ZOMBIE FORUMS

It's a stinking, shambling corpse grotesquely parodying life.
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 10, 2007 8:23 pm 
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Imp-Chan wrote:
P.S. Should we make a larger donation meter for the news section so that people can see progress against the $25,000 goal right on the main site? Any ideas for what it should say if we did make one?

YES! That is an excellent idea.

Try a donation meter like this one - a very visible, colorful, and large graph showing how close donations are to ES not having to abruptly stop due to finance issues. To someone who doesn't see the announcement, the current donation meter looks like you've gotten more than enough for the month - although I admit that since I saw that first, I figured something bad just happened and the extra money was REALLY needed, and ended up doing some investigating...

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PostPosted: Sat Mar 10, 2007 10:01 pm 
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Believe wrote:
Imp-Chan wrote:
P.S. Should we make a larger donation meter for the news section so that people can see progress against the $25,000 goal right on the main site? Any ideas for what it should say if we did make one?

YES! That is an excellent idea.

Try a donation meter like this one - a very visible, colorful, and large graph showing how close donations are to ES not having to abruptly stop due to finance issues. To someone who doesn't see the announcement, the current donation meter looks like you've gotten more than enough for the month - although I admit that since I saw that first, I figured something bad just happened and the extra money was REALLY needed, and ended up doing some investigating...


That site looks very cluttered, to my eye, and if I hadn't been looking for a donation meter I wouldn't have found one.

I would put the donation meter across the top of the page; perhaps have two bars at the moment, one large (thick) one for the $25,000 goal, and a thinner one below that for your monthly goal, with a line of text between them briefly explaining the situation. You could put it directly below the ad banner, above the announcements. (Or, leave out the text line and just leave the explanation in the announcements). I'd actually leave the monthly donations bar in that spot even after you make the $25K goal.

The only downside is that it might push the comic completely off the top of the front page for some people, so you have to scroll to see it. But some comics are already like that, so I don't think there's much harm in that.

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PostPosted: Sun Mar 11, 2007 4:21 pm 
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I agree that you should have some sort of meter showing your actual financial status when it's a dire need like this one. Real Life Comics had one, back when Greg needed money for something I can't remember, below the comic with its own newsblurb/description above the rantspace. Right now, I imagine a lot of people are skipping over the text and links to this thread (Your links are non-obvious) and just seeing that you have $2600 out of $1000.


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PostPosted: Sun Mar 11, 2007 4:22 pm 
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What if we arranged it more like <a href="http://www.exploitationnow.com">EN</a> where the announcements don't go across all the way and there's a donations meter thingy of some sort to the right of them?

Kyhm is building us a new donations meter this week.

^-^'

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PostPosted: Mon Mar 12, 2007 12:40 am 
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Imp-Chan wrote:
That's a generous offer, Yorik, but wouldn't actually help. Their heirs would inherit the debts, afterall.

^-^'


You say that like I would be foolish enough to leave any of their heirs alive.

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PostPosted: Mon Mar 12, 2007 12:58 am 
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:bang: I wish I wasn't struggling to get by myself or I'd love to help out. Unfortunately, good intentions don't pay the bills as well as cold hard currency.

Well, if moral support counts for anything, I hope things work out for you guys. Poe kicks ass and I'd hate to see this comic cease production.

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PostPosted: Mon Mar 12, 2007 7:28 am 
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You should probably also be with-holding comic content, too. Instead of furthering the story over the next month...at some point you should start making comics out-lining the problem. They could be humerous and everything, but the truth is for as often as the news is updated I'm sure most readers of the comic tend to ignore what's in the news post. I wouldn't be surprised if almost half your reader-base still didn't realize the financial situation of this website.


Or you could just whore yourselves out to the mob for a bit.


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PostPosted: Mon Mar 12, 2007 7:40 am 
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The thought was suggested that we replace the comic update with a short explanation comic, with a link to the real comic beneath it. I think after already donating so much people might get pissed if we withheld the content entirely.

Problem is, we don't know how to do the comic with linked other comic thing. It'd be easy in the upgraded ES system that we haven't implemented yet, but we've no idea about this system.

^-^'

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PostPosted: Mon Mar 12, 2007 8:08 pm 
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Donated just before you posted about the financial trouble, I'll likely donate again later (once my financial situation is better known).

To be honest I barely noticed the current announcement above the comic. I think a graphical donation bar either above or below the comic with a very clearly visible explanation (larger font or what not) would help a lot. Of course there needs to be a balance between asking for donation and having a cluttered/annoying webpage (which is why putting it right below the comic may be good, people still see it but it doesn't push the comic down even further).


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PostPosted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 2:34 am 
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Tossrock wrote:
You probably don't want advertising advice, but really, have you considered either AdSense or Yahoo Publishing Network ads? CPC advertising can pay off bigger than CPM if you've got a motivated user base.


AdSense content guidelines wrote:
* Violent content, racial intolerance, or advocacy against any individual, group, or organization
* Pornography, adult, or mature content
* Hacking/cracking content
* Illicit drugs and drug paraphernalia
* Excessive profanity
* Gambling or casino-related content
* Content regarding programs which compensate users for clicking on ads or offers, performing searches, surfing websites, or reading emails
* Excessive, repetitive, or irrelevant keywords in the content or code of web pages
* Deceptive or manipulative content or construction to improve your site's search engine ranking, e.g., your site's PageRank
* Sales or promotion of weapons or ammunition (e.g., firearms, fighting knives, stun guns)
* Sales or promotion of beer or hard alcohol
* Sales or promotion of tobacco or tobacco-related products
* Sales or promotion of prescription drugs
* Sales or promotion of products that are replicas or imitations of designer goods
* Sales or distribution of term papers or student essays
* Any other content that is illegal, promotes illegal activity, or infringes on the legal rights of others


Alright, most of these are irrelevant to you.

