GL ads disappeared...did I miss something?

When the economy turns down the first thing lots of companies do is cut their ads and fire their sales staff. The very things that bring money into the company. Stupid CFO's who can count the money once it is brought to the counting table; but don't have a clue how the money gets there. Keep up the good work GL. By the way I have been very satisfied with their services. Sure some things fall through the crack; but I believe it is your responsibility to stay on top of them.
Charlie Haws
President of LabQuest, Inc
Manufacture's Representative to the Analytical Instrument Industry.

And the next thing will be that (we are bashing GL) and this thread will be closed!
People will advertise if they feel they can get something for their money.
Maybe GL pulled because of the economy or maybe they pulled because they felt like we were bashing them too much so the pulled their add.
I dont know but I guess this site will come to SS members who pay dues only soon without advertisements helping out.

Regardless of how much of a bashing GL has taken, buy the threads that pop up after every auction closes on who got what, I'd say that SS members are still buying quite a bit from them. It might not compare to the large companies purchases, but I'm sure it's considerable income. Until Mike or Chris or someone from GL comes out and says that they pulled their ads because of the GL bashing, I'm not going to jump to that conclusion since their are many reasons why they might pull the ads. For all we know they might not have seen the desired increase in sales with the ads to warrant the expense. Or as was stated before, it may just be downsizing in reaction to the poor economy. It's really hard to tell.

As for the cost of the site, that's been discussed several times and you an bet it's probably twice as expensive as you would think. This site offers a lot of added features that most other sites charge for or don't offer at all. I seriously doubt that this site is lining Chris' pockets. I don't know what revenue the ads were pulling in but based on the quotes I have received for advertising Stull Unlimited, I'd say that Chris is still forking out cash from his own pocket to keep the site online, not to mention the hard work that he and Mike and the other volunteers put into SS to give us all the cool stuff we have at our fingertips. I remember what SS used to be like years ago and believe me, they have done nothing but improve it and increase it's usefulness a thousand times.

I agree with you Elwenil 100%!!!!
But I will add this, if I was a supporting advertiser to a site and all I read was the negative that my companies does and not the good my companies does then yes, I would pull my advertisement.
Im not saying that is why GL pulled out and thats if they did.
Only the Staff knows the reasons right now and maybe soon we will find out why and if they did.
How many times have we all gone to McDonalds and seen that nice picture of a large french-fry over filling the large box?
When we get our french fries it looks to be a small fry in a large box!
Im sure many of us dont complain about that!!!!
We all keep going back asking for the same Large Fry because we want it no matter what!!!!
Just like we all keep going back to GL even if we didnt get what we paid for!!!!!

Mike_Pop said:

I would like to know how much it actually costs to run this site. I don't mind paying for a service but if it is going to line the pockets of the administrators instead of providing knowledge for the hobby, then I would question it. No offense to the administrators, everyone is allowed to make a buck. However, the purpose of this site is to share info.

Click to expand...

Thats a heck of an accusation to make. No-one is making a living off of this site, its just about self supporting (before the GL ads got pulled). None of the admins here would allow money to be funneled from the site, it all goes back into the site in one way or another.

If we are all guessing why GL pulled their ad's, here is another guess.

Maybe the new contract does not allow for the gov't to be paying the ads. Maybe the ads are now on GL's shoulders. Could be you see the ads pulled from the MV mag too. Just a guess.

why would they keep advertising with a place that seems to be crapping on them all the time?

Thats a heck of an accusation to make. No-one is making a living off of this site, its just about self supporting (before the GL ads got pulled). None of the admins here would allow money to be funneled from the site, it all goes back into the site in one way or another.

Click to expand...

I am not making accusations, just a hypothesis. I've seen other message boards become paid memberships and they usually have a drop in participation and the information deteriorates. I'm just curious as to how much SS really needs to operate. If there were a dollar amount that we all knew about, then maybe more of us would be willing to contribute.

Too bad about the removal of the ads......the reason will come out I am sure if its appropriate to do so. If not the rumor mill will keep grinding on.

