Fmttm Progress at Last?

F

fmttmadmin

Administrator
Staff member
Well, after a month of earning less than £3 a day (gross) from this site - we may have finally started to find a formula that will bring in some revenue. Without revenue, as so many of us know only too well at present, you cannot keep things going. It is early days, as in it was only installed this morning but hopefully this works better. The new google auto ads were really not working well for us, especially if you used a tablet. I even sat a webinar with google on auto ads - and received lots of advice from them but the more we saw it on practice it appeared there were more flaws than pluses in a message board at least. (I never understood why people didn't believe me that I had spoken at length with people from google in California about fmttm - we exchanged emails and then we arranged a telephone conference thing, two or three times).
Obviously this turned out to be the worst possible time to change a website. With no football and appalling changes going on outside our doors. Hopefully this will start to actually be viable now going forward. But as I say it is early days or day. Thanks for sticking with it.
 
(I never understood why people didn't believe me that I had spoken at length with people from google in California about fmttm - we exchanged emails and then we arranged a telephone conference thing, two or three times).
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Surely thats around ads, which google will happily help you integrate because you are a revenue stream for them? rather than the lady from google telling you how to fix the myriad of problems on the old site such as report button not working and the page jumping around on mobile because of the news ticker loading in, menus that dont work, any post with a > symbol in it truncating all content after it and so on.

I'd assume most the problems here stem from moving to a new domain which wont carry the same weight with advertisers as the old one. There are many message boards online that manage to make good income through advertising and affiliate schemes. Many people on here will link to websites like amazon and ebay which could be generating affiliate income, and users have repeatedly said they would be willing to pay for ad-free access which would also provide an income stream.
 
TheFair86 said:
Surely thats around ads, which google will happily help you integrate because you are a revenue stream for them? rather than the lady from google telling you how to fix the myriad of problems on the old site such as report button not working and the page jumping around on mobile because of the news ticker loading in, menus that dont work, any post with a > symbol in it truncating all content after it and so on.

I'd assume most the problems here stem from moving to a new domain which wont carry the same weight with advertisers as the old one. There are many message boards online that manage to make good income through advertising and affiliate schemes. Many people on here will link to websites like amazon and ebay which could be generating affiliate income, and users have repeatedly said they would be willing to pay for ad-free access which would also provide an income stream.
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As discussed before an ad-free version as an option in addition to the PDF fanzine would work well for me. May also save on printing costs if you could move more people over to getting the PDF version.
 
"(I never understood why people didn't believe me that I had spoken at length with people from google in California about fmttm - we exchanged emails and then we arranged a telephone conference thing, two or three times)."

That's because over a long period of time you mentioned your conversations with 'the lady from Google' and promised that the site would soon be improved especially in terms of being able to use the site during/after matches, a lot of time passed and the board went from bad to worse. Surely you can understand why people doubted you?
 
It is easy to assume. I don't know how to do ad-free income, I have made that clear. I have written to many websites for help but only one has ever replied. But I cannot see how I could make ad-free viable in any case. I have no idea how to set up affiliate links etc. If anyone has any actual experience then I would be glad to hear it.
As for google - I never ever said that I was asking about how to fix individual elements of the site - but they did offer advice about the overall operation. But I have never ever been in control of those elements. It is like running a site where the people in control hide all the workings from you - that has been the case for me for 20 years. I never access under the bonnet. I have a little bit more now but still not enough.
But if you know about affiliate stuff etc that would be very welcome. The domain name switch might be an interesting point although this place is still under the fansonline umbrella.
 
Spanishman - the evidence I have against this - is for instance I made the last issue of the fanzine v Swansea available to buy online - remember the game didn't happen, so the fanzines were printed up and are still in their boxes.
Thank you to the dozen that bought printed issues. NO ONE at all bought the email issue. That is the point very few people want the emailed fanzine - the maximum I have ever had in one season was around 20. That was a decade ago. Sunderland never replied to tell me how to offer an ad-free service.
The online subscription to the fanzine costs £17 so I think even reducing it and bundling it with an ad-free website might be too costly for many but would also not really bring in enough money.
parnabyscrosses - I was not making the decisions the guy in charge of fansonline was letting me down at every turn so I was caught in between a rock and a hard place. But at least you weren't paying for the (poor) service.
You can order the last fanzine - here - Fmttm Issue 604
 
Rob,
Do you get more income if we all start clicking on ads, rather than just ignoring them?
 
Anyway, will see if this works a bit better now. I wasn't unable to do anything like switch domains etc until there was any sort of income stream coming in. £2-3 a day was just way too low.
But if anyone can give me any practical advice and pointers please do message me. Affiliates, advertising, ad-free stuff.
Sorry I sounded so annoyed in the posts above - it has not been an easy period at all. But far worse is happening out there.
 
