Weekly Poll: Site Sponsorships
An incredibly important poll for subscribers!
https://www.wincustomize.com/webpoll.aspx
WinCustomize Forums
This week's poll is a little different from what we usually talk about. This week it's all about how we support and fund the site. Currently we support WinCustomize primarily through subscriptions and web ads. However we have repeatedly turned away the much more profitable ads because they're just so darned annoying. We know that at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how well an ad pays if it drives users away. That's why you'll never see pop-ups, hover ads etc on WinCustomize, even though they pay extremely well.
That said, we are still looking to find additional revenue sources, especially as the cost of the site continues to climb. One of the ways is through a "Site Sponsorship" program.
A "Site Sponsorship" is basically where a company decides to sponsor WinCustomize for a month or more at a time. They would get something akin to the image to your left as a static image placement on the site. In the case of the example here, it would be a box added to the WinCustomize sidebar. It's not a typical ad. It doesn't bounce, flash, play sounds or in any way impact your browsing. It's merely a logo placement, perhaps with a brief text message that would be a part of the site.
There's a catch though (there's always a catch). If we were to secure these sponsorships, they would have to be displayed to ALL users, even subscribers.
That's where today's poll comes in. For all of you who are subscribers, or who are thinking of subscribing. Would a sponsorship placement like what I've described be acceptable to you?
Of course, you'd get something in return for such a placement. Sponsorships like this one, run over the course of the year, would directly fund projects like new Subscriber Suites. We could actually afford to hire skinners from Stardock Design to draw up and build several Subscriber Suites in the course of the year.
So, if you were to get additional subscriber suites, would that make the sponsorship placement more acceptable?
Go ahead and vote. We'll tally it up next Monday. And please use the comments here to discuss the proposal, and what would make the addition acceptable to you if it were to happen.
