Ok, it’s time to talk the hard talk about sponsors. Let me be honest. We need funding to continue to run this site. The website uses up a lot of bandwidth especially for the high res photos and mp3s we host. That costs money. We have to purchase coding services to keep the databases and classifieds running smoothly. That costs money too.
I spend around 4 hours each day on average to keep everything running smoothly. That’s writing the articles and maintaining the backend. We have contributors working just as hard as myself to continue to bring you high quality articles.
All of it takes funding and for guitarbench, the best way of bringing in that funding is through sponsorship. We can then provide appropriate links and adverts in a manner which enhances your visit. Over time, we aim to broaden the way we fund the website thus lowering our sponsorships.
I’d like to hear your views… do you think sponsorship on Guitarbench is a positive or negative thing?
Photo ©2007 Porg.
http://www.guitarbench.com/Images for articles/topshelf/basss/1005.jpg
Now that you’ve added your blog, we need to make sure that you own this blog.
Do what you have to do.
Ads are annoying, but one of the problems with the Internet is that it’s created an impression that everything is free. Of course, as you pointed out, it’s not. Unless you use one of the “free” (for now, anyway) blogging services and use its domain name rather than getting your own, you have to pay for the domain name and pay for the ISP’s or your own server and pay for the Internet bandwidth.
Then, as you say, there’s your time. Why should you sacrifice that for readers when they aren’t willing to sacrifice something, namely accepting some ads?
The question is not, what do you think of sponsors? The question is what would you prefer, your favorite site with some ads attached or to not have your favorite sites at all? Because, when the site owner has heavy cash and opportunity costs to bear, that’s what it’s going to come down to.
That’s so true! Time is a thing that seems free but actually not. Good luck, I try my best to contribute and help. I do hope everything goes smoothly.
Joel and Music,
Thank you for your comments- I agree that things are never as free as they seem, and that it would be a give and take- some ads, but not so many as to overwhelm the site!