AdSense guidelines that apply to ES wrote:

* Violent content,
* Pornography, adult, or mature content
* Excessive profanity


Now, what I suggest is making a "public" version of ES that censors content like that, with the real version available at some subdomain. You could see a more conspicious example <a href="http://www.blueabyss.com/">here</a>.

The problems as I see it:

1. Finding all that shit is a lot of work!

Easy fix, recruit forumers to do it. Offer incentive? But I'm sure that people would be willing to go through the archives and pick out the "FUCK"s and titties.

2. Making a second version is a lot of work!

Maybe, maybe not. In almost all cases you could change it to a watered down version of the expletive, and for the few tittie scenes, you could use the censored versions which already exist. If those are too graphic for google... well, I doubt their rep will read the whole archive.

As for coding something like this, well you could do it simple or you could do it fancy. And I've seen several people offer coding help on the forums for free, too.

3. That compromises' Poe's artistic integrity / will drive off users!

This is a real issue. However, Poe's put out censored versions of certain comics before, and I don't think ES is really built around the word "fuck". Longtime readers could be alerted to the "split" on the forums. For new users who need the occasional titty / fuck and can't be bothered to read the forums, well, it's a choice between possibly more users who don't really contribute much value (you said ads weren't selling well), and a more functional business model.

Conclusion:

1. Harness power of forums to get as much done for free as possible
2. Look smart for google content review
3. ???
4. Profit

This is all just an idea, thought I'd throw it out there. But with click through rates as high as you say on your ad advertising (>_>) page, you could really see significant profits from CPC ads of some sort.

Edit: Apparently I say "well" a lot at 2:30 am. Interesting.

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PostPosted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 1:04 pm 
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So far looks like we are making progress, but keep it up people!

I need poe comics like some people need crack!

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PostPosted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 5:09 pm 
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Tossrock wrote:
Brilliance.


That's a great idea, Toss! I've been working on implementing something very similar for more than a year now, except that in my version the secondary "real bad words and nudity" comics will be in color and will be part of the bonus content that's available with the subscription service we're planning to offer, that doesn't use ads anyways. That way we get extra income directly for generating the secondary versions of the comic (though the subscription is planned to be only about $10 a year and will include a hell of a lot more than color comics), we get color comics that we can possibly sell to a publisher for monthly publication at issue length, as well as being able to run ads on the general site.

We're even using volunteers to help develop it (part of the reason it's taking so long... good and free kinda exclude fast).

^-^'

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PostPosted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 6:12 pm 
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I went to the store to pre-order the super-de-duper EN book to do my part towards that $100/day for the store, but could not locate the book. Is this correct?

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PostPosted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 6:25 pm 
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Yes, there's an announcement-marked thread about it at the top of this forum.

^-^'

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PostPosted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 7:29 pm 
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There is also Ryan North's Project Wonderful to consider for advertising. Don't really know how well it works, but I don't think it has any restrictions on content. Just another option.

I'd help out myself, I really do want to buy the books, but I am yet another of those scurriless, incomeless, university students.

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PostPosted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 9:24 pm 
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Unilin wrote:
There is also Ryan North's Project Wonderful to consider for advertising. Don't really know how well it works, but I don't think it has any restrictions on content. Just another option.

I'd help out myself, I really do want to buy the books, but I am yet another of those scurriless, incomeless, university students.


The most I've seen generated by any one of those ads was just shy of $25 a day. They're cut is 25%, so it means they'll hardly be raking in the dough, even if they do find good advertisers.


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 Post subject: Yes!
PostPosted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 10:44 pm 
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Location: Nyon, CH, near Geneve, on the shores of the Lac Leman. The heart of Suisse Romande.
After 18 months of unemployment, Salegamine got a job in Geneva, last December. Unfortunately, this means that we have to move to Nyon or have her incur a 5 hour per day commute (2.5 hr train ride each way). I should be able to bring in more contract work too, once we get there.

On the other hand, as an Oracle database developer, she's bringing in some decent cash now. I sent you what I could and may do more after payday. Salegamine wishes you guys the best as well.

Slowly digging out of the pit,
Your friendly neighborhood Slamlander

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 Post subject: Re: Yes!
PostPosted: Wed Mar 14, 2007 1:24 am 
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Slamlander wrote:
After 18 months of unemployment, Salegamine got a job in Geneva, last December. Unfortunately, this means that we have to move to Nyon or have her incur a 5 hour per day commute (2.5 hr train ride each way). I should be able to bring in more contract work too, once we get there.

On the other hand, as an Oracle database developer, she's bringing in some decent cash now. I sent you what I could and may do more after payday. Salegamine wishes you guys the best as well.

Slowly digging out of the pit,
Your friendly neighborhood Slamlander


Well, got ya added as a friend in my LJ but I must admit I was a bit shocked about one thing: In all this time, I didn't know you lived in Europe, let alone Switzerland.

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 Post subject: Yay!
PostPosted: Thu Mar 15, 2007 1:41 am 
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Hello!

My first post! Anyway, some of the ES auctions finished, and guess what? I won! I got the Spring Print original lineart, and the Meji Original lineart.

Now I just have to wait for the Giant Banner, and the EN: Kawaii auctions to finish... Gotta do my part for ES!

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Wed Mar 21, 2007 10:43 pm 
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I did see pre-order... how about pre-order for the third book of ES?

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