advert at the top and bottom of the page for members as well as guests. This shouldn’t slow things down for you and shouldn’t spoil your experience since it doesn’t interact with the content in any way.
This will allow every member to contribute towards CC’s upkeep regardless of available personal funds, and allow me to deploy new features as well as invest in development of the new mobile-friendly forum software upgrade coming in 2018.
I have deliberated over this for quite some time as I am well aware of the many sites where ads completely ruin the experience; crash your browser, obscure content, force you to click, start noisy videos, etc. but hopefully the way I am deploying it on CycleChat is the right balance between funding the site and all of us continuing to enjoy CC long into the future.
Cheers,
Shaun
PS. Anyone who contributed to the recent funding drive will not see the ads for quite a long time.
After feeling very humbled by your generosity in the recent funding drive, I have been reviewing where and how revenue is generated on CycleChat to adapt the model so that we can be more self-funding as we go forwards.
Changes in the internet landscape in recent years mean that we can’t rely on guests to fund CC in the way that we used to, so I have developed a slightly different approach that I have tested on the new forums and will be applying to CycleChat shortly.
The first part was to enable shopping links for selected merchants, which has helped – thank you. The second part is enabling a banner advert at the top and bottom of the page for members as well as guests. This shouldn’t slow things down for you and shouldn’t spoil your experience since it doesn’t interact with the content in any way.
This will allow every member to contribute towards CC’s upkeep regardless of available personal funds, and allow me to deploy new features as well as invest in development of the new mobile-friendly forum software upgrade coming in 2018.
I have deliberated over this for quite some time as I am well aware of the many sites where ads completely ruin the experience; crash your browser, obscure content, force you to click, start noisy videos, etc. but hopefully the way I am deploying it on CycleChat is the right balance between funding the site and all of us continuing to enjoy CC long into the future.
Cheers,
Shaun
PS. Anyone who contributed to the recent funding drive will not see the ads for quite a long time.
