Blog piece: Ads, Supporters, Endorsements and Bandwidth Throttling

[psycros]

What if you're on dial-up, or 1MB/sec download speeds are a dream to you? All this talk is pretty pointless huh? Yeah, it is. Sorry about that.

 

/raises hand

 

Still went premium, though :)

[eleglas]

Oh my friend. I had no idea. I've been here on the nexus for years, but I never really thought about all this. I feel like a complete jerk, I've been using this wonderful, amazing site for so long without giving anything back. What a c*%! I am.

 

But I've always pondered over whether to become a Premium Member, and now it is decided. Not only will I gladly pay for it, but I will be paying for the permanent option. I feel better, just don't spend it all in one place :D

[Jason310M]

I just disabled my ad blocker for this site! I felt bad about it after reading this. Cheers.

[eleglas]

May I suggest one thing? I still feel like a bit of a douche, perhaps every now and then I could donate something, maybe you could add a donation service? Trust me, you'd be swimming in the money.

[KennyMcCormick315]

This is nice. Once I get some dosh I'll probably get the supporter thing.

 

 

The main reason I run ABP is because I don't trust advertising companies. Malicious advertisements end up on legit sites like the Nexus all the time, despite the best efforts of webmasters. So, in the nature of the security of my machine, I have ABP turned on for all sites.

 

 

That's fine for sites like Youtube which are too big to fall. I couldn't care less about Google not getting my ad revenue, they make a bloody fortune they'll be fine. But small sites like this? They don't have that luxury. They need their ad revenue to sustain, and often offer things like premium memberships. But why, then, if I love the Nexus and understand its financial woes, have I never purchased it?

 

 

I'm one broke MFer. Like, seriously broke. I've got just $5USD in the bank right now, and that's very much the norm. I simply cannot justify a $65 fee to a site, even though I love it dearly, and get nothing in return. I need that $65 to get to work and back over the coming week. I need that $65 to keep the fridge stocked for the week. I simply do not have the budget for a lifetime premium account here, as much as I would like to get one, and nothing it offers makes it worth the money to budget that $65 in somewhere.

 

"But Kenny, what about faster downloads?"

 

My DSL is too crappy for that to be an issue. The current cap is about 60% higher than the fastest my internet can actually download, and where I live it's either this or dialup. So that has precisely zero value to me. I don't even see the entire range of bandwidth normal users have available, let alone get any use of having unlimited bandwidth. Even if it did, I'm rather patient about these things, having unlimited speeds would not be worth $65 to me.

 

 

That's where the supporter thing being presented here comes in. I can afford that. I don't have to choose between supporting the Nexus and eating for the week. I can do both. So I will. It's all I can spare, but spare it I will. I do love the Nexus and I want to support it as best I can without breaking the bank or opening my computer, something I obviously cannot afford to replace, to malware.

 

 

I'm also glad there's no plans on freaking out and telling ad blockers to bugger off. That was a huge annoyance when I was on The Escapist's forums. It made me resent the site, not want to support it even more. The fact that Robin is not doing such things makes me like the Nexus even more than I already do.

 

 

 

Will I ever go premium? Perhaps when the cost of a lifetime Premium account doesn't mean I live on Kraft M&C for a week I will. Perhaps when I can just shrug off that kind of dosh I'll get a lifetime premium. But right now that's just not the case. So in the mean time I will get the supporter package instead.

[sangimpur]

You had me at Hello?

 

Actually you had me at "We get by for two reasons; ads, and Premium Members. They’re both ridiculously important "

 

Now I didn't sign up for Premium to be ridiculously important to you (though that is a life goal in RL :). I signed up after realizing Nexus adds more value to Skyrim than Bethesda and the financial side of that was out of balance (sorry the mind wanders during V E R Y long articles).

 

Not a modder by any means and am resisting becoming so - no offense. I'm here to enhance Skyrim with the boundless creativity of truly talented fans not earn my software engineering degree

 

Was a good little freeloader though.... not blocking adds, reading the f*#@ing manual (description), offering constructive criticism, endorsing/voting only when merited and effusive praise when warranted. Still, the guilt preyed that such a great site with the right philosophy should struggle without a little helping hand...... So Premium Lifetime it is....

 

Thanks for all the hard work on this killer site.... keep it going!

[fxdwgnexus]

I just finished reading your entire post. It was very informative about how and why you are using ads on your site.

Even before finishing, you had me convinced about ads and ad blockers.

 

However, my network setup at home uses a dedicated box that hosts my Untangle applications, which preforms duties as a firewall, web filter, virus blocker, spyware blocker, spam blocker, phish blocker,and yes an ad blocker. This setup allows me to not need ad blockers in my web browser. It also means that, to the best of my knowledge, I can't turn off blocking to Nexus, or any other site in particular since it blocks by well-known ad names and addresses. So its an all or none situation.

 

I have and will continue to endorse mods that I like and use. I love what you've set up here and your mod manager makes it all work pretty well. I appreciate the time you are putting into your download scenarios as well. I will take a closer look at membership.

