sci wrote:I do understand. You have a beautiful website. BUT, with the extra money you could have money for a rainy day (so to speak). You could have some really nice giveaways/contests.
We don't really have enough revenue for hosting giveaways (even if we implemented ads), and at one point we were giving away a free unlimited account for life every month but no one showed any interest. You can see the remnants down the list of boards if you look.
sci wrote:You don't have to pocket the money.
We don't. All revenue from donations and from once upon a time when we had ads, all of it goes into funding the server directly. None of us, including the owner, make any profit from the site. We are non-profit.
sci wrote:I click on some of the various Ads on websites I like because I know they need and appreciate it, and it costs nothing but a bit of time. [...] (Shhhhh..., Ads are the way to go....

)
I'm sure they appreciate that, and if we had any ads I'm sure we would too, but In my opinion (and I'd like to be clear here, in no way does my opinion reflect how we operate TOC or upon what Hot Trout believes), speaking unofficially for a second, I feel that ads are not the way to go if you can afford to go without them, and we can. I'm sure everyone that visits us is eternally grateful that we're not that ROM site that goes balls deep in ads and voting.
I understand that it's how other sites make their revenue and that's fine if that's how they want to operate, but as you can see we buck that trend. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying anything bad about the other sites as they need to do what they need to do to stay alive, but we've had such positive feedback since we removed the ads and we like it this way.