PAYPAL BUTTON

Hi, Everybody,
Have you noticed the Paypal button on the left side of the screen below the list of subjects on the site? It looks like this:

This is a safe and secure way to help finance this great site. You can contribute any amount; all is appreciated.

Do you know how much revenue you get from advertising and sponsored links for each user? I block all of that on this site. I guess I should be ashamed, but I hate flash ads, and the sponsored links slowed navigation to a crawl.

I don't mind paying the same amount and then some directly to you though.

Well, we are all different. I feel that if something is good for me, it's worth giving something in return, if only to keep it going.

I even buy music i have gotten by undue means, if I find that it's good. :^)

Thanks, Lucidor!
In a way this site belongs to all of us. Its like a living thing we can all keep alive with just a little sharing. Think how sad it would be if it dried up and died.
I'm not the owner of the web-site, just another grateful participant who wants to help defray the cost.
Edit: when I made the post May 3 I wasn't a moderator, but since then I have been invited on board..sorry for any confusion about that.

Bee-atch :^) Nah, I wouldn't go that far. But you are a bit of a freeloader, but those are ok with me if they are nice enough.

Puma: I didn't mean you as in you, but as you guys who run this site. I thought you were a moderator until now.

I'm with Beatachica on this one. My contribution to this site is my presence, which helps on two levels. Firstly, my charming manner and amicable tone brighten the mood in this dreary place. Secondly, my unique IP is logged as traffic for the site, then justifying a higher market price for the ever-increasing advertising here.

As a devout capitalist (so devout that I believe charities should be corporatised, and governments disbanded and privatised), the collection tin to my left is as redundant as it is hypocritical. Either Sean advertises and doesn't beg, or he begs and doesn't advertise. You have to understand that this site, beyond being a mental health support site, is a market place for advertising space. So you could say Sean is an advert merchant (A legitimate and respectable business in my books). Thus, he is a business, a middleman of sorts, who puts his clients (advertisers) in touch with a select demographic to which he claims exclusive viewing space and time to.

The question I raise is, how would you feel donating your local K-Mart? Or dropping some coins into a tin below that big advert billboard on the way to work? Or swinging Mr. Gates an extra yellowback after buying his latest vista suite?

Either the organisation is non-for-profit, and exists on donations and good-will, or it is a profitable company. Those that don't make the cut for either do so due to a lack of demand for the goods and services provided, and thus redirect the wasted resources it's existence elsewhere.

The problem here is not that Sean is dishonest, or whatnot. Rather it is that society and the consumerate do not recognise that a) Advertising is a real commodity, and b) Seemingly altruistic businesses focussed on traditionally public sectors (e.g. healthcare, aged care, disabled care, welfare, etc) are no more deserving of 'donation' than their heavily competitive tradtionally private sector peers (e.g. Insurance, retail, banking, etc).

When you are subjected to advertising you are essentially giving out free labour-hours, and enabling capital to those who subject it upon you. This is not wrong so long as they have your permission, though this is often sullied by the government and their private interests- as such ensuring the laws contradict themselves and do not meet these simple standards. As such, as a smart consumer, you should expect some kind of inflow of economic benefit if you are to contribute to the same for a business. Luckily, as per the capitalist equation, this is most often the case, as the economic benefit of advertising revenue lowers the bottom-line of a company, allowing it to be more competitive in the market place.

Anyhow, enough of market theory. I like this website, and by visiting I contribute greatly towards what seems to be it's sole stream of revenue. If that revenue is sufficient or not for the running of this website is not a concern of mine, but rather one for the management. If they think they'd do better from voluntary donations, perhaps they should take down the advertising and pursue that angle. I personally doubt it. If the current profit from advertising is not sufficient, then the solution lies either in better organisation and application of the website in terms of profitability, or abondoning it all together and redirecting the resources put into it towards an end with a greater market demand.

That's pure economic theory mixed with a bit of reason, and just a hint of logic.

The idea of the Paypal is to move away from the other forms of advertising which can be annoying, ect. Anyway, it is totally voluntary.

I have seen good sites go commercial as pay services and by using ads. Both were bad. Those where you have to pay to get access lost most of their visitors and became much less interesting because of that, and those with ads became so slow and annoying that people stopped coming because of that.

The best thing would be if there were a sensible amount of non-animated ads which would go away if you paid a small fee. I'm very interested to see how much every page view is worth for the advertiser. It can't be very much.. I wonder if it's more than the dollar/week that I would find reasonable. The sites that turned into pay services wanted five times as much.