Online Cavers Advertisement Poll

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Online Cavers Advertisement Poll

Postby David Grimes » Dec 10, 2011 4:27 pm

We are conducting a poll for Online Cavers. If you are a member of Online Cavers and wish to share your opinion I encourage you to fill out our simple form and cast your vote.

I am conducting a poll to determine whether or not to proceed with a trial period to run advertisements on Online Cavers. This poll will be active until 12:00p.m. 12/18/2011.

Just a little information on the ads. The advertisements would be very similar to the ads that used to run when Ning offered their services for free. The ads would be related to the website (if possible). The advertisements would be used to raise funds to pay for the operating costs of Online Cavers. Currently this website costs the NSS about $600.00 a year to operate. We are experimenting with ways to offset this cost.

Online Cavers is and will remain free for everyone to enjoy and use no matter the outcome of this poll or trial period.

Please click here to take the poll.
You will be returned to Online Cavers after submitting your vote.

Thank You,
David Grimes
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Re: Online Cavers Advertisement Poll

Postby batrotter » Dec 11, 2011 6:20 pm

OK, I'm stupid. I see the link at the top of the page that says "Online Cavers Network". I picked on it and it had a whole bunch of other stuff. I see an NSS logo. How is that different from what I'm looking at right now?
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Re: Online Cavers Advertisement Poll

Postby David Grimes » Dec 11, 2011 7:18 pm

Online Cavers Network is a social network similar to Myspace that is owned by the NSS. There are tons of caving videos and thousands of caving pictures ont he site and you can create your own caving groups as well. The poll is to determine how people feel about the NSS running advertisements on that website (Online Cavers NOT Cavechat). If you are not a member of Online Cavers you can still cast your vote and I encourage you to go to that site and check it out.
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Re: Online Cavers Advertisement Poll

Postby NZcaver » Dec 11, 2011 7:29 pm

FYI, when I tried to submit a response to the Online Cavers poll I got this message:

You are seeing this page because the system administrator of 000webhost.com is currently checking this website for malicious content. This redirect page will be removed once we finish manually checking all files on this account. Since we check over 100 websites per day, it can take about 2-4 hours to complete. If you are the owner of this website, you will get an email confirmation once it's done. If you are a visitor, please come back later.

Too hard. :doh: I don't really use the Online Cavers site anyway.
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Re: Online Cavers Advertisement Poll

Postby David Grimes » Dec 11, 2011 9:13 pm

That's what I get for hosting it on a free server :doh:. It will be back up by tomorrow. They always check new sites for malicious content, problem is they are really slow at doing it.
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Re: Online Cavers Advertisement Poll

Postby David Grimes » Dec 11, 2011 10:31 pm

The poll is back up for anyone wishing to cast a vote.
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Online Cavers Advertisement Poll Results

Postby David Grimes » Dec 19, 2011 8:22 pm

The poll officially ended yesterday and the results are in. I will say the turnout was smaller than I had hoped to see with only a total of 7 votes.

3 Votes Yes
1 Vote Don't Care Either Way
3 Votes No

Basically it is a draw since I cannot argue that the undecided vote favors either side. I will likely seek input from the OVP and/or President to determine which path we will take from here.

Thanks to everyone who participated
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Re: Online Cavers Advertisement Poll

Postby NZcaver » Dec 19, 2011 9:43 pm

This might have had a better response if a) the site wasn't a blank page asking people to enter their user name and email address, and b) the site was actually working (I tried again after you said it was back up - but it wasn't).

For what it's worth (which is nothing since the poll is done), I have little objection to targeted advertising to offset the cost the NSS pays for this service to cavers. Provided the advertising is appropriate, minimally intrusive (NO pop-ups, scrolling banners, floating crap, audio clips, etc), and preferably easy to hide like the Facebook ads. Just my 2 cents.
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Re: Online Cavers Advertisement Poll

Postby David Grimes » Dec 20, 2011 11:48 am

Thanks for the note NZ. The form was hosted on a separate site only because Online Cavers does not have a poll feature and the html form would not display correctly in the blog post. I could not simply use a poll here because it could not capture information about who voted. I could have made it a little more inviting looking instead of a white page but like you said its over now.

As for the ads they would be small and no pop-ups or audio or anything like that. We were really looking at something like the very small google ads (I believe the smallest is about 60px tall and maybe 100px wide) That is really pretty small considering Ning had ads on the top, right side, and bottom. Most people never even noticed when the ads first disappeared once the NSS started paying for Online Cavers.
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Re: Online Cavers Advertisement Poll

Postby NZcaver » Dec 20, 2011 4:26 pm

Cool. Incidentally, my last post seems a little disparaging but really it was intended to be constructive. :waving:
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