For awhile now Google has been sending me notices that it refuses to serve ads on various pages. But there is no compulsion to do anything about this, although they do is suspend the display of ads on these pages. However today I have deleted a discussion started by <strike>TTBN</strike>Bazz (see discussion below) entitled "Police Arrest a Hardened Pregnant Mum". Apparently the discussion violated their community policies, although how, I'm not sure.

It raises the issue as to what I should do in a financial sense. We make very little money from Google ads - maybe $1800 pa - but they do pay for most of the cost of the servers.

Is there a better way to make this site sustainable? Is Patreon an answer, for example. Of course there are other advertising companies, so maybe I should see what they offer.

So I'm letting you know what has happened on our site, and if it is happening here, then it is happening on other sites as well. You might want to discuss that, or make suggestions on the monetisation front.

I beg your pardon, Graham, but TTBN did not start that discussion; neither did ttbn. I think it was Bazz, but as you have deleted it, I can't be sure.

How about a paywall? Say, like Quadrant Online, where anyone can read the content free of charge, but to comment, you have to be a subscriber. Newspapers do it, but you have little hope of getting a letter to the editor published. Just a thought. I, of course know nothing about running a blog, nor what Graham's reason for doing it is. $1800 p.a. from Google shouldn't be hard to replace.

To Graham Y- this is very concerning.

This sounds like something similar to a Sleeping Giants campaign.

I'm sorry to see you put in this difficult position. I know that Dick Smith and others are sympathetic to the cause of free speech even if Google isn't. Maybe I'll put a good word in for you.

I'm sad I didn't save the thread knowing that it has upset someone

I would accept a paywall up to $50 per annum

I would not like anyone besides Graham decide what is allowable. I also would not like anyone's voice stilled because they didn't have the money to pay for the forum. If Graham decides on a pay wall I will try to pay it.

Hopefully OLO stays free, which I think is its major strength against other sites which charge, and an alternative advertising option can be found

It's a toss up for who is the most dangerous: the government or the corporates. You can't get rid of governments because they are all the same these days. You can hit back at many corporates by not buying their products and services. But Google? Impossible to deal with I would think. I really cannot see how a discussion on the appalling treatment of a woman by Victorian rozzers can have anything to do with Google at all. Would they allow us to to say anything about the VicPig who stamped on a man's head a couple of days ago, after he had been mowed down by another VicPig using a patrol car?

Chris Lewis,

What is the alternative to advertising? Are you going to find it? It seems to me that a paywall is the only way to freedom from interference. It might get rid of some of the childish and boring back and forth between two or three posters who think the site is just for them to win arguments. They never win, but they keep on trying. Not to mention the irrelevant topics some of them put up to goad anyone silly enough to comment.

And irony of ironies, when I look at this thread, the ad they serve up to me is a scam for cryptocurrencies peddling fake news about Dick Smith. Seems to me they need to worry much more about their advertisers than the vehicles on which their ads are served!!

Hi Graham,

As I wrote to you on the Trump discussion - Google does
have community guidelines. A code of conduct.

1) Respect the user.
2) Respect the opportunity.
3) Respect each other.

"Discussions that make other Googlers feel like they don't
belong have no place here".

And -

"You are responsible for your words and your reach".

So perhaps some of our "Aussie" lingo that we're used to,
may come across as "abuse" to Americans. Especially with
all their problems regarding law enforcement that are
happening there currently. Hence the notices and warnings
and withdrawals of their adds to you.

Maybe all we have to do is improve our postings?
I'm not suggesting that we censor our posts - just perhaps
put things in a less "abusive " way?

It wouldn't hurt to at least try?

With respect to hosting costs.

My understanding is there are several new costing models available for hosting blog sites that could lower OLO's costs from $1800 or so per year to something significantly lower.

I'm not an expert but...

Options include-

Cloud based- Azure/ AWS/ other - SAAS throttling

"Deep web" options.

Bulletin Boards

Some of these options are still exposed to cancel culture "marks" but perhaps less than Web 2.0 based service companies such as the big ten IT companies

If the death penalty + torture is to be re-introduced, then it is advertisers and their facilitators who should be first for the punishment.

This filth has to go, so I support and intend to contribute my share into any paid membership-scheme that can help eliminating this bane from the face of the earth!

