When did I say I don't want input? If I didn't want input I wouldn't of wasted my time typing all those words to you.
It just sounded like your mind was made up, but kk then, I'll bite.
Affiliates and CPAs: That's what we are running now since google saw some titties. Revenue generated by those ads is at best 20-30% of google ads. If I wanted to maximize revenue, there are a ton of annoying things we can do. Giant popup ads that come up when you come to the site where you have to click "Continue to Rerolled.org". I can put advertisement after every 5 posts and if you don't want to see those you have to subscribe to Rerolled.org for $5/mo. I can shrink the forums to a certain width and put a nice siteskin on the forum too.
If all you're gonna do is toss up a banner at the top and bottom, then sure, but that's not the only option. (Also consider that having the forum default set at 40 posts per page REALLY minimizes the banner views. I had to actually give the site another look to see if there were actually ads here.)
I agree that interstitial are shitty for user experience, but a tasteful site skin has never bothered me. They can also be really targeted too. Why not have a different site skin on each main game thread advertising that game? Why not add affiliate links for those games in each of the posts? Why not make review posts for mmo's that aren't covered yet? If there was a quality review for a game that I hadn't tried, I wouldn't mind signing up though a link here. The product review thread could be filled with aff links too. If you're up front about it and not trying to be shady and shilling for shitty products, I don't think most people would mind. It's far less disruptive than some things.
Also, why not have some of the more annoying things, like the ads every 5 posts, appear for non-registered users? People get an incentive to register and you monetize those that don't.
I know some of you think that putting the porn behind a wall is all of the sudden going to kill the community because a few people that saw a picture of a unicorn fucking a vampire suddenly wanted to contribute won't stick around now. But it's really not. The majority of the people on this site read a lot of the other sections of this forum.
So a quick look at the views makes it look like the screenshot section is about 50% of the total views on this site. The FSR thread alone is probably 25-30% or more. That's some damned significant traffic to be walling off. Also consider the the old grizzled vets of the board aren't really the ad clicking type. I'd bet that new visitors are much more likely to click ads than the standard community member here. Are you tracking behavior by user segment to know which type of ad performs best for which users and what each segment's users are worth?
Regarding Porn sites: Most porn sites require a subscription to access content. Others just host videos ripped from the internet and allow users to upload content. They also have actual porn advertisement which probably makes more money than other affiliate programs. I do not want to put porn ads on Rerolled because then the whole site becomes NSFW and then no one can see it at work.
Shit, most porn sites are just glorified landing pages for other porn offers. Also, there's no reason not to have NSFW ads on the NSFW pages. Even if you don't want to go for straight porn, why not slap adult friend finder ads in the pgt? what about okcupid/eharmony ads in the gwbyht?
Ya, it might be a lot of work, but you can't tell me that doing all of that wouldn't be more effective than slapping a couple of google banners up and forgetting about them (while killing half your traffic).
