We are seeing increased site costs with our growing membership and increased activities which is absolutely wonderful! We are curious if members of this forum would object if we began using Google AdSense (link to more information on AdSense) to help defray the costs of maintaining and running the e10Help website. We will not employ any methods that result in pop-up ads or any other means or methods that would be considered intrusive. We value your input and welcome you to participate in this brief poll concerning this decision.
Thank you,
e10Help Moderators
I understand the need to cover site costs and am not opposed to using unobtrusive advertisements for that purpose.
I understand the need to cover site costs but would rather explore other means than the use of advertisement.
I understand the need to defray costs on site upkeep. But like Aaron,
please keep them from being too intrusive. I’m getting close to cutting
off visits to WIRED for their mid-article ads.
I’d be curious how a donation based approach would be received. I enjoy following along Troy Hunts approach he is taking on HaveIBeenPwned.com. He is very open on the cost to keep the site up and it’s a good read on both his donation and sponsorship approaches.
ALWAYS have more than one than one payment option to accept donations!
PayPal can’t tell the difference between Mark Thomas Wonsil and Thomas Mark Wonsil and since he was banned for life, so was I, because we’re apparently the same person.
I would be happy to donate but PayPal even blocks credit cards processed through them. @#$%!
I thought some ads were always part of the plan. I have no objection, and I will donate a few bucks to the cause. Thanks for putting this together with Josh and Jose.
Not just a Paypal donate link, but what about investigating a Patreon? I am not sure if you can do subscription based donations with Paypal like Patreon, and I know Patreon do take a cut, but it does make a simple pay by the month method.
I am very happy to donate in any form though. This site and the Vantage forum has been a real life saver for me at times.
I have to argue with management every year at maintenance renewal time. Any “extras” such as user group fees, conventions, etc. won’t even be considered. I’d love to say we’d contribute, but I don’t see it happening. Between being “at the top of my box” and the shortened work weeks we currently have, paying fees out of my pocket may or may not be possible depending on the set fee or subscription. I’d REALLY hate to lose access to the group. I would like to at least give non-obtrusive ads a chance.
@John_Mitchell we may consider that in the future, but it opens up a maze of things to consider from issues such as perceived favoritism (i.e. veiled advertisement) to expectations of outside influence and control.
One of the things I do like about Patreon, is that as a subscriber you actually see what is being donated per month along with the Patreons monthly goal. Not sure if this is a setting in their configuration to display this information or not, but it does give you a good feel as to how many people are contributing. If everyone who was subscribed to the list donated just $1 then surely your costs would be covered. Not to mention you may have some additional funds to use for things like a competition to pay for some of the expenses to some online training (Pluralsight, or even the next Insights!).
Obviously there are laws for accountability for clubs and societies, (I am assuming that E10Help may qualify under that banner), and no doubt they are different from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. But there lays the dilemma people are faced when attempting to recoup running costs for a NFP site such as this.
Not being affiliated with a corporate is a good thing, it makes it totally clear to the end user that there is no subjective bent on behalf of the vendor, which is something I believe is really been the ethos of both sites since there inception and, I believe held it in good stead. Corporate affiliation from vendors and partners should be avoided, but I could not see any conflict of interest if companies that users belonged to, donating, unless they worked for a partner or a vendor.
Of course going cap in hand to your boss for some cash for a donation to a site that has the potential to provide better information from the vendor, particularly after paying a hefty sum for annual maintenance, may seem a bit irksome.
I can see this could become a fairly complicated discussion point.
At the end of the day two of the things I do love about this site, are the standing rules of no Epicor bashing, no promotion.
As I said before, I am very grateful for the efforts of the team that have dragged the Vantage Forums to the 21st century, and am happy to donate.
Wouldn’t be too horrible for Epicor to be a corporate sponsor. The site is
dedicated wholly to their product and is an epic resource for their
customers.
As long as the information isn’t kept behind a login wall so that search engines can index the information, I’m all for it. That’s what was hard about the Yahoo Group…
Epicor Sponsorship: That’s kind of what the Epicor User’s Group is for. They also have a list server and it’s not bad either. The Yahoo! Group began as an independent bunch- previously called the Gang of ###, where the number changed over the years. The eGroup/Yahoo! group started on 10 September 1998! That’s old in Internet years.
