How do you know it "doesn't work with community donations" when you have no measures to help deal with the tragedy of the commons?
I refused to show ads because they were all ticket brokers / scalpers.
It is actually kind of a pain and takes work to raise money this way. For me, I had to do a personal appeal, email drips, and I even added membership status indicators to usernames and gave access to “exclusive” content.
It did work though with the thermometer thingy and some pluck.
I don't blame GP for wanting to make some money - they're certainly putting in some otherwise unpaid hours. But a "Target 0" system could work well for some communities.
I can't tell you how many times someone has said to me "why do you guys send out those letters? Everyone just throws them out." Do you know why? Because we see how much they cost, and how much they make, and it's worth it.
This guy is actually running a community site that's paying for itself. Do not question him, especially by proposing one tiny little strategy among the thousands that might work.
I don't think this advice of "if you haven't done it you can't criticize or ask questions about it" is very good. It would bar me from commenting on and criticizing Michael Bay movies, so no thank you.
I'd also like to know if the guy shuts off the ads when he makes more than is needed for maintenance costs.
1. That's my bill for hosting and bandwidth expenses. I obviously need to consider the cost of my time which is not included in that figure. The more money the site generates, the more time I invest in it. So, if it were to generate $150,000 from advertising, I wouldn't shut it off, but I'd start pulling my time out of other projects, and moving it into this community site to add more of the requested features.
2. I want to save for a rainy day. Online communities don't last forever. It would be short sighted to shut off advertising simply because this years expenses are met, and then two years from now I need to close up the site because advertising is falling short. When the site hits a rough patch, I want the savings to either push it through or pivot. Coasting on maintenance costs would be a dangerous road with an abrupt end.
I've heard that line from people raking in several hundred thousand a year, while they still callously heap ads on their audiences.
If you have no target, neither for your site nor for your personal ambition, it seems like the veneer of "I tried to avoid them but couldn't" is really quite thin.