If I was to tell you to click on ads I would be banned from google. I have to sign something to that effect.
But that advert down the right side should now make a big, big difference. It doesn't show on mobiles but is there on PCs.
 
fmttmadmin said:
Spanishman - the evidence I have against this - is for instance I made the last issue of the fanzine v Swansea available to buy online - remember the game didn't happen, so the fanzines were printed up and are still in their boxes.
Thank you to the dozen that bought printed issues. NO ONE at all bought the email issue. That is the point very few people want the emailed fanzine - the maximum I have ever had in one season was around 20. That was a decade ago. Sunderland never replied to tell me how to offer an ad-free service.
The online subscription to the fanzine costs £17 so I think even reducing it and bundling it with an ad-free website might be too costly for many but would also not really bring in enough money.
parnabyscrosses - I was not making the decisions the guy in charge of fansonline was letting me down at every turn so I was caught in between a rock and a hard place. But at least you weren't paying for the (poor) service.
You can order the last fanzine - here - Fmttm Issue 604
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"That is the point very few people want the emailed fanzine - the maximum I have ever had in one season was around 20. "

I might be in a minority Rob, but I'm a subscriber to it, and value it highly (y)
 
Malaguena said:
"That is the point very few people want the emailed fanzine - the maximum I have ever had in one season was around 20. "

I might be in a minority Rob, but I'm a subscriber to it, and value it highly (y)
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Me too - I look forward to getting it.
 
Rob, if this is xenforo, there will be add-ons you can install that will automatically affiliate links to amazon and ebay (or other words) whenever someone types those words, its automatic. loads of sites run affiliate schemes, its a case of setting them up initially and letting them run.

I'd also imagine the emailed fanzine is unpopular because it is the same price as (or even more with postage?) as the regular so people might as well take the print copy.

Likewise there will be member group add-ons whereby you can create a member group for people who have subscribed to a year of ad-free, and those members will not be served ads. This is usually accomplished by having a separate theme assigned to those that have subscribed, which is basically the same theme but without the adwords code inserted.

Add a donation system - even a buy me a beer button.

Leverage local firms looking to advertise, but at a reasonable price - the one listed on the old site is a bit mad, not many firms will pay £50 a week for a banner ad, maybe a national firm would do that, but when you weigh up the cost of leaflet drops etc vs having a banner ad on a site with a very specific target audience in a fairly specific demographic (Male, mostly over 40, football fans), £50 is probably not good value for money for most firms - and there would be ways to do this rather than having it be banner ads.
 
TheFair86 said:
I'd also imagine the emailed fanzine is unpopular because it is the same price as (or even more with postage?) as the regular so people might as well take the print copy.
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It's cheaper - I really can't understand why the takeup is so low. I've been getting it since Rob started doing it and I always bring it to the notice of others in the North America group.
 
Thanks so much for the suggestions - I will certainly look into them.
The prices of the emailed fanzine are cheap though - surely. But the idea is for overseas - I want to continue printing fanzines. £50 for an advert that reaches so many people - people taking one out have seen a really big take up on their websites. Obviously I try my hardest not to rip people off.
 
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How many advertisers do you have each week for those banner ads rob?

I see one every couple of months, and its usually a gig or the car leasing bloke. Its not a case of reaching "so many people", its a case of reaching their demographic. Traffic from an advert isn't an indicator of the success of an advert, conversion to sales is, and they would only be able to measure that with proper lead tracking analytics. Just by having a link from a banner ad you will automatically drive traffic through to a site because search engines will follow it during regular spidering activity, and people will click it out of curiosity or by accident, but that doesn't necessarily lead to an uplift in business for the sponsor, just traffic. The demographic of this site is almost entirely (I would say likely 95%+) male, I would say probably 80%+ (if not higher) over 40, and probably 99%+ football fans. It's a fairly specific demographic. £50 a month maybe, but I can see why you dont often have these local adverts for £50 a week. £400 a month for one site & demo would be better off spent on targeted google adwords spend as its going to capture people looking specifically for your product and funnel them to your site, suspect majority of the ads you've ran in this vein have been people doing it as a favour or specifically to support the site.

As a local fanzine I would have thought you would be working much more with local businesses in terms of promoting them, and it seems to be an opportunity missed.

This lockdown would also appear to be a good opportunity to test doing digital versions of the fanzine, with no print version produced. Yes there are no games on, but you could do it on a bi-weekly schedule and see what sort of results you get. you would have no printing costs to consider.

I'd also start to look into how to leverage your user base email addresses as it would seem a good idea to promote subscriptions through that, same with donations, moving people over to the new site etc.
 
Many thanks for the tips and advice - I should say the adverts you refer to are sold through google. They have always been extremely happy with the situation. My £50 a week for local ads was arrived at after research and I cannot agree with some of what you are saying there. Of course I would like to support local businesses and I always do that when I can.
Thank you though for the feedback.
 
Please don't get me wrong here am not appealing for money etc. Just the old format worked with an income but was on a server platform that was very instable. And from my point of view the absentee owner did not do his job properly.
This forum is quite hard to work at initially, especially if you have become used to a different way of doing things for 20 years. It has been hard to find a developer with knowledge of advertising or get the old landlord to help.
Am now hoping to get help and advice from a big, active football forum with an awful lot of experience of using this software.
There are some interesting tips on here but also some stuff that would not work at all.
Hopefully things will settle down a bit from a forum point of view over the coming weeks and then we can totally switch over to this site.
 
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