I read that other thread too Matt... but no, unfortunately clicking on the MF ad doesn't pay us anything. If you buy something from their online store (within a certain amount of days), we make a commission from the sale... but that happens very rarely. Funny, since we have over 35,000 members who are into guitars... but MF is aimed at US buyers so really it's not much good to anyone living outside the US, but it still surprises me.
We used to have some other ads on here that were pay per click, but it is against the terms of use for us to encourage anyone to click on those ads. We would end up having our account suspended if we were found to encourage that or even if there is suspicion of false clicks.... I haven't put those back on after the revamp as our members seem to not want to click out of our forum. They want to stay here!!! Damn it.
The other problem is that with adblockers, most of these kinds of ads are blocked anyway. I know many people use adblockers and for the user they are great, unfortunately the downside is that they will probably be one of the reasons free sites are less and less common. Most sites rely on these ads to survive.
That's the problem with having a sticky site, people visit but they don't want to leave. It's much more profitable (strangely enough) to have a site that people want to leave and will leave via a link.
We could have opted to use pop-unders and other offensive types of ads (adult, pharmacy, dating) that do pay per impression (every time a page is loaded) and pay very well - but this is not what we want for this site.
PlaneTalk sales and donations pay for the running costs of this site.
Clancy
"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.". Will Rogers