• Posted 12/19/2024.
    =====================

    I am still waiting on my developer to finish up on the Classifieds Control Panel so I can use it to encourage members into becoming paying members. Google Adsense has become a real burden on the viewing of this site, but honestly it is the ONLY source of income now that keeps it afloat. I tried offering disabling the ads being viewed by paying members, but apparently that is not enough incentive. Quite frankly, Google Adsense has dropped down to where it barely brings in enough daily to match even a single paid member per day. But it still gets the bills paid. But at what cost?

    So even without the classifieds control panel being complete, I believe I am going to have to disable those Google ads completely and likely disable some options here that have been free since going to the new platform. Like classified ad bumping, member name changes, and anything else I can use to encourage this site to be supported by the members instead of the Google Adsense ads.

    But there is risk involved. I will not pay out of pocket for very long during this last ditch experimental effort. If I find that the membership does not want to support this site with memberships, then I cannot support your being able to post your classified ads here for free. No, I am not intending to start charging for your posting ads here. I will just shut the site down and that will be it. I will be done with FaunaClassifieds. I certainly don't need this, and can live the rest of my life just fine without it. If I see that no one else really wants it to survive neither, then so be it. It goes away and you all can just go elsewhere to advertise your animals and merchandise.

    Not sure when this will take place, and I don't intend to give any further warning concerning the disabling of the Google Adsense. Just as there probably won't be any warning if I decide to close down this site. You will just come here and there will be some sort of message that the site is gone, and you have a nice day.

    I have been trying to make a go of this site for a very long time. And quite frankly, I am just tired of trying. I had hoped that enough people would be willing to help me help you all have a free outlet to offer your stuff for sale. But every year I see less and less people coming to this site, much less supporting it financially. That is fine. I tried. I retired the SerpenCo business about 14 years ago, so retiring out of this business completely is not that big if a step for me, nor will it be especially painful to do. When I was in Thailand, I did not check in here for three weeks. I didn't miss it even a little bit. So if you all want it to remain, it will be in your hands. I really don't care either way.

    =====================
    Some people have indicated that finding the method to contribute is rather difficult. And I have to admit, that it is not all that obvious. So to help, here is a thread to help as a quide. How to become a contributing member of FaunaClassifieds.

    And for the record, I will be shutting down the Google Adsense ads on January 1, 2025.
  • Responding to email notices you receive.
    **************************************************
    In short, DON'T! Email notices are to ONLY alert you of a reply to your private message or your ad on this site. Replying to the email just wastes your time as it goes NOWHERE, and probably pisses off the person you thought you replied to when they think you just ignored them. So instead of complaining to me about your messages not being replied to from this site via email, please READ that email notice that plainly states what you need to do in order to reply to who you are trying to converse with.

Results from the call for donations....

WebSlave

WebSlave

The world looks differently to me now.
Staff member
Staff
Endowment
Resident Demon
Joined
Feb 3, 2002
Messages
20,307
Reaction score
826
Points
113
Location
Crawfordville, FL
I have decided to remove the list of donators to this site. Not only am I terribly behind in keeping it up to date (and there is little chance I will be able to do so), some people have requested that their names NOT be posted on the list.

So with the above in mind, I feel it is best to just remove the list, rather than have an incomplete one, where someone might feel slighted because of my failure to keep it updated.

In any event, I truly appreciate all of the people helping me out here with the donations. It has gone a long way to helping me pay for custom programming, support programming when needed, as well as being able to afford a quality server at a quality data center. It also allows me the opportunities to explore other avenues to offer you all even more bells and whistles as well as other upcoming sites that you may find of interest.

THANK YOU ALL!

<center>
<form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
<input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_xclick">
<input type="hidden" name="business" value="[email protected]">
<input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="Donation for continued support of free site">
<input type="image" src="https://www.paypal.com/images/x-click-but21.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="Make payments with PayPal - it's fast, free and secure!">
</form>
</center>
 
Last edited:
Keep it comin

Thanks for posting RZ. I was wondering if it was helping.

Al (gordon) Guetzkow
 
I did not include advertisers in the list, since I believe everyone knows they are contributors. Besides you guys are all listed on your very own Supporters Page.

Speaking of which, 5 of the 7 renewal notices I sent out on Friday have had positive returns. And there is another advertiser that lapsed that is trying hard to get it together to come back.

So maybe things are turning around.

Thanks everyone.
 
Holy Mackeral!!

Dang Ken, I overlooked yours somehow. FACE IS RED!! Yours came right in the thick of things. I remember sending you a reply, but I must not have printed it out. I went by the printouts when I made up the list.

Sorry guy! I've got you in there now.

Jeez, did I miss anyone else??
 
Oh yeah, while I am at it. I haven't been to the post office box recently. Darn computer problems been keeping me busy. But I'll be running by there on Tuesday.

Thanks you guys.
 
Thank you Rich...

As you can see from all the donations there are a lot of people who love this site. I think the thanks is to you (Rich) for giving all of us a great place to come to.

I am glad to see so many people help out!:D
 
Maybe I am wrong here but I feel that list should be a heck of a lot longer. I would hate to see things end there. Rich is there a way of updating that list ? C'mon everyone cough up one stinkin dollar !


Gary
 
Uhh, Gary, except for three donations that came in today, it IS uptodate.

