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.