Advertisements for big money?

[Bagder]

I know this has been discussed in the past but I feel it is a topic that can be taken another round.

Let's say someone mailed us with a suggestion to put (non-intrusive) text ads on the front page of rockbox.org and they're willing to pay us 500USD/month for this.

Would this be agreeable?

[AlexP]

Non-intrusive as in a couple of sentences at the bottom for example?  Personally I don't really have a problem with it so long as the front page looks like rockbox with the odd advert and not some adverts, oh and here is rockbox too!

However, I tend to take a pragmatic view that for reasonable amounts of cash it is worth it, others are more idealogical.

My £0.02

[petur]

I would have nothing against it, certainly not text adds.
As long as the content/adds ratio remains sane

[GodEater]

Yeah go for it - 500USD a month is nice little addition to the Rockbox fund.

[Llorean]

I wouldn't object to adds at all as long as they're never misleading or disruptive.

[dionoea]

Wouldn't you be able to make more than $500 per month with stuff like Google AdSense? (According to alexa rockbox.org has a respectable traffic rank so that must surely be worth some money)

[LambdaCalculus]

I wouldn't mind as long as the ads are sensible, and they're not disruptive.

[Bagder]

Google Ads only provide good money if you have an audience of frequent ad-clickers, which my experience says hackers (like Rockbox kind of hackers) are usually not. So, no I doubt google ads would come close to 500 USD/month.

[Mikerman]

As a non-developer site denizen, I would have no issue with non-obtrusive and non-numerous ads, especially if they don't impede load time (at some sites, I have found that ads are set to load first and there can be considerable delay, especially over, yes, dial-up).

In fact, I would encourage a trial as to this.  Quite candidly, even $100-$200 per month would be beneficial, for developer equipment (and beer) runs.

Indeed, if the ads are keyed well, they could be informative.  Such as, ads to emerging DAP player marketers.

[Domonoky]

If it is only a small, non-obtrusive Ad, go for it, its worth the money...
if we had 10 of this ads, we could a pay a dev full time for rockbox ! :-)

[Mad Cow]

I say go for it, I for one use adblock with firefox so it won't affect me at all. But even if I didn't use it I wouldn't care, as long as it's a banner at the top or something and doesn't impede browsing I won't care.

[DancemasterGlenn]

Go for it, I know the money will be put to good use.

[scorche]

I am definitely for non-obtrusive text ads, however I don't know if we should discount AdSense so soon.  We could have a month to try out a few things...

And I think we have enough "Go for it"s, so please only say something if you are discussing or saying "no".

[crzyboyster]

My position would be that putting text only ads on the rockbox.org frontpage (or maybe on all wiki pages?) would be a great idea.

I have a question about how these google adsense things work. So say we tell people to click on the ads just for the sake of raising money. Would this get even more money for the rockbox fund if it's on a click and pay basis?

[Bagder]

I have a question about how these google adsense things work. So say we tell people to click on the ads just for the sake of raising money. Would this get even more money for the rockbox fund if it's on a click and pay basis?

Yes, that's how google adsense ads work, but if we'd go with them we could never ever write anything that would encourage people to do this. In fact, just mentioning the ads (on the same or a related site) has been deemed inappropriate by google in the past (and then they revoke your rights to display their ads). Which is another reason I like ads that pay a fixed amount per month.