To whoever is responsible in bringing FMTTM

Yep. It was a joy reading the board via my phone this morning and not having to 'pinch-zoom' every time I wanted to read a thread.

Great work! (y)
 
Sadly, although it has been brought up to date in so many ways it has completely failed to work out financially. As in, it earns virtually nothing at all.
So, we managed to hook up with a new commercial partner after being given good advice by a very big and successful xenforo football site. This will need work being done on this site to better position adverts etc - I cannot see there being more but it is about changing the site look slightly so that it actually earns. They know how to do this as it is not straight forward with the experience.
This has just sort of been finalised in the last week or so. Then we can finally commit to moving the whole site with content over to this platform. I have had to stay within fansonline because it was the only way we could get the deal done.
I very much appreciate the backing - it can seem a bit dispiriting at times. None of us envisaged it would be quite this hard and that the off the shelf platform might look and work well but just did not earn any money at all. ie £10 a week.
But we have some expert advice now and so we'll just have to see how it goes.
 
Rob,

What happens if you can't make this work financially?

Apologies if I'm prying as I've got no idea if this is your main (or one of) source of income.

Presumably a relatively niche site with a predominantly older user base isn't going to earn huge amounts.

Anyway, apologies again if I'm prying. Board has had a new lease of life since the move imo.
 
I did some minor research into pay sites and it isn't really a goer at all. It would mean people paying substantially higher sums than I would be comfortable asking for.
The aim is to build this site back up to the traffic count of the old site again. I hope that works for everyone - it was always the objective to have a big Boro site again with content and very busy with posts and posters etc. This will be fmttm.com as soon as possible.
 
I did some minor research into pay sites and it isn't really a goer at all. It would mean people paying substantially higher sums than I would be comfortable asking for.
The aim is to build this site back up to the traffic count of the old site again. I hope that works for everyone - it was always the objective to have a big Boro site again with content and very busy with posts and posters etc. This will be fmttm.com as soon as possible.

I didn't mean as an enforced pay site, maybe an ad free option, or a donate button etc.
 
genuinely cant understand the difficulties. Our forum hasn't been used in over 10 years (apart from occasional "whats everyone up to these days?" and we still get free hosting and £40 a month for a hosting company just to have a tagline on the front page of it. The only thing I can think of is that the site moved to a brand new domain here so the traffic value would have been low to begin with? If a site that's frozen in time / been defunct since 2010/2011 is generating more income than a brand new busy active forum which regularly has users linking to sites like ebay or amazon, something is definitely wrong.
 
surely the quicker you get the old board migrated over the better, is there not a way you can point the link on the fansonline forum to this one?
 
surely the quicker you get the old board migrated over the better, is there not a way you can point the link on the fansonline forum to this one?
What about a yearly subscription fee, don't know if this has been mentioned on this thread, I mentioned on here a few times it's been a big help to me over the past 3 months, probably others too, good site, 👍
 
I'm sorry Rob's income is made up of advertising revenue from the message boards because he'll never get a penny from my viewing whilst adblockers exist.

I'm differentiating between a fixed banner type ad which is perfectly acceptable and the kind of pop up ads that follow you around and make sites like the Gazette unreadable. It's a strange old world where someone can set up a message board and generate an income purely by bombarding you with ads.

I choose if I want to see adverts or not and won't have them forced on me. If it was a choice between no board or a board with adverts then the former would win.

That said I'd happily pay a subscription fee to use an ad free board. I'd be interested to know what figures rob came up with when he investigated the option of subscription.
 
I think one key merit of this Site compared to the old is not so much it’s technicalities and manoeuvrability ( albeit massive improvements ) but the people on here . Very little venom and vitriol but mature debates and civility .
I recall only being notably insulted once and it was just a matter of flicking an icon and the villain was gone for as long as I see fit .
 
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I'm sorry Rob's income is made up of advertising revenue from the message boards because he'll never get a penny from my viewing whilst adblockers exist.

I'm differentiating between a fixed banner type ad which is perfectly acceptable and the kind of pop up ads that follow you around and make sites like the Gazette unreadable. It's a strange old world where someone can set up a message board and generate an income purely by bombarding you with ads.

I choose if I want to see adverts or not and won't have them forced on me. If it was a choice between no board or a board with adverts then the former would win.

That said I'd happily pay a subscription fee to use an ad free board. I'd be interested to know what figures rob came up with when he investigated the option of subscription.

Surely an ad or two is reasonable when the forum is free to use?
 
Suppose it depends on your reason for blocking ads. There's a strong ethical reason to do so given that it's not as simple/black and white as "it pays for the site", given the insidious nature of the data tracking involved and how that is used to build up a profile of that user to serve ads. Some people do not like that level of invasion of privacy. People are probably happy to support rob directly in lieu of ads, or have local ads that aren't data tracking based.
 
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