Hosting costs

[Gangis]

Hi,

I've been thinking about this for months and I thought it was finally time me to present this thought and have everybody chime in with their opinion.

Maintaining this website as well as others can get rather expensive, especially considering UCT2 is gaining in popularity with each passing day. I'm only a college student and I don't get paid too much with my job at CompUSA. I would like to at least recoup hosting costs in some (legit) manner. People have offered to donate some money to the project but I've always declined because it just doesn't feel right taking money from others unless we truly had something to give them. I always appreciate the thought, however.

I'm sure you despise banner and popup ads as much as I do. I refuse to put them anywhere on my site. However, people have seemed to react favorably to Google's AdSense. If you want to see what it looks like, go here. It's pretty unobtrusive and is always dead-on relevant with the context of the page.

My question to you is, how do you feel about my adding AdSense onto the right side of each page of the UCT2 website? It's totally up to you guys, if the majority of you strongly oppose the idea, then I'll find another solution.

When UCT2 comes out, there's sure to be a lot of traffic (not just the website, but my bank account too) and I would like to cover the bandwidth costs. Please look through the page I liked a couple of paragraphs back and then tell me your opinion. Thank you.

[mp3guy]

put up ad sense, and leave a paypal donate button

[Gangis]

Like I said, I don't want to accept direct donations from anybody. I want to cover the costs of hosting through another means.

[DarkHawk]

it seems like a really good idea, and since you really seem dead set against not accepting donations then yea it would be a good way to help cover the costs of your hosting.
so definately go for it.

[chronoct]

fine by me

[Mouser X]

I'd say that's your best bet. If, for some reason, you did eventually decide to put up ad banners, or something, I'd just use adblock from firefox, so I probably wouldn't even care about that either.

In other words, do it. If it helps out, then it is certainly worth it. If, by some bizarre twist of fate, you actually make more money than the hosting cost is, then save up for when UCT2 is actually released. Also, though I know you don't want to accept donations, I would recommend a paypal thingy. However, make a maximum limit that people can donate. That way, if someone wants to, they can donate, but they won't be donating anything that's unreasonable.

There's my thoughts. Mouser X over and out.