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Well, thanks for all the comments :) There may only be 185 subscribers but the response from people here echoes a lot more, people do want to help.

We've never had a real subscription drive, as always its remained an option at Neowin, just look at some other sites that block features if you don't pay. We believe that Neowin should be a rich experience for free and that costs us money. Until recently we blocked images for guest viewers in the hope that some of the 'lurkers' would register. It seems to work with an average of 150 new registrations a day (up from 100, 2 months ago).

As for the cost, well its 4 dedicated Xeon dual CPU servers 2 have 2GB and the other 2 have 4GB with 1.2TB data traffic per server I can tell you its not much under $2,000 including all the software we've bought to enhance the experience at Neowin.

IPB costs money and some of the modules and we have a few scripts that require yearly license fees, just to make this site a little better.

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ads? what ads? ;)

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/me cries at the ignorance at this member especially after knowing he read this thread :cry:

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I can tell you its not much under $2,000 including all the software we've bought to enhance the experience at Neowin.

IPB costs money and some of the modules and we have a few scripts that require yearly license fees, just to make this site a little better.

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Is the $2000 Monthly or Yearly? :blink:

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fcuk ..... holy sh1t..... the data ... FOURRR TERAABYTESSS PLUSS....

i am avid visitor to neowin from past 3 years it was just fun some years ago. right now i am not noob anymore and in middle i stopped coming to this site, as i got workload. but soon i missed the desktop threads and silly questions discussed here . so i am here again regularly from past year.

so much so that i heavily contribute in linux section answering all queries( ask mark jenssen).

neobond. i totally admire the way you have managed to handle this growing community site. if i was you i would had go overwhelmed and left . you and me have talked earlier lots of times ( remember the kidd0 issue. and one day you wanted to setup half life server and i pulled out my googling skils :D )

i wont sleep peacefully tonight until i remove googleads from ADBLOCK.from my MAIN home comp seriously... from ever other place i dont have adblock at all.

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Just another in the line of hundreds of jerks and free-loaders...

:yes: yeahthat.gif

exactly.gif

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How am i a free-loader, i pay rent for my house, i pay my electric bills, i pay my internet subscription, i bought my pc...

Im a jerk because i personally dont want to look at the ads? its shocking how many people are sucking up to the admins, i can appreciate how much time/effort/money goes into Neowin, ive been here through the ups and downs and clicked a lot of ads in my time here.

So kindly get off your high horse and do something constructive, there are plenty of other free sites i can go to but i prefer to stay at neowin and i dont appreciate people like you whose been here for literally 2 minutes telling me.

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Because people look for every reason under the sun to bitch and moan. They want this community, they want to be able to promote all the stuff they make for free, yet they aren't willing to sit and look at a few measely unobtrusive ads.

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Hell, I could look at them. What would be the benefit of that? There is no way on earth an ad could entice me to click on it. If I want something, I, like million of others, go find it via a search engine. So what would be the point in looking at it? What would Neowin gain? I'm confused. I don't have any interest in motorbikes, ergo, I don't look in motorbike shop windows. This is absolutey so basic.

Some people seem to be under an illusion that if you choose not to show ads then you are somehow a criminal or freeloader. I've never heard such utther rubbish. That is just displacing responsibility.

It is the responsibilty of any site which wants to generate revenue from me, to give me something that I feel would be worth me shelling out money for. At the moment Neowin doesn't. That's not a criticism, it's fact. One day, one of the bright-sparks may well hit upon an idea that will make me think "Yeah, that's worth paying for". It's not criminal, it's just absolute common sense and economics. You can't make people have an interest in something that they have no interest in.

There are a number of sites I pay for. So why hasn't Neowin enticed my money from me? That is not my problem -- that is, with respect, Neowin's problem to answer. So maybe it's time to concentrate that time and effort on thinking up new solutions instead of insulting your Membership? That latter, I know doesn't generate funds at all!

P.S. For the record, some time ago I arranged with Neobond to give Neowin five free copies of our next commercial skin, so that they can use them for competitions, etc as they so wish. (Yes, they could even sell them.) So please, don't believe that if people don't look at the 'measly' ads, they don't support Neowin.

Edited by SniperX
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If this site went under, there's about a zillion others that could replace it in 10 seconds. Unfortunately.

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Thats so true, but as long as Neowin is visited as well as it is theres no reason to assume we could be replaced 'easily'.

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I currently use adblock, I never see ads. But once adblocks gets a white list feature, I'm definately going to add Neowin onto the white list and click on ads often.

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Im the same, my filter set up is really restrictive, and it blocks pretty much every ad.

I do want to help though, i am a subscriber (although with the bandwidth bill, dont suppose that really helps)

The problem is i dont really click on ads (although google adsense ad's are the best, they actually relate to the page im looking at) they never interest me, if i want to find a program, or a company to get services off, ill google around for the best deal/feature set.

