Vgchartz taking advertising too far?

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ioi said:
@billy07, what is your problem?

You subscribe to NPD numbers - how much do they charge you for that? ~$100,000 is about right for a yearly subscription.

How much do we charge you for our data? $0.

Now the reason we don't charge for our data is twofold:

1. It is not accurate enough, imo, for us to sell it (yet).
2. I want to offer a different service to NPD. Think of it as McDonalds vs a gourmet restaurant, a Volkswagen Polo vs a Ferrari. Both do a similar job but one does it far better and thus can charge far more for it. You are basically saying a Polo isn't as good as a Ferrari so it has no value whatsoever??

I've actually been approached by numerous analysts to sell them data (which I could have made a killing doing) but told them I am not interested, it isn't how I want vgchartz to go. That said, I can't run vgchartz at a loss. I put a lot of hours in, have mounting costs and offer something unique - why do I not have a right to make some money from it? By doing it through advertising as opposed to charging for membership it should be of as little inconvenience and cost to you, the users, as possible. Show me a site that does not use advertisements? GAF is plastered with google ads, what services do they offer besides a forum? VG Chartz is actually about much more than just the data - over 1/3 of the monthly hits are from the forum and another 15% from the game database, 10% from user profiles. So well over half of the impressions we serve are nothing to do with the sales charts. If myspace, facebook, every forum in existance can advertise then why can't we? Take the immense overhead of putting out numbers each week out of the equation if you want to and view the site as a social networking / forum (which is why you say you are here).

As for the numbers being inaccurate - did you look at this months software vs NPD? Decent match as far as I'm concerned and actually pretty amazing all things cosidered that we even get as close as we do. You are obviously pretty ignorant to statistics and sampling to have made some of the comments you have.

So as others have stated, if you don't like the ads and you don't like the numbers then find another site to frequent.

 Here Here.