All,

I hoped the day would not come but it has, and before you unleash a hate storm, please understand that I didn't make this decision lightly or in haste.

NA has been open since 2006, mostly ad-free since the beginning. I say mostly because we had "cornerstone" ads a few years back that were from folks in our community, like RetroZone. Our membership has grown a lot and so have the costs over the years (part of those costs include the cost of upkeep and time maintaining the massive amount of data we have now). 

Patreon has helped keep a stream of income that helps with a portion of the monthly costs, but it's been in steady decline since the beginning, as I suspected it would. Thanks to all the folks that have helped, month after month, since the beginning -- don't think I don't know who you are, I do, and I thank you for the continued support you've given.

​Instead of running donation drives or other panhandling efforts, I think I'm going to try ads on a few pages to see if it can help a bit. I'm going to leave the forum pages for last, only as a last resort. For now, I'm going to put a few ads on game listing pages, and perhaps the inbox. I plan on rolling these out slowly, carefully watching and listening to feedback -- your opinion matters, even if it's negative.

I can almost promise you that other sites that get 1-4+ million hits a month (which NA does!), have ads all over the place. I'm wanting to do it slowly.

If you use ad-blockers, I understand -- I do too. But consider this: if our only revenue streams keep drying up, NA will close. That said, reconsider this stance, at least on our site, if you want to keep it alive. 

-Dain​

Damn. Understandable, though.

I think it is obvious not only from your statements here and in the past, but also from the fact that we haven't had any ads this entire time, that this has been a last resort option. I think it's actually quite amazing that NA has gone this long without having ads and rather than looking at the change as a negative, I encourage everyone just to be open-minded and give this a chance to see how it goes.

Instead of ads, become an ebay and amazon affiliate.

We're already an ebay affiliate, and that does help some, but it's been in steady decline for years. For Amazon, we used to have that until they cancelled all NC users a while back due to tax laws (they've since re-enabled NC users). Amazon brought in a total of about $100 over the course of 3-4 years, so it wasn't really working well for the site.

 

Just in case I wasn't clear in my initial post -- I'm not asking for ideas at this point, as I've done everything under the sun. I'm letting everyone know what's going to be happening, as a courtesy.

Are you getting revenue from ad views or do you need us to click on the ads as well? I have no problem clicking on ads when I see them in order to generate more revenue for the site. Thanks for all the work you put in and hopefully this eases the economic pains.

Ads don't bother me at all. If I could contribute I would, but some people just don't have the means. If we need ads to keep the site up I understand, and like you said, other sites with this kind of traffic have ads plastered all over the place. Its remarkable that it hadn't come to this sooner.

Do what you gotta do Dain.

Understood, though it's possible you could promote your affiliate links more for the referrals.

I ad block the whole internet, as do many, so I don't know how well ads will do here. Unless you are going to vet your ad vendors and individual ads, ad providers, especially google adsense, are just a delivery system for malware.
 

If ads will keep this place alive, then bring them on.

I feel guilty because I want to contribute, but all my donation fund was eaten up by the storm damage. If anyone gives you hate for keeping the site running they should just leave. I'd rather see an ad (hell plaster them everywhere) then loose Nintendoage! This site has been so helpful to me over the years and has connected me to awesome people. Do whatever it takes to keep the lights on and never feel bad for anything! Without you there would be no NA. Thanks for everything!

Patreon is on the decline?

I want some names! *Sarcasm*

I know adding fees to sales would be frowned upon, but what about having to be a subscriber in order to list items for sale or "VIP" listings of some sort. Maybe some added perks to being a subscriber in order to motivate some to hop on board.

I know the decision has been made to roll out ads on some pages, but just throwing out an idea to hopefully turn things around.

Understandable, and I'll disable my ad blocker for http://nintendoage.com/...

Adding marketplace perquisites for sellers (possibly buyers too) could drive subscriptions.
 

Do what you gotta do! I dont care about the ads if it means this great site continues to function. I totally support this move. As others have said, I will even click on them if that helps.

You can whitelist this website pretty easily on most modern adblockers now.

I'm down with whatever decision you make, Dain.  

Like always, I'll continue to try and contribute by donating a % from my auctions and things to the site.

I'm not going to whitelist any site, because the ad networks are all notorious malware sources. That's the problem with ads on the internet, no matter how good the site is or the intentions, the ad networks don't do their job of checking what they are delivering.

If you need an example, look into the situation at NeoGAF where supposedly 'light ad presense' on the site has all kinds of browser highjacks and malware infecting the users who don't block ads.

 

I know very little about websites, but would getting rid of the "vintage" option help cut costs? What about deleting all dead threads? Instead of keeping dead/locked threads clean them up and put the ones with important info in an archive section. I can't tell you how many threads in the FS haven't been touched in three years...that would cut digital storage however minute it is.

Thanks for all the hard work to all the people responsible for keeping this place going, it is what it is and I've got no problem with the adds to ensure NA stays.

As much as people hate ads, they are the foundation of the internet. It's surprising to me that NA has been around this long with this many users and hasn't had any ads. I think it's a great idea and I hope it works in creating enough revenue to keep the site going strong.

When you buy a website you're really paying for the bandwidth allowance - how much data is sent back and forth. It's not the storage that's costly, it's supporting a couple million visitors a month.

I think maybe you should consider putting ads in the transaction pages or on the buy sell forums (if you can limit it to one forum subsection like that). A lot of people treat NA like an eBay alternative. Viewing some Ads instead of losing a percentage of sales is a nice trade off.

Also a good idea, put the ads on the most commercial part of the site that likely gets by far the most traffic.
 

We need Nintendo ads! That way I can know what I am going to be buying anyway!