Question on banner add revenue.

[Jim O'Dell]

If a contributor has the banner ads turned off, does this still generate a hit that generates revenue when that page is opened? Silly question, I know. But this came up because my contibutor status lapsed (check sent 8 days ahead of time, holidays, hasn't been logged yet) so I'm seeing the ads. I guess another way to put it is, if as a contributor I allow banner ads, does this generate revenue as opposed to no revenue if I turn the ads off? If so, I'll keep the ads going, even when I get my contributor status back. Jim.

[Josh Reet]

This is one of those things where it really depends on the programming and honesty of the site at hand. It would be technically possible to get a "count" for each ad even if someone had turned them off. But you run the risk of being labeled a cheat if someone caught you doing it that way. The honest way to do it would be to not count it unless they were turned on.

[Jeff Farris]

As a banner advertiser, I believe I am correct in saying that only the "Google Ads" that appear after the first post in a thread would be affected by page counts. We who support SMC directly pay by the month, not the hit.

[Jim Becker]

In general, banner ad "hits", if it was important, would only be registered if you click on them for 'pay by the click' type contracts. Merely seeing them on the page wouldn't matter much...but one taking action by following the ad to where it leads does. This commentary again is general and not specific to SMC.

[Jim Rimmer]

So, then it would be beneficial to SMC to occassionally click on the ads?

[Jeff Farris]

I have this funny mental image of someone sitting in his study clicking Google ads and the back button as fast as he can go.

[Keith Outten]

The SawMill Creek server is setup to log page views not banner ads specifically. This isn't a problem here because only a very small number of people have the option to turn off advertisements, less than 5% so 95% of the page views are serving banner ads.

We currently are serving over ten million page views per month and our Sponsors pay a flat rate for their banner ads. These banners are woodworking specific and aren't a nuisance at all, in fact they often contain valuable information concerning discounts and coupons, etc. I have my account setup to view banner ads, because I don't want to miss an opportunity to support our Sponsors or miss out on valuable information. I must admit I have a financial interest in our banner advertising program but it is minor compared to my sign shop.

The "Other" ads are setup differently but I am not allowed to discuss it publicly.
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[Jim O'Dell]

Thanks for the insight guys! Jim.

[Bill Arnold]

The SawMill Creek server ...

We currently are serving over ten million page views per month ...

I've been under the impression that SMC had its own server. The site referenced in another post as well as Whois indicates that Cox is the ISP of record for the SMC domain. Just curious about which it is.

Also, depending on the statistics one views, records show 80,000 to 100,000 unique page views per month. Is the difference between that figure and your figure of 10,000,000 due to multiple page views by individual members?

Thanks.

[Keith Outten]

Bill,

Cox is our bandwidth provider. The SawMill Creek server is in my work shop office, we own and operate the whole shebang, servers and all. We run Linux and have software installed that provides our server statistics, the ten million page views per month is accurate. Aaron Koehl is our server Administrator, he will be setting up a new primary server for us most likely over the Christmas break. We used to get three years out of our machines, now it is down to just two.
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[Aaron Koehl]

I've been under the impression that SMC had its own server. The site referenced in another post as well as Whois indicates that Cox is the ISP of record for the SMC domain. Just curious about which it is.

Also, depending on the statistics one views, records show 80,000 to 100,000 unique page views per month. Is the difference between that figure and your figure of 10,000,000 due to multiple page views by individual members?

Thanks.

Not sure which statistics you're looking at..

We're currently serving over 10 million page views per month, about 350K per day. Visits per month are rapidly approaching 1 million. To give an idea of what counts as "visit", a user who visits for 2 hour in the morning and 4 hours in the evening would only count as 2 visits for that day. A user who loads one page every 44 minutes all day long only counts as 1 visit.

This quarter shows a 10-15% growth in daily average traffic, while the summer had a slight drop in traffic.