Spread the rate card to save Kerces from Oak Flats

We are looking at a number of options to give our loyal readers/subscribers something extra. Unfortunately those things take a bit of time to put in place as we have day jobs too. But we also want to be sure they offer you value for money.

$$$ for an edit your own posts button. Free for people who historically made a sizeable contribution to RA, such as Thumper.

You know it sounds good.

It seems odd to be concerned with what others are paying – surely the criteria should be whether you will get a reasonable return for the amount you would have to invest yourself. And it’s not as if when you advertise in the CT or Yellow Pages or whatever that you know that none of the other ads were donated or treated as “in-kind” sponsorshop etc…

dunno where you got facist – I thought a superior intellect such as yours would have been able to se the link between a colonic soloution called faecaway and the fact that it involves cleaning faecal material from the colon of those who choose so, but I guess not.

You (a total stranger) can think what you want of me – draw your own opinions and conclusions – but do these really matter to me ?

Not really…

Like I said – do canberrans a favour – turn into compost – hell ill even water you into the ground with my colonic irrigation solution (used of course)

Anyway – this aint about you and me – its about JB and Kerces.

Cameron, The ads we elect to leave in the rotation arent free. They cost Johnboy, myself, Che, NTP and Kramer money to have them there. Not only in increased bandwidth, but also in the displacement of paid ads. Troy’s paid ad for example would have expired in approx half a day if we didnt have others in the rotation. Probably not so great for Troy as his exposure would have been over a very very limited period. (good luck Troy).

There are others in the rotation that have given RiotACT things over a number of years. This is our way of showing some support back.

We are looking at a number of options to give our loyal readers/subscribers something extra. Unfortunately those things take a bit of time to put in place as we have day jobs too. But we also want to be sure they offer you value for money.

Btw, our limited market testing indicates that $100 for 10,000 pageviews is very very cheap.

i see it now danman, youre actually a gfascist.

you want to close medicare down and throw sick kids on to the streets.

i mean, you have health insurance, why should someone receive treatment under medicare.

Well that’s what Jey says. I have yet to see hard evidence.

I consider the free ads to be a community service. It’s very helpful in building awareness that Jey is not a bloke, for example.

should read only – just proving I am human.

On use a trusted colonic solution – Faecaway by danman – dealing with bonfires shit for eons.

Troy, no one has expressed a problem with the advertising fee.

And Johnboy, my problem is that my co-“advertisers” (the free ones) will CONTINUE to enjoy similar page views/clicks gratis whilst I will need to pay for them.

If I haven’t been clear: I fully support RiotACT and your desire to try and generate some revenue from it. I fully intend to advertise here, but am still not comfortable paying for something that others receive for free – non-commercial or not.

G’day all

To be honest, I didn’t have a problem with the advertising fee. From my perspective it was ‘thinking out of the box’ and generated some interest … whether good or bad I won’t know until later in the year. It was also a good way to support something that provides an insight into Canberra that’s otherwise hard to get.

All the best

Troy
– Representing 50% of all paid Riot Act advertisers

dunno about that but it’s a cut and paste from our ad engine software which chooses to put dots in where others would use commas.

Seems fairly obvious.

You also got 24.291 adviews and 21 clicks from us gratis. Not that there’s any obligation.

Out of curiosity, what’s 0.291 of an adview?

You could always buy BMA and turn into RA…

Yeah Dan, Bonfire is a rude pr*ck to all of us…

danman i have nothing against you, i dislike everyone in an equitable fashion.

if you think ive singled you out for special treatment then think again.

perhaps youre one of those people that ‘its all about you’. every word written, uttered, graffitied – is about you somehow.

arrogant softhead.

now pedal off on your recumbent tricycle with your silly little flag bobbing away.

but make sure your colonic irrigation business is advertised on it.

you do know that 97% of colonic irrigation is water dont you ? the other 3% is danman.

Bonfire – I supplied email contact details and a mobile number on the advertisement – the same details that were probably located on other peoples webpages to which their advertisement was linked.

As my business netts less than 5k a year – I am not that worried – I have full time employment – I like to stay under 50k a year gross.

I submitted a small advertisement for the free period to test the waters – see my luck – what you are suggesting is that I build a website purely to function as a backup link to that webad ?

What a waste of time – I have a life – I dont live online.

