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There are some reports of the ads not working in Firefox! Stay tuned as we fix :)

I know, I know.. you're thinking "Seriously? More ads?! Is Route 50 selling out here?!" Well, rest assured, we're not selling out. In my address to you, the members, the citizens of this web-nation, I must declare some both good and bad news. Route 50 has grown to the point where the traffic we're receiving is causing slow downs to our server, and soon we will have to upgrade to a private server. This commits me to an additional few hundred dollars a year, which, being a kid and a college student, would be hard to come by!

These ads are an experiment in earning money for the site. That space at the top with the PokeBall looking strip are two ad slots. If these slots work out, I'll be removing the Google Ads on the rest of the site. Until then, unfortunately, you'll have to bear with me as I tinker and change things around!

Guess what?! The bidding starts at $0! Yeah! The first two ad slots are up for FREE! Basically how it works is that you have to bid on an ad slot to bump someone else off and put your ad in there. You only pay for however much time your ad is up. Since we're starting the bids at $0, you can pop some suckers in there right now for no charge and see how it goes. The hope is that other people will want those spots, and in order to bump you out, they'll actually bid some money.

Please give me some feedback guys, and tell me what you think about this. Do you hate it? Do you.. really hate it? Tolerant? Even love? Respond below :)

Go here to start putting in ads ^_^ We only accept quality and tasteful advertisements, too.

Interesting...I like that it's going to mostly have ads relevant to us. XD I don't mind.

Haha stealing from the community are you? /shot

It's a good idea. We promote what WE want, not some MMO nobody's interested about. And the price goes up with each replacement of the ad, which means a few steps closer to a larger, better server! Nice idea Kat :D

Yeah, exactly! 8D All the ads will be relevant. I think you completely understand, Nechaken

Will you get money if we click on the ads? :D

I don't think so. The only money I get is from people paying to stick 'em up there ^_^

Aww, I was about to spam-click them...

I thought that you got paid when people clicked on their ads... Must have been thinking about somethin else. x3

That's as good as how Stack Overflow advertisements worked.

That's for most other ads like Google Ads and stuff, I believe. But that money, I don't really know where it'd come from. Maybe from the advertised site? If it was that case, then the advertiser would have to pay each time someone clicked on the ad. Which doesn't make sense because you only pay for how long it's up and the bid price.

Can I explain how this works?
This is an infinite auction, your bid has a timespan.
For example, A bid $1 for 3 days, and in the second day, B bid $2 for 5 days,
B's ad will only show up between the second day and the 6th day inclusive, then after the 7th day, A was the winner.

Here is a timeline:


Notice A did not pay between day 2 and day 5 inclusive, because B's ad showed up instead.

DISCLAIMER: I did not verify it

If there are more players involved, the auction will get competitive and higher bids will appear, which the owner (or "publisher") earns more money. The opposite applies.

Here is a table, "less" and "more" means how much money do you have, and "low" and "high" shows the popularity (which positively correlates with competitiveness and average bid):


There is a balance between advertising in a less popular site with lower bid, or a more popular site with higher bid.
If you have more money, you may be opting to more popular sites.

Other factors includes how desperate you want your visitors, the cost-effectiveness of advertising. (for example, increasing the advertising rate of Route 50 will make Kat pay more server fees)

I really like this new idea, Kat. It's a great way to have the community involved with helping this site, and their own sites. C:

Ditch DreamHost and go to MediaTemple?

When the site was Eevee's HQ, I can recall one of the ads next to the chatbox being something like "You call them man boobs, I call them POWER BAGS" for some random fighting game thingamabob. XD

Anywho, relevant ads are great! As for having ads in the first place, relevant or not, I think that it is perfectly acceptable. Money for the site has to be made somehow, right? It is most unfortunate that the Elite Four confiscated our roomfuls of Pay Day-ing Meowths.

Haha, I remember that ad too. I'm glad you all are pretty accepting of the ads. ^_^; Now we just have to get people to start paying for them.. xD

Nick, tell me about MediaTemple. Are they good?

ill put mine in later when I finish my site revamp