On-line Communities - Ads or no Ads?

numacra asks: "There comes a time in the life of every growing on-line community where ads start looking like a good way to support it. What does the Slashdot community think about ads on open source and security community websites? Does it bring down the quality of the website/community? Should we start putting ads up on our wargame pages? We receive around 10,000 unique hits a month and are debating whether or not ads will improve our community or ruin it." Ads and donations seem to be the easiest way to drum up money for grassroots websites, however are there other alternatives which could cover the costs?

Comments

Re:it'll be fine

[RemovableBait]

Our only problem was users clicking too many Google ads in their attempts to support the site.

Out of interest, how did you combat this?

I'm currently in a similar position. I'm getting (Adsense) click through rates of 40% and around 200 page views per day. I'm 90% certain that this is just friends and others clicking to support me, and I'm worried that Google will pull my account because of it. I just find it highly suspicious, considering my site (blockavoid.co.uk) isn't even complete!

Any suggestions?

Re:Do it, but do it wisely.

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"99% of users will ignore it, and the remaining 1% tends to make a one-off payment of $5. Useful? Yes. But I've not seen enough recurring donations to offset hosting costs."

Are we talking about just adding the butotn, or are we talking about providing a goal? I help run a site that used to do the 'donation goal' method, and actually it worked. "We need $189.23 by the end of July", and we'd consistently hit the goal. What I don't know, however, is whether or not our site was specialized enough to warrant it.