And I'm going to add them just as soon as I finished his message.
 
Don't mean to be a pest Rich it's just that IMHO that list should be a lot longer from all the people who use this website. There are 71 people on that list ( unless I miscounted ) and you said that there was actually three more that you have not added yet, which would bring the total count to 74 ( respectively ). Now if there are about 3,000 active users then IMO that is a really small percentage of just over 2%. I don't think it would be unreasonable to ask for 10% of the active users to step up.


Take a minute and think if this was a paysite ............ C.mon kick in a buck or two !! Where are you going to get this much entertainmnet, information, etc. for free ? This is a great site and if you didn't agree then you wouldn't keep coming back !!! Think about how much you might miss this site if Rich just got tired of doing everything and paying for everything and said " SCREW IT " or how stupid you would feel if because of expenses it was turned into a paysite and then just for the priveledge of posting an animal for sale it cost you say $50 a year to be able to do that when you could have done that for free ?

Gary
 
Gary,

Don't be so hard on people. I am actually VERY surprised as many people have donated as they have. I had several people suggest I do this for quite a long time now and thought it would be a waste of my time to even try. But when advertisers began dropping out, I REALLY got worried.

If all of the people saying they are working on banners to advertise here come through with their promises, then I will be a happy camper and won't have to sweat it about the bills I have to pay for the server. I got the cheapest server with the most 'oomph' that I could afford, so with a few extra bucks, maybe I could get one with a little more beef. And I would REALLY feel a whole lot more secure if I could afford to have nightly backups done of the server. But that additional $1000+ per year is hard to swallow.

Anyone out there know how to set up a mirror site? If I could do a nightly copy to a backup server, I would feel a lot better. You all do realize, that if the hard drive crashes on the server, then ALL of this could be lost? I have been doing SQL dumps of the database, but I don't have a clue if that will be sufficient to bring it all back or not. Certainly having to rebuild and reinstall everything from scratch will be one major headache. Fortunately, hard crashes aren't all that common (I specified an IBM SCSI hard drive on the server), but they do happen.
 
Rich,

I have a confession to make, and it shames me to do so.

There I was starting to get upset, because I had been checking the General Business Discussions and the Discussions About This Site forums pretty frequently to hopefully see some thanks posted for the donations. I, of course, did not see such a posting on those forums. Yes that bothered me somewhat; and now it bothers me and shames me even more that I was getting upset over nothing (as usual). I guess I never would have imagined that thanks would be posted here in the BOI, but when I think of it in retrospect, I guess this is the appropriate place. Afterall, this is the forum in which we either call em bad guys or good guys, and I guess you posting your thanks here is your way of calling us good guys.

Sorry I doubted your gratitude even for a moment. I really should know you better by now, you are a class act. Thanks for the nice thank you note to everyone. It has been a pleasure to help you out because your site certainly has been a worthwhile diversion and has helped me out a few times.

Best regards,
Glenn Bartley
 
Glenn,

I wish I could say my logic about where to post this thread was that deeply thought out, but I thought the BOI would be best simply because it is the most heavily traveled forum on this site. And I really wasn't sure this would be appropriate at all, since not everyone really wants to be publicly thanked like this.

I have to admit I am pretty humbled by the number of people whom have contributed. The uncountable number of times I have gotten frustrated by some of the shenanigans going on in this site and some of the hurdles I have had to overcome just keeping this up and running have several times gotten me VERY close to throwing in the towel. And I thought that although a few people might miss the entertainment, nobody would really give a damn one way or the other.

But to see how many people have been willing to dig into their pockets and help when things were looking kind of bleak, has been a real eye opener for me. When several advertisers in a row dropped out, I really thought the show was over with. I would have hated to think I wasted all my time and effort with this site, but I was fully prepared to accept that and let it go.

Again, thanks everyone............
 
Rich,

I pay over $60 a month (maybe over $70 by now my wife takes care of the bils) and I think I spend almost as much time on your site as I do watching the premium channels I pay so much for! It was definitely worth a donation. My wife might not agree, but she does not have to know everything, and I am pretty sure she would think my time and money better spent here than on a porn site!!!!!

This site is well worth a donation now and again. Thanks again for the wonderful site.
Best regards,
Glenn
 
Oh boy I am tired. What I meant to say was I pay a lot for cable TV, and this site is a lot better than most of the junk I pay so much for to the cable company - so why not help you out for all your hard work to give us something I and others truly enjoy. Keep up the great work!!!!!!!:)
 
Try this to fix spacing problem w/tables

Rich,

Here's a link to use to deal with that spacing problem on the board:

http://beta.ezboard.com/fcooltipsntricksfrm9.showMessage?topicID=9.topic

Just do a cut and paste into the java app, then hit the button, then cut and paste the result back. These boards handle hard returns weird.

Hope that helps. I might be broke, but I can donate info. =)

Best,

Brian
 
Not much in life is free!

Thanks for all the hard work. As anyone knows that read my posts for Rob@RK Reptiles, I am a single mom with a sick child. I came up with a donation and I sure hope more people do too.
Don't take what is free for granted, the freedom might be gone someday. My son and I both read the posts (except I won't let him read all the jokes) and I enjoy the site. I like having somewhere to check for honesty about who to deal with and help with problems.
Candy King
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top