Many thanks for taking the time to read and respond to this.
Mark Goodge
Founder, RailwayModels.uk
From the start, this website has been primarily funded by advertising. That has both paid for the hosting costs of the website and the professional skills involved in running it.
The company which operates this website is a small, family owned and family run business. We're not part of a big corporation.
However, advertising revenue has been on a steady downward trend over the past few years. This isn't because more people are using adblockers, and it isn't because fewer people are visiting the site. Visitor numbers are up, and so are advertising views. But the total revenue from those adverts is down.
There are all sorts of possible reasons for that, and it's likely that there are several factors involved. But what it basically comes down to is that advertisers are spending less on advertising (or, at least, less on this type of advertising), so our share of what the advertising networks get is correspondingly smaller as well.
One way to solve that would simply be to put even more advertising on the website. More adverts equals more money, it's as simple as that.
But I'm reluctant to go down that route, for several reasons. One is that it ends up in a kind of arms race, where ever more intrusive adverts encourage more and more people to install adblockers, thus nullifying the gains. But, also, I'm well aware that the most lucrative forms of advertising are the ones that people hate the most.
Most people accept that something which is free to use will need some form of income, so they also accept that advertising is a part of that. It works for free-to-air TV channels such as ITV and Channel 4, it works for local free newspapers and it works for websites.
What people don't like, though, is where the adverts become so intrusive and disruptive that they make it hard to view the content. Just scrolling past an advert on the screen, or clicking through an interstitial, is trivial. But experience shows that people really hate adverts which autoplay audio or video, or which appear in the middle of viewing the page, or cause the content to reflow after the page has loaded.
Unfortunately, audio and video adverts are where the advertising money is mostly going these days. Without using them, it's almost impossible to get enough revenue to cover the costs of running the site.
What I would like to do, therefore, is move away from the main advertising networks as a means of funding the site.
There are various options for this, two of which are available now and two of which I'm working on.
For donations, we're using the crowd-funding website Buy me a Coffee. We're using that system because it's specifically designed to help fund websites and small businesses through subscriptions and donations. If you prefer, though, you can make a donation via PayPal (link below).
Site sponsorship and donations are both available now. There are two other things in the pipeline that I'm working on:
In the meantime, I'd be interested in any feedback about these options. Either drop me an email at [email protected], or let me know your thoughts using the comments section below.
Many thanks for taking the time to read and respond to this.
Mark Goodge
Founder, RailwayModels.uk