Why ?

Not all businesses rely on the internet for advertising.

Like I said – I tried riotact – to no avail – I was appreciative – and decided to try other avenues.

What then is your problem with my methodology?

You seem to have some personal agenda against me dont you Bonfire.

My advice to you – turn yourself into mulch – that way I save paper and do canberrans a big favour – did you know the body is 97% water ?

The free advertising is a temporary measure to keep the rotation functional as we build our paid advertising stocks.

It doesn’t detract from the delivery of the promised exposure.

You also got 24.291 adviews and 21 clicks from us gratis. Not that there’s any obligation.

Maybe if it doesn’t work out you could just have a donate link like some of the open source software projects have. That way at least it might help to keep the site running.

I’d definitely pay to use this site.

As for helping it to grow, I tell just about everyone I know about this site, and I know that many of them now read it.

I’ll support in any way that I can, but that doesn’t extend to paying for advertising that others can feature in for free. It DOES extend to spreading the word and being willing to pay a subscription.

So in other words Danman, you expect new forms of advertising to funnel leads to….

nowhere.

keep on leaflet dropping. i need the mulch.

I was not complaining – I was merely stating that the advertising here was not specifically targetting my demographic.

The free advertising was appreciated – and gave me a snapshot of what I could expect from the readership of this website.

No business website – I know – I am old school – I do leaflet drops at local shops etc and provide buiness cards to individuals/bands at venues.

Maybe next year ill place an advertisement in the Yellow Pages – but at the moment – I make less than $5000 a financial year so more a hobby.

Once again thanks for the free advertising…

I doubt we’d get more than 50 paid subscribers while losing thousands of readers.

As to your own ad it didn’t have a website linking to it which is major part of making web advertising work.

I would advertise – but during the testing period I recieved nada enquiries.

I decided it a bad business move to put money into advertising that guaranteed zero coverage for my target audience – so I decided against paid advertising in favour of my current methods.

User pays system would rake the money in methinks.

JB?

Maybe *loyal* readership would offer this advice somewhere other than in the middle of efforts to encourage viral marketing.

Anyway if you’re all right you can go back to reading advertorial and re-hashed media releases as the only effective way to run local media without State subsidy.

Johnboy, way to insult your loyal readers. Personally, I think the readership of RiotACT is very supportive. I just think your expectations were too high, too soon. Two paying advertisers is an EXCELLENT way to start a business. Give it time.

You could always place an ad in the CT.

Not that I would have seen it if you have already been doing that, on account of I have never felt the requirement to read it.

Just get it over with and make it a paid site – so many people have already expressed their willingness.

Actually there are a lot of websites which make very large amounts of money.

The trick is to serve a specific niche which our Canberra focus fits.

The difference is they have readers willing to support them, an area we have misjudged.

My understanding is that there aren’t all that many positive models of organisations making a great deal of money using internet advertising. Certainly not a living wage for one, or, if we want Kerces back too, two people.

I’m sorry to be one of those people smashing you in the face with the cold, wet, fish of reality, but really, you can’t imagine you’re the first person to have found it difficult to build a viable business model on the internet…

I go clubbing all the time!

Me! Me! Me!

If only I can find that walking stick now……

The biggest issue I have with advertising on this site is the scope of the demographic… Sure, Canberrans are attracted to this site, but I wonder what type is attracted to the often acerbic articles and often unintelligible rabble aka comments. That said, I’d only be looking to advertise club nights and from the looks of it there’s not too many clubbers hanging around RA..

I applaud efforts to make some revenue out of the site – Johnboy et al deserve a bit of recompense for their efforts thus far.

My point remains however, I’m not a fan of sharing paid advertising space with other ‘probably won’t be’ commercial advertising.

Perhaps there needs to be a commercial advertising section and some sort of affiliate rotation that are distinct from one another and don’t effect the amount of pageviews?

Johnboy, happy to have this discussion with you via email if you like.

More of the sort of support which makes the effort so worthwhile.

You’ll probably be getting your wish very soon.

John, shut up and move already. Or get a job. As much as I think RA is a resounding success, and I’m mighty proud of you guys for making it that way, it ain’t going to be making you a living in the near future.

So lush; so green; I remember what green grass used to look like, but my kids have grown up thinking all grass is brown and crunchy, except that strange stuff they have at the War Memorial…

*sigh*

Well I probably wouldn’t pay to be part of a rotation that included freebies!

