Why are there ads on NikeTalk? The answer is inside.

Im sure youre all wondering why youre now seeing ads on NikeTalk. (and if youre not seeing them yet, you will soon.) As most of you know, weve worked our hardest to keep ads from appearing on NikeTalk for over six years. So, what gives?

NO, we havent sold out. As it stands, our staff wont receive one cent of ad revenue. Right now, were just trying to stay online.

Allow me to explain. For those cursed with short attention spans, just read the BIG, BOLD text.... slowly.



Without ads, we cant afford to stay online.


Recently, NikeTalk has become so popular that we simply cannot continue operating without a steady source of revenue.

In other words, without these ads wed have to take NikeTalk offline.

NikeTalk costs tens of thousands of dollars simply to HOST.

Some of you have been incredibly generous in donating to NikeTalk over the past six years, but unfortunately its just not enough anymore and its not fair to ask a few of you to pay for the 100,000 people who view NikeTalk each day.

In the past 12 months, we received a little over $2,000 via user donations. We can barely afford a single month of hosting for that amount.




Ads will allow us to add new features to NikeTalk.

Dont look at this as a negative, though. Since NikeTalk has grown so large, advertising can - and, with your support, WILL - be a TREMENDOUS positive for our community.

For starters, once the ads start running well be able to offer ALL of our users FREE UNLIMITED page views.

You may have noticed that we no longer have a community chest. We have removed the chest because we no longer want our members to pay a single cent for NikeTalks hosting. Save your money. Let the advertisers pay for it.


Not only will ads allow us to continue running NikeTalk, but theyll also allow us to bring you a host of new and exciting features in the months to come.

This fall, NikeTalk will run on an entirely new platform: Yuku.
You can check it out here: www.yuku.com/

Once we move to Yuku, youll have picture hosting, an enhanced profile with your own blog, and much more. Youll be able to upload your own pictures in one click, drag and drop pictures right into NikeTalk posts, and start your own user groups. The site will load faster and the search engine (goodness willing) will actually WORK WELL.

We'll be telling you more about Yuku, and our upcoming transition, in the weeks and months to come. You don't need to wait until the fall to experience the benefit of advertising, though.





Ads will allow us to give back to the community.

Using all of the remaining funds in our community chest, we extended our ezboard community gold subscription until June 18th. As such, we've decided that until June 18th, 100% of the amount we raise from advertising will be donated to charity.

After June 18th, were going to use ad revenue to pay for our hosting costs first and foremost. If we have anything left over, were going to donate it to charities and well keep everyone updated on exactly how much were able to donate each month. You can help us decide where that money goes, after all youre a part of the community.

We should also be able to hold contests and giveaways in the future, using our ad revenue and sponsorship arrangements to obtain prizes for our members. It may take us awhile to get something like that off the ground due to the organization involved, but I'd love to be able to give sneakers away every month if possible. Successful ads will allow us to make that happen.





For the next few weeks, we'll be testing different types of ads in various locations throughout NikeTalk. These will all be text ads running on Google AdSense. I'm sure you've all seen these types of ads before.

If you come across ANY inappropriate ads, (counterfeit sneaker sellers, "adult" content, etc.) PLEASE report them to our staff immediately and we'll have them removed as soon as we possibly can. Let us know the site's web address and we'll have it filtered out.

Feel free to share your feedback with us. Let us know what ad locations you feel HURT the site and which ones you're ok with.
The last thing we want to do is damage your experience here on NikeTalk, so we'll have to work together to find ad locations that you'll support with your clicks rather than simply ignore. Otherwise, we won't be able to pay our bills and stay online.



This has been a difficult decision for our staff, but embracing advertising is the only way for us to continue offering NikeTalk for free. We've reached the limit to what we could accomplish without outside funding.

By taking this step, though, the possibilities are now limitless.

Ads offer us a way for us to make this community a better place through enhanced features and performance while allowing us to do our small part in making this world a better place through charitable donations. I'll describe these contributions in more detail within the next post for those interested.

If you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer them here, via private message, or email. (a link is in my signature)



Thank you all for your continued support of the NikeTalk community!

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NikeTalk has always been a way for our staff to give something back to our fellow sneaker fans. With the arrival of ads, now we can all work together to give something back to the GREATER community. Since were paid for until June 18th, were going to donate a full 100% of our ad revenues between now and the time our community gold subscription expires to charity.

As sneaker fans, we often get a bad rap due to the rather exploitive labor practices of Nike, Reebok/Adidas, etc. Through these ads, we have the opportunity to demonstrate the type of social responsibility thats been so thoroughly lacking among our fellow sneaker websites. We may not be able to raise millions of dollars or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, but were going to do our BEST and very few people in this field can honestly say that. Were not out to slap together some token fundraiser for the cause of the month as a PR stunt. Were not going to preen ourselves for donating .000001% of our operating budget on a few school grants and call it social responsibility. Whatever we manage to raise, we're going to donate as much as we can to charity. Right now, our staff members are STILL going to volunteer their time without receiving ANYTHING in return.

