My issue has nothing to do with ME wanting any money for helping out. I already help out my encouraging my text based game players (Can be seen through my profile) to come here and register and post. A few have. I also post on other game/computer related sites where people show interest in Wii sales, PS3 lack of sales, etc etc.

My issue is more along the lines of this. You have something that's going to be huge. VGChartz is already huge and it has a lot of room to grow. Game reviews, release dates, hell walkthroughs, *hint hint*, gamer news, are all avenues that can be explored to further increase the userbase here. Now, what's being asked of the community is this. I've done the core work, I've done what I can to make the site appealing, now it's up to you to attract more people, which increases ad revenue, for me, so I can herein make more profit from my work. I need you to do all the dirty work for me, which still makes me more money, so I can work on other things which will, make me more money.

I know I'm being cynical here, but come on. You can't really believe that this site is just for the community and has little to nothing to do with the potential revenue it can generate. I just feel, strongly mind you, that if something is doing extremely well, and every indication is this site is, that for you to require people to help out, there should be some kind of incentive to do so. This doesn't mean if I were interested, and I am, I just lack the time to dedicate as I said awhile ago about being a mod, that I would demand some kind of bonus, it'd just be appreciated because I'm doing 2 groups of people a favour. The community, and the owners ($$$).

 

If this site were really to turn from hobby to business they surely would have to pay for those positions (or hand out shares of the company). Voluntaries will do fun stuff and simple stuff, but they won't be there to put in extra hours to do the gritty stuff and the truly inspired stuff to make this website look professional. By the way, 1-2% click through would be quite outstanding. 0,1% is a more realistic extimate.

I've looked into adsense, since I run it for my website, and got a general idea what most people get for CTR, and it's in the 1-3% range.  Most of the clicks are people helping out because they know it generates revenue.  I highly doubt anyone here actually clicks the ad links because they really wanted to buy a wii at wiishoponline.com!

And for Talon, I'm not even suggesting the incentive be something huge.  Hell, let's assume it's 3K a month, and all operating costs are $750 a month (WAAAY too high, but I'm being modest)  that leaves $2250 left.  A nice incentive would be a game a month, or cash value for a game a month.  If there's 4 people, that's $300, which still leaves $1950 left over.  If I knew I was getting a game a month, I'd be happy. :P

 

I was just curious if ioi had anything to say about all of this...

rendo said: I've looked into adsense, since I run it for my website, and got a general idea what most people get for CTR, and it's in the 1-3% range.  Most of the clicks are people helping out because they know it generates revenue.  I highly doubt anyone here actually clicks the ad links because they really wanted to buy a wii at wiishoponline.com!

Only ioi has the real % for vgchartz, but from my experience with AdSense (I'm paying Google a handsome amount every month for posting my ads) the click-through is a bit lower than you think, though it may depend on the site. One thing though, what you promote is fraud, click fraud, and there are companies on the other side (not all of them evil faceless corporations) who actually get hurt by this kind of behaviour. I don't think you help vgchartz when you advise the users to screw vgchartz' advertising partners.

ioi said: Hi all, a few comments on the interesting path this thread has taken 1) Anyone who thinks a site can generate 1-3% click through is delusional. Anyone who thinks or promotes click fraud is not welcome here. We generate a normal (about 0.3%) click through from people genuinely clicking ads (I hope) much like any other site. If adsense start seeing large ctrs you'll be kicked off. So you can revise your estimated revenue downwards significantly. If I was running vgchartz purely to make money the site would have been closed down a long time ago as my hourly rate would be less than a dollar. 2) The main purpose of this site is videogame charts. That is what most of my time and effort goes into. I also have a full time job, a fiancee, a close family and a number of other commitments. I feel as though my time is spread rather thin at the moment in terms of coding the site, aquiring and calculating new data (not to mention all the old data), moderating, thinking of ways to expand and improve upon the site and so on. At the moment, any help I get will be voluntary, the site isn't making any profit at the moment. All I want is a few hours a week from a few different people. If we did ever get to ign levels then these people would of course benefit (although I think that is optimistic) but at the moment I just want some mods, some people to ensure we get fresh news stories on the site, some people to maybe write news stories (we could have 2-3 official news contributors maybe and get rid of the user-submitted format at the moment - would be a good thing to put on a CV and so on), someone to advise me on marketing the site, help set up some ads or think of ways to get more people on the site and maybe build an image, an aspiring graphics designer (although I have a few already) to maybe design some banners and stuff - again great for a CV. Stuff like that really. I'd be happy to add a links or credit page that links back to personal pages, in exchange for any help we get on the site. Hope this explains a little more where I am coming from...

 Go look into it more.  Perhaps you have poorly placed ads, but the average I've seen and personally experienced is 1-3%.

I might be interested in helping out. I'm a stats junky which, combined for my love of video games and the industry, lead me to this site. Not quite sure what you mean by chart editor though. Is this someone who creates the charts based on info given to that person or do they play a role in collecting or analyzing the acquired data? In terms of a news position, are you looking for stories that are linked to other sites that may have reported it first or are you looking more for exclusive vgchartz stories/news/interviews?

RavenShadow said: I might be interested in helping out. I'm a stats junky which, combined for my love of video games and the industry, lead me to this site. Not quite sure what you mean by chart editor though. Is this someone who creates the charts based on info given to that person or do they play a role in collecting or analyzing the acquired data? In terms of a news position, are you looking for stories that are linked to other sites that may have reported it first or are you looking more for exclusive vgchartz stories/news/interviews?

Welcome RavenShadow to the forum!

You can't generate them yourself because they monitor that. I just know how to work a site. ;)

Show me yours and I'll show you mine. ;)