I think it'd be great to see AVATAR advertised more on the internet. I've done a bit of research and found that it isn't terribly expensive. Considering that the average age of players on AVATAR is probably 20+ and the fact that paypal makes making donations easier than ever, I think we could raise a good chunk of change. If a dozen people donate $10 we've already raised enough to advertise our site for nearly 7 months on either TMC, topmudsites, or zuggsoft.com. If we added a feature to the website like a thermometer with milestones, and gave users something visual, I think they'd be more likely to donate. Here's some packages and numbers from the three sites mentioned above.
Zuggsoft.com
Details on the banner ads are here: http://forums.zuggsoft.com/affiliate/docbanner.php
The discounts are for when you get both a side banner and also a top banner in the forums. Instead of $100 per month I usually do $500 for 6 months or $1000 for a year.
Keep in mind that we do not provide any sort of click-through tracking or statistics for the banners. It's up to you to provide a URL with some sort of key in it that you can track on your own web site. There is no limit on clicks. Also, currently there are only 2 side banners and we have 3 slots so your banner would not "rotate"...it would be shown all the time along with the other two (retromud and nodeka).
In August we had about 500,000 hits on the forum topic pages (where the top banners are shown) and about 80,000 hits on the front pages where the side banners are shown.
# Top Mud Sites
# Unlimited Impressions - top of page - (468x60 Banner)
$25 per month or $150 for 7 months. Your banner will be added to the rotation at the top of nearly every page on the Top MUD Sites. You will also get an icon of your choosing that will appear next to your site on the ranking list. The banner should be 25 KB or less in file size.
Additionally, you can use a flash banner for an additional $5 per month.
# Unlimited Impressions - top of page - (728x90 Banner)
$35 per month or $210 for 7 months. Your banner will be added to the rotation at the top of nearly every page on the Top MUD Sites. You will also get an icon of your choosing that will appear next to your site on the ranking list. The banner should be 30 KB or less in file size.
Additionally, you can use a flash banner for an additional $5 per month.
# Unlimited Impressions - sidebar - (140x50 Banner)
$30 per month or $180 for 7 months. Your banner will be added to the left sidebar that appears on approximately 75% of every page on Top MUD Sites. The advantage to this is that it doesn't go in a rotation, so your banner will always be showing. You will also get an icon of your choosing that will appear next to your site on the ranking list.
Additionally, you can use a flash banner for an additional $5 per month.
TMC
$25/mth - 5,000 ad banner impressions displayed in general rotation on all available TMC pages (page availability subject to involvement in exclusive campaigns - eg. front page is generally excluded from general rotation).
With google adwords we can put ads on searches like Free MMO or Free Fantasy Game, or whatever and they're pretty inexpensive too.
Historically, when we've advertised in the past, it's usually personally funded by one or more of the Imms.
Donations usually go towards the actual running costs of the mud i.e. the internet connection, the electricity bill for the machines and the air conditioning which keeps them running when it gets hot.
We are already advertising on TopMudSites, look on the left hand side below the mud number rankings.
We have previously advertised on Mudmagic.com and Mudpages.com before they stopped running or changed formats so that they no longer do advertising.
Would need to check status on The Mud Connector advertising, I know we discussed it at some point but can't remember if this is still going.
Zuggsoft is usually too expensive for our budget .
They sometimes auction off advertising space and one year it was cheap enough for us to take advantage of, however since then it's been too expensive.
Bear in mind that we are often competing with muds who charge to play so they have more budget for this type of thing.
We do welcome suggestions for other places that we can get the word out about Avatar. If we can afford to advertise, we will, however we have been burnt in the past by paying for advertising on sites that go under before the 6 months or year of advertising is up.
We do have to be careful that we aren't seen as spammers so we always do our best to check that we are complying with any rules that listing sites etc have.
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