outta here....victim of marketing

Well, here's my 2 cents-------- As far as the ads, and links to ads here, they don't bother me one bit, now if they were POP-UP ads, that would be a whole nother ball game. I figure the ads here on SN are sorta like the lottery here in louisiana, if you don't want to play and thereby pay the extra taxes ( it IS another form of taxation afterall) you don't have to play, same thing with these ads, nobody's forcing you to click on the links to them. I for one appreciate these forums ( even though I have given more info than I have ever recieved here) and the classified section staying free, unlike the VMF forums and ads. I used to list stuff in the VMF classifieds, but no longer do so, for the same money I get a larger, better customer base on ebaymotors. I for one think Lman would have gotten better results with the link to his endeavor if he would have sold advertising space , same as SN has done. I really don't think he has any business critisizing StangNet for what they're doing when he's done the same thing with his link in each of his post's. What we used to call "Pot calling the kettle black"

D.Hearne said:

Well, here's my 2 cents-------- As far as the ads, and links to ads here, they don't bother me one bit, now if they were POP-UP ads, that would be a whole nother ball game.

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Ok, you are right, if they were pop up ads I WOULD be complaining!

(go ahead, taunt me some more...Ill click again)

Old Blue said:

I can see in this very thread that some people agree with you. but i would say that more than 90% will likely just ignore the adds and continue reading and posting skipping over what they dont want to read, just like you would do in a "People Magazine".

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I think most people probably agree with me about the ads, they just don't care enough to let them be bothered by it. What I'm saying is, I've seen how much it's changed. I'm not bailing on StangNet, but it sure seems to follow the trend of just about every other damn thing in life and I find it sorta ticks me off.

Another thing, there are those that say, "If you don't like it, don't watch it/turn it off/change the channel/don't look at it/etc..." The smut, the trash on the radio/tv, performers/artists/actors/etc. trying to push the envelope further than the ones that came before them. Just because its bigger, wilder, more exciting, doesn't make it better. You can only take stuff so far before you have to do something else for.... the shock value, for example.

I've only been on this planet for 37 short years, but I do know how much the world has changed since the early 70's that I can start to remember things. Just look at history and see how much faster things in general change relative to how close to the present that you get, mainly due to technology. Now don't get me wrong, I think technology is great, but it, like guns, are a tool, and it can be used as it was intended, or used in an abusive way. I guess having kids really wakes you up to how life goes by.

I used to look at girls in skimpy clothing and go WOW!!!, now, having daughters, I still go WOW!!!, but it doesn't have the same tone to it. At first it was with excitement, now it's with disbelief. I guess I'm just getting old, but I do care about the concequences of mine, and other's actions, and how they effect others, many don't.

Well heres my thoughts.

First off, I run a VW site just like Stangnet. Its free and Ad free and will continue to be. Its got 600 members, and I know not near the volume of stangnet, but I know how things work.

Stangnet just got another server. These are called dedicated hosting servers. Usually*, these are maintained by a company and you just lease them from that company. They do all the software upgrades and such.

I just looked up a Dual Xeon server with dual 73gb scsi hard drives. Unlimited monthly transfer, aka bandwidth. Now this runs $500 a month. Lets say out of the 75000 ish members only 40000 are active and only 25000 would be willing to donate. To run this site for a year, each of those 25000 donating members would have to donate a one time gift of $0.24. Even if they have to have 3 of these servers to handle the volume, it only jumps to $0.72 one time a year.

I believe stangnet should seriously chop most of the ads and charge each memeber a $1.00 annual due. This is more than cheap enough for everyone, even myself, a 19 year old college student with a wrecked up stang lol. They should take the google ad at the bottom off, and all of the ads within each actual post topic. Leaving the ads on the main stangnet forums page and the individual forums section pages would be fine, but cut everything else out. This would easily keep stangnet running, and everyone would be happy.

Also, if you hate ads, just do a google search for popup and ad blockers, my norton takes all the ads off stangnet for me

i just ignore them. however, i would rather pay 20$ a year or something and not have advertisement thrown in my face.

Just a little insert here --- you DO know that you can pay like $3/mo. and get the ads removed and your connection run off of a dedicated subscriber server, making stangnet much faster --- right?

It's in an announcement AT THE TOP OF EVERY FORUM: http://forums.stangnet.com/announcement.php?f=5

Yeesh people, learn to pay attention.

yea, but thats more than 20 bucks, now isn't it?

Depends on what you get... 2.95 a month or... lets see here... 30 bucks a year. Personally I'm considering it mostly just for the speed, I know that I spend a good 20 minutes a day combined probably waiting for stangnet pages to load that could be cut out if the server could keep up with the demand... and that much money is worth that kind of time to me, either in more info grabbed from this site or more time to move on to other things. Personal preferences though, of course.

Sorry to see you go, Lman. I enjoyed your posts and the info you shared. Keep the feet & knees together.

Gellpak said:

Depends on what you get... 2.95 a month or... lets see here... 30 bucks a year. Personally I'm considering it mostly just for the speed, I know that I spend a good 20 minutes a day combined probably waiting for stangnet pages to load that could be cut out if the server could keep up with the demand... and that much money is worth that kind of time to me, either in more info grabbed from this site or more time to move on to other things. Personal preferences though, of course.

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30 bucks for a year of entertainment is a pretty good deal.

I also realize that StangNet has a shop, has purchased company project vehicles, and has employees, that although, support the upkeep of the website, also suck resources from it as well. What I'm worried about is Mike and company overextending themselves on this and the site going away. To me, this plastering of ads is just a sign of times to come if care is not taken.


Above quote (in plain text) is real. Although most of the replies sound like this on the SiFi channel.

Given: Stangnet is on the Internet.
Given: Stangnet has people working at it.
Given: Bandwidth will SUCK resources from a company.

Not explained is: the management of such resources, company and virtical of the company.

Granted, if you don't like the links, don't click. No brainer. If you get annoyed at the underlined text, don't click. If you complain about posts in the forum, don't click.

Get over it. It's free!

When or if, they change to a charge site...which may or may not happen...tell me, and I'll start a free site...out of spite!

I just wish they would get rid of that 'Mad" google guy at the end of the posts!!!!

But then again, I would think that SD would say something like...RTFM. Moron!