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We've submitted our adsense application and placed our ad code. So in a few days we should be displaying ads on the website. Ideally I would have like to have started with this way before we had any traffic, but adsense required some content on the website first.
For those of you who read our about page you know that our business strategy revolves around hosting tournaments with prizes based off ad revenue. We have other ideas for sources of revenue to fund this, but ads is an essential part of it. I believe that we need to bring money from outside and into esports and ads is one way to do it. Another way will be small signup fees for the tournaments.
I hate intrusive ads. I hate irrelevant ads. My goal with ads on Clash is to have specific companies advertise rather then use advertisement bureaus like Google Adsense, but until we have really great numbers this isn't going to happen. So we're stuck with Adsense for starters. We will not implement ads in between content. We will use skyskraper on the side and footer ads.
The most important thing for me is that Clash is an all-round good website. I don't want to compromise the website in order to run a few extra ads. I have no idea what kind of ads we'll get from Adsense just yet, but I'm pretty sure I'm going have my hands full with blocking and reviewing ads.
There is one subject that I really want feedback on:
I wanted to place ads on the overlay we use to show twitch videos. However I loath the notion that people might think we are profiting from other peoples work. So I'm asking all of you - do you think this is ok? Considering our goals of running prize tournaments contributing to the economy of esports. I will not implent ads on the video overlays before I am certain that the community supports this. I don't want to harm our reputation with placing a couple of extra ads on the website.
If you have no idea what Clash is please take a look at our about page. In short: We're a tournament hosting site and our vision is creating the best system in the world. In addition we run a spoilerfree vodsystem for GSL, WCS and SPL.
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Not being funny, but TL's blog section isn't your daily updates list.
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My apologies. I thought it would be a good place to post information.
I have messaged the admins to clarify. I don't want to be breaking any rules or policies.
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On April 12 2014 00:16 clashgg wrote:My apologies. I thought it would be a good place to post information. I have messaged the admins to clarify. I don't want to be breaking any rules or policies. Er...I definitely haven't been around for as long as most, but I find that mods are in general pretty liberal with blogs, and as long as you're not just "hurp durp check out my webpage111111", and actually writing something of substance (as you did), I imagine it'll be fine.
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Well I hope so
I've been working on Clash as a hobby for about 1.5 years probably putting in something like 4-500 hours of work in hope that one day it might grow into a website that people find useful. It's hard raising awareness for a project like this and getting people to use it. I've always been aware of this, but it can be frustrating if the only thing you encounter is "please go somewhere else and talk about this".
I genuinely believe in this and believe I can make it work over the course of another year. If not I wouldn't have bothered putting in all this work. So bear with me and hopefully soon we will start running prize tournaments and organizing a lot of great stuff.
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I just want to wish the best of luck with the website. It look like you have good intentions, but I really don't see a market for what you are trying to accomplish. Especially in SC2.
All features you are providing are in very very low demand for SC2, and transparency is nice, but being transparent will just make people bitch at you when they disagree with any decision you make, because by making your thought process available, it's impossible to hide things and you're open to criticism. It is very likely to be used against you. I also think transparency doesn't really matter to most people that are not super hardcore fans.
Also, a thing to keep in mind most people who watch esports HATE watching VODs, and always want to see it live. Also the amount of people that ladder in SC2 is absurdly low, according to SC2 ranks only 350k have played one ladder game this season. Out of that, you probably have 150k-200k English speakers playing that game. And if you look at how many people would pay to play in a tournament, especially the majority of players ranked Bronze-Plat, you're likely down to 1-5k players.
These Pay to Play models for tournaments have been used in the past with no avail, so unless you have some crazy innovative ideas that will revolutionize everything we know, it'll be a challenging task that I cannot see work. Nonetheless, I wish the best of luck to you.
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You're absolutely right Fiwifaki.
I am starting with SC2 for several reasons. The first and foremost reason is that I love SC2. While love is often not a good business strategy I think it's a good place to start. If I was to start with League of Legends the prize tournaments would have to be 5 times the size, but most likely the amount of visitors and ad revenue could be 5 times as large.
E-sports isn't going to go away and as long as it exists you are going to need tournament hosting systems. The reason I believe in this project is because 5 or even 10 years down the line there will still be a market for this system. The only question is - can I make this project a top contender world wide? You gain nothing by not trying. I love esports and I love making systems that people use. There's really not a better place for me to be then here.
I got time and I'm willing to put in the effort.
In regards to the transparency this is because we want people to see that we are trustworthy when it comes to payment of prizes. I don't plan on revealing our business strategies or software ideas. It has to be crystal clear to people that we contribute to esports and not using this to grab some $$$.
I am still hoping to get some feedback whether you guys think it's ok to put ads next to the embeds. It generates quite a few extra pageviews, but if people think we're trying to profit of other peoples work I don't want to do it.
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Ignore Omnishroud, he is just being cantankerous, had you put this in the SC2 section you might have had issues.
Your best bet is to link up with some mid tier MOBA organizers and familiarize yourself with the lay of the land in the non SC community.
The tournaments that persist in SC2, do so for a few reasons including but not limited to well established organizations with peripheral interests in gaming (Dreamhack), well respected casters (Khaldor is a good example), player draw/best of X format between notable players ala Go4SC2.
There are other reasons as well but if you are hoping to draw viewer numbers/site visits to earn money for eSports purposes/tournaments to levels that you can actually solicit sponsorship and or sell ad space to specific companies, you'll need a larger draw than most tournament start ups in SC2 generally produce.
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Since no objections have been raised anywhere I have enabled ads on the embed pages.
I have also updated the vodsystem to use a html based notification rather then a annoying messagebox when there is new content to a channel and you need to refresh.
I have also added LCS to the system.
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if you want to raise awareness for your website, maybe you should actually talk about the website instead of ads.
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I do. This is one of the entries in the blog about the website and this time it's about ads.
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