Ahhhh here is a subject that I feel kinda strongly about. I know you most likely won't like what I have to say, but you did ask. :roll:
I think that there should be no sponsors at all.
When I first logged on here I thought this site was owned by Uxcell, due to the banners all over the place. This does not promote us as a site that is neutral in our opinions and ideas. It tells the world in general that we do what Uxcell says.
I am an Administrator on a site similar to this,
Pachitalk.com but it is dedicated to Japanese pachinko and pachislo (slot) machines. We do not allow advertising of any sort on our site. We don't have sponsors, we use the google ads similar to this site to offset costs. Almost all of our good (meaning legit) vendors offer some sort of deal or discount (ie 15% off shipping, it costs almost $80 to ship one of these machines, free tokens or pachinko balls, or a just a general 10% off your order) to any member of our site, whether they buy form them on Ebay or from their websites. All they have to do is mention that they are a Pachitalk member.
As to prizes and such, when a vendor offers a prize they get their advertising during the contest period, and of course the thread does not get deleted after the contest so that ad is still available for all to see.
Take away individual areas dedicated to companies that sell these wonderful little toys.
They don't need a section of their own to sort out problems, they all have email addresses and phone numbers. This is just an extra place that a vendor has to look for issues, just because someone doesn't send them an email. Waste of the vendor's valuable time in my opinion.
In place of those areas, you have a section called vendors. In that section members will put in opinions and reviews of the individual vendors that they have dealt with, both good and bad. If a vendor wants to know how they are doing, they can check here.
You have your classified section, which is the only place a vendor should ever advertise or try and sell something. We have an internal auction system running on our site kinda like a mini ebay where members and vendors can sell anything they want. And unlike Ebay, we don't charge a listing fee, and a smaller percent of the final sale price than Ebay charges. Those fees go into website support.
Pachitalk.com has been going strong since 2004 without any kind of sponsorship.
Just some stats from our site (these are today's):
Threads: 11,956, Posts: 165,135, Members: 3,195
Total members that have visited the forum in the last 24 hours: 136
The most members online in one day was 196, 12-28-2006
It is our members that make the site work.
It is our moderation staff that keeps it spam free (as they do here).
It is our members that decide which vendors are good or bad. We don't squash anyone's opinion (Unless it's vulgar, we try to keep it PG-13).
I know our member counts are not as high as they are here, but our site has a much smaller niche to fill.
But I do have one thought tho, how many of the members here actually stick around and actively participate? Those stats above are registered members, not guests.
I have also noticed that the big special vendors on here don't participate in discussions with the general membership. We have vendors popping in and offering opinions and support on Pachitalk all the time.
SO I guess my spot on the poll will have to be no more sponsors, let's have less.
Poll: Would you like to see more sponsors?
