Hi, gang -- I have a request from our site's sales manager to find more pages on which to display banner ads for advertisers who want to reach employee benefit professionals (you!). These ads on other pages of our site are an important part of our revenue (which goes to cover salaries and benefits for four employees, server costs, etc.).

Could you live with seeing a banner ad in the top-right corner of the message board pages?

The banners would involve only services or products for employee benefit professionals (no off-topic ads like computer products, etc.). It would be stuff that we think an employee benefit professional would like to know about.

The load time would be practically nil for users with high-speed connections; even with dial-up connections they'd cause a delay of only a couple of seconds.

The banners would not place a "cookie" on your computer or otherwise track you if you decide to click on one for more information. (Per our strict privacy policy.)

Please let me know if this proposal causes stomach-churning for you (post a message in this thread or email me at davebaker <at-sign-here> benefitslink.com). And if you're OK with it, let me know that, too.

THANKS!

Dave Baker
Webmeister

Is it possible to see an example?

Dave - your site provides an invaluable benefit to many people. Therefore, its fine with me if you need to place additional banner ads. And thanks for asking for our opinions.

I don't see any problem with it as was described. Why don't you go one step further and have a place for members to share/advertise? Don't know exactly how, but it seems it might be of help. I have noticed that there are all types of members (attorney's, CPA, TPA's, producers, etc.) who might be interested.

Nothing is free...so my vote would be yes...not that my vote counts for much, being a mostly quiet newbie!

I agree with PIP.

Hi Dave,

I've got no problem with this, users don't pay for the message board, so ad revenue is certainly a reasonable concept. Customer demand for additional ad space - sounds like things are going well for BenefitsLink. Congratulations.

JIM

I too agree with PIP
We are just happy to have access to the board.

I also agree with PiP.

Hi Dave,

I vote for the banner ads too. Thanks for asking!

Go for it. Thanks for asking!
-John

I agree with all of the sentiments already expressed.

I agree. Your services is "priceless", why shouldn't you be compensated?

Jim

Add my "no problem" to the sentiments already expressed.

You provide a real service to those of us who use these message boards, the daily e-mail summaries and all the other features that are provided.

You've got my vote as well. No problem whatsoever.

No problem here!

It's fine with me. Please no flashing lights and dancing bears though.

Go for it! Dancing beers ok with me. Oh wait...bears...nevermind.

While I detest popups, banners and other obnoxious ads, I know that there is a cost in making this board available. Thank you for trying to do it in a way that respects our feelings and opinions. One request: that a portion of the revenues from the ads be used to expand capacity so that I don't get the overflow message every time I try to reply to a posting (during work hours).
Thanks for all you do.

vebaguru,

Thanks for your response!

Please reply to this post and enter the exact text of the overflow message so I can help further.

Whatever happened to the idea of using ads?