- Joined
- May 27, 2001
An update on the site.
Im sure for a while you guys have heard us talk about how the site couldnt even pay for itself with the few supporting vendors we had. I do plan to set up a donation system but Ive been waiting for the dust to settle.
However, we brought in a 3rd party to look through the site and see why we werent making any money. The site has never been something youre going to get rich off of especially with so few supporting vendors but Google ads did help out. We went from making about $800/mo in ads to about $100 a month with no apparent reason. We just chalked it up to lack of traffic, Facebook, Google not paying as well, etc. Well, come to find out through our 3rd party guy that someone had gone into our ad system and changed our Google Ads account out with another one so all the ads being served were for the most part paying someone else. Wasnt me, wasnt Shane... I wish we could get Scooby Doo in here to do some investigating. "I woulda gotten away with it if it wasnt for this third party guy you hired!" There really was only one other person who had access to do this and the first thing he did was blame it on me... the guy that hired someone to audit the ads. Darwin award winner there.
And I dont think many people can appreciate the amount of money it takes to keep this site up. Shane was paying around $2500 a year in hosting alone then there were multiple licenses that have to be renewed every year along with other crap that comes up. Its not a cheap endeavor.
The windup here is that hopefully with the Google Ads mystery solved and moving to a more affordable hosting platform, things are going to turn around.
The same third party that audited the ads is also working on reintegrating the pictures. I will say at this point its not looking like he will be able to do it. Maybe, Im not writing him off but he isnt super confident. Just know we are still working on it as best we can.
Also T6P is for sure a goner. Hopefully over the weekend Im going to set up a private forum for T6P people to congregate. It will be a joinable group in the control panel like the political forum.
One last thing.. More than likely we're going to go away form Tapatalk. Xenforo is designed to rescale itself to mobile platforms. That's one of its big selling points. If someone can make a compelling argument as to why we shouldn't do that, I'm open to hear it but Ive done testing on my own and you pretty much get the desktop experience in your mobile browser.
As always, thank you for your support!
Im sure for a while you guys have heard us talk about how the site couldnt even pay for itself with the few supporting vendors we had. I do plan to set up a donation system but Ive been waiting for the dust to settle.
However, we brought in a 3rd party to look through the site and see why we werent making any money. The site has never been something youre going to get rich off of especially with so few supporting vendors but Google ads did help out. We went from making about $800/mo in ads to about $100 a month with no apparent reason. We just chalked it up to lack of traffic, Facebook, Google not paying as well, etc. Well, come to find out through our 3rd party guy that someone had gone into our ad system and changed our Google Ads account out with another one so all the ads being served were for the most part paying someone else. Wasnt me, wasnt Shane... I wish we could get Scooby Doo in here to do some investigating. "I woulda gotten away with it if it wasnt for this third party guy you hired!" There really was only one other person who had access to do this and the first thing he did was blame it on me... the guy that hired someone to audit the ads. Darwin award winner there.
And I dont think many people can appreciate the amount of money it takes to keep this site up. Shane was paying around $2500 a year in hosting alone then there were multiple licenses that have to be renewed every year along with other crap that comes up. Its not a cheap endeavor.
The windup here is that hopefully with the Google Ads mystery solved and moving to a more affordable hosting platform, things are going to turn around.
The same third party that audited the ads is also working on reintegrating the pictures. I will say at this point its not looking like he will be able to do it. Maybe, Im not writing him off but he isnt super confident. Just know we are still working on it as best we can.
Also T6P is for sure a goner. Hopefully over the weekend Im going to set up a private forum for T6P people to congregate. It will be a joinable group in the control panel like the political forum.
One last thing.. More than likely we're going to go away form Tapatalk. Xenforo is designed to rescale itself to mobile platforms. That's one of its big selling points. If someone can make a compelling argument as to why we shouldn't do that, I'm open to hear it but Ive done testing on my own and you pretty much get the desktop experience in your mobile browser.
As always, thank you for your support!
