I just created 2 new forums.
The first is the long-awaited "Long-Term Preparedness" area.
Note that the forum name deliberately does NOT include the word "survival" and we'd like to put the black helicopter crowd (you know who you are) on notice that if you can't carry it, eat it, drink it, sleep in it or ride on it, it's not a topic of discussion for this new forum. It's a test, if it works, there's future plans in the works to make this part of a premium (read: paid) offering that I think will be both fairly priced and highly valuable.
The other forum is ADVERTISEMENTS.
Gasp! It's true.
I was getting a "free ride" here on the equipped forums for a product I sell, and I felt that it wasn't terribly fair to ETS for me to benefit so much without ETS getting at least a share of the money. The ETS audience is knowledgeable, spends money and is passionate about the art of survival preparedness. While it's not a HUGE audience, with high natural Google rankings, it only makes sense to make an effort to use the traffic this site generates to provide financial stability to the ETS foundation.
But the issue of neutrality comes up. That's why, unlike many other media outlets you might encounter, there's a clear wall between editorial and advertising here. Doug is off at the SHOT show, he'll write his reviews and so forth with no input at all from me expected. I'll take care of posting advertisements based on a few simple criteria (a real offer, from a real company, in an ad that's family-safe, factual and accurate).
So now there's a section where it's clearly labeled "advertising" so you know what you're looking at and there's no question that the content is indeed intended to get you to buy something.
I think that's better than "advertorial" content where you're never quite sure if the content is neutral or created to sell you something.
The intent is for product advertisers to use that section. For now, the way it works is you submit an ad to me via my real email address (martin@focazio.com), if it's approved, you pay for a 30 day run of the ad (currently $25) and I post it for you. Ads can be HTML, with links to your own site, rich media, whatever.
We're pondering a members rate for classified ads, but I don't have anything ready for that yet.
Ads are posted weekly, on Sunday nights.
This section is also a TEST to see how it goes, and see how the community reacts. If it all works out well, then we'll continue it. If not, the ads section will be deleted.
That's all for now.
Marty Focazio
Previous Topic
Index