On the topic of the costs and money made off the website, I can say that very few get rich off of any website, particularly a forum. I have a very small one for my business and it is nothing but an expense and plenty of work. It does direct business to me, but still it costs to run it, pay someone to keep it up to date and then come up with new ideas to keep it fresh. Like my business, folks who don't understand the costs of doing business, tend to think that I just sit back all day and rake it in. I'd almost bet that isn't the case here. In fact I am 100% certain it isn't.

As far as GL goes, they don't conduct business the way I'd choose to, but time will fix that soon enough. It has a way of weeding out the chaff.

Somewhere someplace somebody made it politically correct to say the exchange of information should be free - may Al Gore when he invented the internet - but that has got to be one of the biggest crocks ever. Try that next time you wanna send your kid to college.

Hosting this site costs money - just like a mechanic's tools cost money, a grocer must pay rent, and a truck driver must by fuel. None of these people deserve to cover costs - if the service they provide is quality, they should make a profit. I don't intend to just get by (although oftentimes it seems that is what I do!) - I'd like to get ahead. If Chris, Mike and whoever else make a quarter-million dollars each of this site annually, I don't care. Chris had the idea, pumped his money and energy into it for years - why should he be doing this "for cost" (although at this juncture I suspect it has been "at a loss".

Information is far from free - I personally spend at least 30K a year traveling to do research - some of which I get paid to share through books and magazines - other information is shared without charge through this and other forums. But most certainly I can say that for me to get it is not free. Should I spend my 30K and give it away because this is the internet - should Chris work for free (which after all, just covering expenses is exactly that - working for free)? He may choose to - but I don't see that any of us are in a position to dictate to each other how they spend their time, or how much they should be paid.

With respect to GL - if I were them, I'd have seen that my advertising dollars were going to fund a site where disgruntled - a few justifiably and and many unjustifiably so (just how many folks can seemingly not understand "inspect the lots you are interested in)" - customers could post their complaints for anyone using Google to find?

My .02,
David Doyle

emmado22 said:

why would they keep advertising with a place that seems to be crapping on them all the time?

Click to expand...

Because there are a LOT of members on this site and we keep buying LOTS of stuff - even if there are complaints. It would be interesting to find out how much or their sales are directly related to SS members finding out about GL here, or the ADDICTION that MANY of us continue to have. I know that I've bought items seen on the ads here - that I did not see when browsing GL.

Like GL or not, we'll keep buying from them. I'll bet on that.

Since GL just signed a new contract with the government they seem to be going after dealer sales and large lot offerings. Trying to weed out the small time buyer. This could be part of that move.

I think you're going to see alot changes with the way Gov. surplus is sold in the next year or two.

In case anyone who does not run their own website and work on their own internet machines wonders how much proper websites cost to run, and how you can make money fast with them..

Anything with failover or "non-stop" connectivity, storage, and processing, a little tiny bit of bandwidth, and most importantly, uptime measured in years - starts around $300 per month excluding maintenance and long-term backup power -if you do it all yourself at home amd already own the right computing equipment.

I'm talking about enterprise-class computers like what you see in the racks in a computer room, not PCs. You need at least two of those 'real computers', preferrably three if you want to be a player in Al Gore's Internet. I'm no big shot, I am describing the "starter kit" at this level. Each computer cost a few thousand when new. I get mine used.

Why the pro hardware? PCs die when put to the "run hard and put up wet" test in a 24x7 environment. As an admin I don't want to have to look at the system to see what's about to burn out. I don't want to walk into the Bunker and detect the smell of impending doom because some $2 Chinese fan stopped. I expect to continue to be able to ignore it completely for months with full confidence.

About backup power - When the power fails here, the costs increase by $4 per hour and that incurs 24x7 till the power comes back.

So a professional website cost a whole lot of money all the time.

All of this great situation can alternately be 'leased' from a hosting company for an astonishing monthly rate, and all you have to do is remotely administer it. The gear is locked up in a secure building with staff. Bandwidth and gigabytes-per-day charges apply. I could have gone that route but I like hands-on.