I think I speak for many of us when I say that Im honestly sick and tired of making money for Nike. Im tired of making money for greedy resellers. Lets use the power of our community to do something GOOD.

So, please join me in participating in this program. All you have to do is click on a few ads every now and then and youll help us raise money for all types of worthy causes.

We have some charities in mind, but please feel free to share your suggestions with us as well.


Its my sincere hope that, just by browsing NikeTalk together and clicking on a few ads, well be able to raise thousands of dollars as a community for the prevention and treatment of diseases like AIDS, support poverty/disaster relief funds, minority scholarship funds, womens shelters, rape crisis centers, and more.

Through something as painless as a couple of extra mouse clicks, we can use the power of our community to benefit the causes and ideals that are important to each of us.

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Since December 9th, 1999, Niketalk launched as a fresh forum to serve sneaker fans and the sneaker community at large.

During this time, the site has gone through extraordinary changes and momentous events, yet always keeping the focus on enabling sneaker fans from around the globe to participate in the biggest footwear disscussion board on the Internet. Niketalk has been as pure, as principled, and as idealistic a sneaker website could be through 6 1/2 years of operation.

As you're all aware of now, advertisements have been implemented into the forum. This is a NECESSARY change.

The Community Chest has can no longer sustain the gigantic hosting costs for this website. It's also a bit unfair to for a committed group of members to literally pay for and shoulder the costs of the other 50,000 members and 80,000+ daily visitors that Niketalk received. Everyone who has donated to the Chest can take part in the fact that it kept this site ONLINE and running smoothly for years.

At this very moment in time, the options are:

1) Niketalk with ads, or
2) No Niketalk.

I think we can all get behind the first option.

Am I correct in assuming that EZ Supports still won't see ads?
It's deep how you can be so shallow.

I knew running a full service .com website was expensive, but damn. I understand the logic behind it, and if it makes the operation run more smoothly, then I am 2000% behind it.

Thanks for the news, stupid ads make me lagg. O well looks like were gonna have to live with it.
Common sense is the anti hype.

so are u saying soon niketalk will be moving away from ezboard

I'm all for it.

Thanks for the explanation MethodMan.

So when switching to Yuku, are we still going to be using EZBoard?

so in the fall we wont be on ezboard.com anymore? will we have to re-register w/ yuku to be able to post? ant i cant wait for the shoe giveaway.

i$$ has a lot of things on there fourm. how much does it cost for them to stay up w/o ads?

lol at all of us asking the same question at the same time.
Its not what you know, Its what you can provestill team anti ds.

I fully support this 100% and can't wait for the new features to roll in.

damn. just... damn. Hopefully it turns out to be a positive.
"So much on my mind I just can't recline. Blastin' holes in the night til' she bled sunshine. Breathe in , inhale vapors from deep stars of shine. Breathe out, weed smoke retrace the skyline."

Sounds great Meth. Thanks!

Quote:

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Once we move to Yuku, youll have picture hosting, an enhanced profile with your own blog, and much more. Youll be able to upload your own pictures in one click, drag and drop pictures right into NikeTalk posts, . The site will load faster and the search engine (goodness willing) will actually WORK WELL.

We'll be telling you more about Yuku, and our upcoming transition, in the weeks and months to come. You don't need to wait until the fall to experience the benefit of advertising, though.

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Can you imagine the groups that will form? This sounds awsome, but will we keep our post counts when we switch over?

Also, this shows that NT>>>>>>>>>ISS and the rest

2006 National Champions​

Click to expand...

the whole thing sounds coo. hopefully it all works out smoothly

damn Meth, you typed a whole book.

but seriously, the Unlimited Page View is awesome. i'm all for the adds as long as NikeTalk stays alive
R.I.P. Nana
5-5-1938 - 5-30-2003

Sp if we switc hwil lwe h ave to re-register?

God, I wish you all would've told me.

I could've given you all a Google Ads referral and been bankin!

All is well.

A few ads will not hinder NT one bit, even if it is for fakes. It's not that serious.

And for anyone who thinks small ads will hurt NT, there's other places for you to go, simple as that.

yeah are we still on ezboard later?

xxSmackxx: That is some bad spelling.

Good move IMO

here's an ad that may be innapropriate, according to meth. It's the "nike shoes wholesale: af1, jordans, shox, airmax dunk etc over 800 styles & 30000 pairs stock", it leads to a fake site. www.zhihou.net/
It's [/i][/b] sides to every story
[/i] strikes and you be in for life, mandatory