So few free member read them because free members aren't allowed to post on political threads.
Not necessarily. Before free members were able to post, they still weren't reading political threads.
If they were it would be a lot more or at least some more page views for you.
Free members can browse the entire site, including threads they can't post on.
Just like SI in the old days, a common trait of new members is that they have an interest in the stock market.
I see banner ads at political sites all the time. Surely some of those are paid ads aren't they?
Sure.
Know which publishing niche (we're considered a "Publisher" in the advertising parlance) pays the highest rates for ads?
Finance. Market-related sites.
I've never actually seen any ad network show rates for political sites. My guess would be that sites that focus on politics run ads that pay about 1/10th CPM (Cost Per Thousand impressions) what Finance sites get or, far worse, CPC (Cost Per Click) ads. When we've been especially weak on ad sales, you'll see them here. "Shoot the duck". "Free iPods" and the like. They're the pits.
If you could do a few banner ad trades with other political sites you might be able to attract new members to the political boards.
Emphasis mine.
We're NOT a political site and we have no desire to attract new members to the political boards.
Then you could flood those people with millions of banners and make millions of dollars.
Million of banners means hundreds of dollars if you're stuck with the really low-paying CPM ads or CPC ads. It's a common misconception that an ad view is worth real money. It's not. A typical ad impression is worth less than a penny, with most coming in at less than 1/10th of a cent, even on Finance sites. On Political sites that're able to get ads, 1/100th of a cent would be good.
I said "able to get ads". Most message-board sites have a hard time getting ad networks to work with them. Check out ad networks sometime and you'll see that most spell it right out that they won't work with message-board sites. They work with us only because we're message boards of the 800-lb gorilla variety, and because we're focused on Finance.
I do have some future plans regarding political discussion, but it really doesn't involve Silicon Investor very directly.
Silicon Investor is a stock market discussion site. Period. Yes, other discussions take place here, but that's not what we're "about". Even the name should make that obvious.
We're still working on salvaging the strong brand SI has enjoyed as a financial discussion site. And to do that, we must focus on financial discussion.
Bottom line: Political forums will be tolerated to the extent they don't make too much work for Dave or dilute the content of the market threads that are our bread and butter. They won't become front-burner or a focus of the site. I can't/won't share all the financial details of how we operate and how we're doing, but believe me when I say that if we encouraged participation in political forums in the way you suggest, it would be financial suicide. I know yours and SiouxPal's input on this matter is very well-intentioned, but it's very misguided. If the political discussion suddenly completely dried up, there would be zero negative impact on our earnings, and I suspect there might actually be positive impact because I'd no longer have to go through the exercise I so often do with prospective advertisers when they find a political thread, tell me they don't want their ads on their posts, and I have to try (not always successfully) to convince them that because only long-time subscribers use those threads, mostly those who were once active in the market but no longer are, ads are rarely seen in those threads.
Silicon Investor will remain first and foremost a place for INVESTORS. It can't be any other way. |