Those are my facts from experience for what it costs to run a serious website. (Talk to me about addictions, a boat might be cheaper).

Anything less that what is described above is a toy; sorry if that offends anyone who is running a perfectly useful site on the cheap.

There is no question that SS is a much beefier site than mine both from a storage and bandwidth perspective.

It's also none of my business what the total cost of ownership for SS is, but I wouldn't want to bear that cost alone each month.

In closing, I'm not against paying for full access to SS if it is available reasonably. I find more information and entertainment and friendship from SS than I do from the MVPA. I am free to give and take advice. I also get a chance to put my 2 cents in here, whenever I want, on whatever topic is interesting. It's worth something. I can only really justify shelling out for one or the other. Seems like an easy choice. Would it make sense to have a business model like that?

Here's my thought on adverts from GL. The membership was buying from them long before they ran ads here and will be buyin long after. They did not reach much more by ads than they already were. No noticeable increase in sales, no need to renew ad.

Here is my thought and I agree with Recovry4x4 in his statement above.
Many of us were buying from GL long before they advertised here because they were getting free advertisement here anyways from our own word of mouth.
My thought is this, since we all have one thing in common here at this site and that being Military Vehicle private owners then what is the one thing we all need?
We all need vehicle insurance and finding a insurance company that will insure this vehicle and that vehicle is hard since it was a military vehicle.
If we could find one or two insurance companies that do cater to the MV owner, then thats who we should get to advertise here.
We allready thru the word of mouth here talk about what companies we can go to for certain parts for certain vehicles.
One thing that most States require is vehicle insurance and I say we should at least find the ones who insure MVs and have them advertise here.
Thats just my thought and opion.

We all need vehicle insurance and finding a insurance company that will insure this vehicle and that vehicle is hard since it was a military vehicle.

Click to expand...

Good suggestion. How about getting some of the title companies to advertise as well?

"I do not know or pretend to know anything about running a website nor am I a guru at internet connectivity."

With that being said, I do know alot about data centers and the costs associated with them. The centers that we operate have certain SLA's (service level agreements) which dictate temperature and humidity levels as well as continuous uninterrupted electrical service that falls within specifications.

You would not, could not, believe the level of sophistication built into these sites and the effort to maintain and operate them. What does this cost the customer? About $250 to $300 per square foot per month not including your electrical usage! Take a typical rack sitting on a 2x2 raised floor tile and there is four square feet, at least a $1000 per month.

Now I'm not saying that this is what SS does, but it gives an idea of the costs involved.

So I'll throw another idea for advertising - most of us enjoy the outdoors so how about Cabela's, Gander Mountain, Dick's or Bass Pro Shops? How about arms manufacturers such as Beretta, Springfield Armory, Glock, etc, etc.....?

What about hiring a sales person for a month and seeing what they could come up with? Do we have a member in sales that would volunteer some time?

I dont mind seeing Camping Gear or even Fishing Gear being advertised here but as weapons goes I would say no.
With the way laws are today, I see a ad here for lets say for (Berretta) and I buy a gun.
My Gun gets stolen and used in a crime or killing so what happens now?
With the way the laws are being rewritten, everyone between the manufactor of the weapon up to the owner can be held liable.
I say stay away from weapons of any type being advertised here and thats just from a legal stand point!!!!!

I have seen several adds that sort of surprised me(in the google banner adds), one was something to do with an Army woman dating service.

One subject I have not seen in the advertisements or on the forums or in the classifieds here on SS is, the need for business ideas(to generate $ to run the site), or advertising ideas (to fund the site).

doghead said:

I have seen several adds that sort of surprised me(in the google banner adds), one was something to do with an Army woman dating service.

One subject I have not seen in the advertisements or on the forums or in the classifieds here on SS is, the need for business ideas(to generate $ to run the site), or advertising ideas (to fund the site).

Click to expand...

Interesting you say that DH. I was just looking for a link to an advertising section yesterday.