You could choose to consider Mess’ example in two ways, as I see it:
1 – ‘Beat the RA’ competition sees RA readers competing to get the site the most possible exposure to advertisers. Because we all love you so much *cough* we organise skywriting and crash an advertising convention -> lots of small business owners see the Beating and think “hmm yes, I have been looking for somewhere to place a small JPEG ad for my business at a competitive price”

2. ‘Beat the RA’ competition sees RA readers competing to get the site the most possible new readers. I’m talking a lot of new readers. So many readers that other media outlets as well as advertisers have to take the site seriously, and realise the amount of people looking at it. Flow on effects include an increase in advertising revenue, amongst other things.

Either way, I don’t think you should dismiss suggestions just because at first glance all you think they’ll do is bring in new readers. Like that would be a bad thing.

We’ve had two paid advertisers, the others are those deemed unlikely to ever be commercial so they’re being kept on to retain the rotation.

AD: have you tried it yet?

As a potential advertiser, I’ve been waiting to see what other advertisers stayed on the site once it was no longer free.

I see most of the same as before… are these all paid advertisers or has the switch not been made yet?

not sure how effective viral type marketing is for attracting advertisers.. your marketing attack probably needs to be more focused.

My $0.02. I think The-Riotact is a fantastic alternative news source, and often brings attention to stories before the major print media.

However if I was an advertiser, I think I would be put off by the comments that feature under the stories, which can be range from insightful to downright offensive. As a reader they’re often some of the most interesting parts of the site, but I can understand an advertisers hesitance at being associated with some of the things that get said.

My suggestion is to create a riotact forum where people can comment on the stories and other things to their hearts content, with the disclaimer that the views expressed on the forum are not endorsed by the main news site. Link the forum to the main site, but keep the main news section site comment free — and more attractive to advertisers.

They might, but we’d like to be a little more targeted in these efforts.

But if you attract new readers, some of those new readers may own a buisness and may look at advertising, you never know!

Suggestion that bring in new readers are gratefully received and put away for future use.

But what we need right now are advertisers, we already have more readers than we can currently sell to advertisers.

JB you’re getting people trying to give you marketing ideas which go beyond “readers letting the business they have dealings with know this is a good place to advertise” but all I’m seeing is you shutting them down.

I can appreciate that us walking around with the rate card is the main tactic you’ve chosen to go with, but you’re telling us it’s not really working, and readers like Mess are going to give up trying to help if you keep telling them their ideas are ratshit. I think Mess’ idea has merit – the Beat The Drum comp is all about gaining exposure for the Js, and what better way to get advertisers onto RA than by getting it in on some of that too?

Rather than just telling Mess “yeah, no, that doesnt actually help “, can I (politely, if it’s not too late) suggest you try thinking outside that box a bit and see if these suggestions can be adapted to what you’re trying to achieve?

That’s my 2 cents for the day.

Mess, the problem isn’t a lack of readers, it’s a lack of advertisers.

We’re working on our own marketing but what we’re after more than anything is readers letting the businesses they have dealings with know this is a good place to advertise.

Well, at least it looks like you could have plenty of free fennel!

and i realise my last post has typos in it. My fingers are dyslexic. Dyslexics Untie! lol

johnboy, i gave you an idea that could help. I will post it here. My idea was to hold a triple j beating the drum style competition, with people trying to maximise the exposure of riot-act. The most original idea wins a prize. what that prize is i will leave up to the mangemnet of this site. I first stumbled across this site earlier this year looking for photos of summernats (cars not gilrs) and now i tell all my friends about it, and some of them have become regular readers. More readers = more advertisers. Spread the word! beat the drum!

26mm of rain at my place today, its green here too

At least it is green out there.

I’m sorry, but I’ve always that Oaks Flats/Albion Park was/is the bogan capital of the planet. Makes Qbn look like Double Bay

Drop your rate card at the sex shops in Fyshwick

I think you need to be taking your anger out on the progress association.

Well, if you’re going to be this rude about the place I was born, I’m definately not saving you now!

Is Oak Flats even worse than Oaks Mistake, sorry, Estate?

Promising, why not get out there and push it and let us know how you get on?

How’s the advertising uptake been so far, Johnboy?