Thanks for all the great work to you and your team.

[HikariNiwa]

This was actually a pretty interesting read. Gonna get me a Supporter Account and Turn off Ad Blocker. Edited February 7, 2013 by HikariNiwa

[Sigus]

I don't know, I happen to very much like Skyrim Nexus and believe that anyone else that like's Skyrim Nexus should support it any way that they can. When I first started to use this site, I will not lie I had a ad-blocker I think, I downloaded about 5-10 mods and then realized that after browsing for about 10 more minutes i was going to be downloading a significant amount more.

 

Well at this point after using a site I have the Ultimate decision to Turn off ad-block or buy a membership. Well luckily for me I am capable of buying a membership and not having to really want a membership and not be able to purchase a membership. I only purchased a one month membership at the time thinking well there is probably not way i will ever need to buy more then this. I must say, I was quite wrong about that and will be purchasing a life time membership.

 

This is due to a lot of different factors that I have come to enjoy about Nexus:

 

1. The community of people that are at Nexus are extremely helpful and Nice. While just browsing the forums I began to notice that there isn't this over whelming amount of hate spam that one would think to find on a website that Catalogs and Distributes a Massive amount of Mods for a PC game. The modding community here is great with people helping with a vast amount of issues and sharing information on how they fixed some issue that was occurring with such and such mod, I'm not sure if this was blind luck with just a large amount of very knowledgeable kind people starting the community or due to the moderators doing an excellent job.

 

2. The price for membership is extremely fair if not borderline under priced, I have to say for a website that carry this much content seems to have very active members and modder's with a well laid out web design as well as great easy to use search function. I was extremely surprised when i saw the price of membership, I had to read it a couple times so that my brain could process what i was getting, at such a good price. I have to say I've seen a large amount of web pages in my day like this that would charge a large lump sum cost to use the service and then if you didn't pay to bad you can't use the services at all.

 

3. Dark0ne don't feel bad to have to talk to use the users and consumers of your web service about have to have ad's and needing to throttle bandwidth and punish those that use add-blocking. I must say I have never seen a Web Master be so overwhelmingly concerned about the Community that his service provides for. In all my years, I haven't seen a plan of action to not only reward member's for contributing to the website via monetary means weather it be ad's or membership or donations, but also for being part of the community as a whole so that mods get the recognition they deserve. I must say I do not believe that you should be the one apologizing for these things but us overwhelmingly thanking you for setting up a service that is in my opinion 100% taking care of the User's who are using the service.

 

4. Well I have to say I do understand using Ad-Blockers as I do use them as they are tethered to my antivirus, Though I have to say this, When you first visit any website I can understand using a ad-block you never know exactly what you are going to run into when you first open a web page as far as ad's go. Plus you never even really know if the service's they provide is worth viewing there ad's for.

 

Here is the catch though, if you find yourself using the website's service on a regular basis or even semi-regular once to twice a month please lift your ad-block for the web page or disable it while viewing the page.

I know that for some people that visit the website that thought of getting a malware or virus would set them back a bit of money as they have no real technical knowledge of how computers operate at a operating system level, and would have to seek out a technician to fix the PC they are using and for a lot of those users its probably the only PC and or Laptop that they own and would be devastating for them not only on a I cant play SKYRIM!!! level but also a personal level of.... oh all my homework and/or work files have just been destroyed and I am going to shell out 100+dollars for some guy to come fix this.

Well as far as I can tell the team here at Skyrim Nexus seem to care a awful lot about there users and I don't Imagine they have a lot of issues with ads installing malware or they would probably get 10,000 complaints per second until it stopped. For those of you that have no choice in the matter of using Ad-blocker such as kids and teenagers that use a single family computer I feel bad that you are going to feel the backlash of a percentage of user's that take advantage of the great service that the Nexus has to offer. Though I imagine you could scrape enough allowance together to buy a prepaid debit card in order to purchase a one month or even subscriber account, If not mow your neighbors lawn or wash his car that should get you the necessary funds :P.

 

5. In closing I would like to thank the Entire Skyrim Nexus Team for making my modding of Skyrim not only take an extremely diminished amount of time by have a well put together and though out website, But for having the User's backs even when you are having hard times of your own, Also making the process's of modding my game a significantly faster and less headache filled process. Please keep up the good work as I'll be around to enjoy it for sometime.

[Talwyn224]

I would add to those who have suggested that a donation button be in place as well as the various levels of subscription. As a premium life member, I think I get excellent value but perhaps it' comes a bit too cheaply? I fully understand that many people are unable or in some case unwilling to spend the money to get life premium membership but to those who can afford it its not a big deal. I fully support what the Nexus does and would gladly donate more to help keep this place solvent and viable.

 

I also understand how ad-blockers really impact on websites who rely on ads to generate revenues however like many people, I strongly distrust intrusive ads, especially ones that install cookies etc nor do I appreciate pop ups for things I have absolutely no interest in what so ever.

 

Anyway, I wish you well with the challenges you face and hope you do implement a donation service so life members how feel that they have more to contribute financially, can do so.