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Hmm

Well I block all the ads on Neowin except for the Google adsense text based ones, as they're not really noticable.

But that's why I'm now a subscriber, and will continue to be. I don't expect to use a site as outstanding as neowin for nothing.

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He's one of the owners of the site... he can say and do whatever he wants.

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Well that sucks, he shouldn't be able to do everything.

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Yes he should.

Im sure if you were forking out $$ for a massive site like neowin, you'd want to be able to do everything.

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I would become a subscriber to get only 1 or 2 of them features! Great post you have there.

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hehe Me too, that's for sure. Especially the dynamic sigs and staff comments/ratings. I remember to this day a Member of staff giving me a warning for something that I still cannot fathom even now. There was absolutely nothing in the rules about what I did, I wasn't asked to stop by anyone, I just got warned without, er, any warning. I stress there was absolutely no way of knowing beforehand that what I did was breaking any rules. Yes, we all moan about our warnings but that was just grossly over-reactive, sheer weight-throwing indulgence, and, I dare say, a little bit personal.

Aside from that, I think everyone benefits by being able to pass criticism. There shouldn't be such a thing as "staff for life". If you don't earn it, or you abuse it, you should lose it. You can't judge performance when it's not being measured by those who are at the sharp end of it. Would I do it on my own sites? Damn right I would. And I'd lose the least popular staff Member each year, without any guilty feeling whatsoever.

As for the dynamic sigs, I dread to think how many seconds they delay a page when you have a few on single page.

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You know I was just looking at the subscriber thing and its ?6.69 for a year, I think I will subscribe tonight. I really think Neowin should do a Subscriber drive or something promote it for a weekend and stuff before I looked I didn't even know how much it costed.

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You know I was just looking at the subscriber thing and its ?6.69 for a year, I think I will subscribe tonight. I really think Neowin should do a Subscriber drive or something promote it for a weekend and stuff before I looked I didn't even know how much it costed.

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It's not the cost for me. It's a sort of principle. If I subscribe now, I'm sort of saying "yeah what you are giving me for the money is worth it." It's really not at the moment, but it could be. I don't need an email address and the little "Subscriber" badge doesn't really cut it for me.

But here's another one -- I just tried looking and I can't even find a "Donate" button. Perhaps it's not that people don't want to give back, so much as the opportunity simply isn't there?

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It's not the cost for me. It's a sort of principle. If I subscribe now, I'm sort of saying "yeah what you are giving me for the money is worth it." It's really not at the moment, but it could be. I don't need an email address and the little "Subscriber" badge doesn't really cut it for me.

But here's another one -- I just tried looking and I can't even find a "Donate" button. Perhaps it's not that people don't want to give back, so much as the opportunity simply isn't there?

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I get what ya saying there, for me though I have lost more money down the back of my Sofa so its like.. I figure ile just help out Neowin is Great some of the ideas you have would cost them money to implement and ya know you need money to make money so by me subscribing maybe they will be 1 step closer to doing maybe 1 of the things you suggest.

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/me cries at the ignorance at this member especially after knowing he read this thread :cry:

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I have few reasons not to view ads,

(1) Ads often promote spyware

The "Next Generation Smilies", or the "Sexy Wallpapers", or "Your Internet is slow, Accelerate it!", and few other thousand intrusive adverts. Whether its text-based, or picture based, most advertisers generate alot of revenue from spyware or spyware-related tools. Its all bad.

(2) Ads often carry cookies, which I feel intrudes on my privacy

Logging infomation about myself, another reason why I dont click on them, hell even a huge amount of javascript trackers annoy me. intellitxt.com, alexa.com etc, no privacy here :(

(3) Ads distract my viewing pleasure

I view the content on the internet, not for the ads, but the content. Having some flashing banner ad telling me "click here" can be distracting from the main article.

The Fact is, most sites only use banner ads as the *only* income, and to pay for an ad-free service can be expensive or in some cases theres no option to remove the banner ads. I'm not to refering to neowin here (as its good value), but in more general terms.

By blocking the adverts that I wouldnt click on *ever*, I'm not harming the industry. I'm also saving bandwidth for both myself, and the server.

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a huge amount of javascript trackers annoy me. intellitxt.com

lol. When I meet the individual who created that annoyance, I'll slap them that fast they'll think they're surrounded! It is singularly the most annoying one for me.

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It's not the cost for me. It's a sort of principle. If I subscribe now, I'm sort of saying "yeah what you are giving me for the money is worth it." It's really not at the moment, but it could be. I don't need an email address and the little "Subscriber" badge doesn't really cut it for me.

But here's another one -- I just tried looking and I can't even find a "Donate" button. Perhaps it's not that people don't want to give back, so much as the opportunity simply isn't there?

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well if you knew anything about the "subscription" it is just a donation. you don't get an email set up for you until you tell them you want it. they are just giving that as extra basically for your donation.

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