It was me that originated that thread.
I am appalled, how dare they should sit across the other side of the Pacific
and make demands on our behaviour. Hmm the US spell checker can't spell. Aaaarrrghh
I do not really understand how the advertising side of this works.
Does OLO get paid if Google copies OLO's advertisements ?
I think sometimes the to & fro gets a bit willing especially when Paul
says something a bit way out, but that is his privilege not Googles.
I would be in favour of cutting google out of the loop but a charge
always cuts back participation.
Here is an idea, a government grant of $10,000 was given to a female
"artist" for exhibiting a splattering of her blood on a piece of cloth.
Surely OLO is worth more than that ?
A government grant for a community square would be a more valuable
use of $10k.

What it is, Google is a platform for media, who expect payment for their work. If we freely quote from their resources, they expect payment.

To be able to comment on the media platforms you have to subscribe, so to use their information on another discussion platform they expect it is being seen by their subscribers only, including their advertisements.

Bazz, why are you directing this at me; "think sometimes the to & fro gets a bit willing especially when Paul says something a bit way out, but that is his privilege not Googles."

I could say the same about YOU! We are all playing in the same sandbox here. How about moving the whole thing to Tik Tok.

Exactly Paul, you say something and I or Altrav bights or he says
something and you bight.
I don't think you will find anything I said was really offensive about
anyone personally but I do attack beliefs that are silly.

I didn't really take part in the pregnant dissident's arrest thread, so am unsure if anything untoward was said.

But I find it passing strange that the actions by Google took place on the same day as the site starts talking about the evidence that the WuFlu virus was manufactured by PLA. Li-Meng Yan's story has already been censored elsewhere and we know Google has been prepared to bend over forwards for China.

Probably just a coincidence, but....

Hey GrahamY,

I meant to make a comment on this post earlier.

I used to build websites, but I never went as far as building them for others, but I was more-or-less good enough to do so if I wanted.
it's been quite a few years and I'm a bit rusty.

I think Foxy's probably right, that it is likely to do with code-of-conduct for the forums comments, if it's intermittent, on some threads but not others.

Not really much you can do unless you want to spend all your time censoring comments unfortunately, you'll run into the same issues as Mumbrella did spending too much time dealing with comments rather than focusing on content / building the site up in other ways.

You could rebuild and update the site, try to draw in more members and look for more income from donations / or even membership.

I myself have felt guilty for not contributing something financially towards this site, as I know it takes time and expense to manage, and the site has been a good place for me to have my 2 cents worth and gauge what others think about things.
I think it kind of grounded me a little.

I used to build websites with a content management system called Joomla.
When I started learning around 2010 it was version 1.5 now its up to version 3.9 soon to be Joomla 4 I believe.
http://www.joomla.org/
It's free open source software, but to really get the benefits you want to buy an aftermarket template.
I used to used Rocketthemes, they have an install package that includes both their template and the Joomla Content Management System in 1.
It takes about 5 minutes to go into C-Panel, create a mysql database configure it right and upload the zip-file to the host server and unpack it.
(provided the technical specs of the host are compatible with joomla)
from there, you'll have an entire website with all the pages installed just like this one for around US$34
http://demo.rockettheme.com/joomla-templates/phoenix/
And you'll get support from rockettheme too.

[Cont.]
Once you purchase a template, you'll also get access to discounted hosting offers as all the web design companies promote each other.
You'll notice on this page you can get a 25% hosting discount.
http://rockettheme.com/promotions
http://www.rochen.com/joomla-hosting/compare-plans/

Hosting for a single site shouldn't cost you more than $100 - $150 yr, I wouldn't think.

Next you'll need a forum extension to add forum functionality to your site.
http://www.joomdev.com/blog/entry/best-forum-joomla-extensions

Here's a few demos, they're both free.
http://www.chronoengine.com/forums
http://www.kunena.org/forum/163-Feature-Playground

The Joomla Extensions Directory is where you'll find other extensions that will add functionality to your site.

Once you get the forum in you'll need to make some small coding changes CSS to make the forum look and fit the template you added it to.
http://www.w3schools.com/css/

Or you could just ask someone at Rockettheme to help you.

After that I think you should invest in crypto, but its risky.
- You could turn your $1800 per year into ten times as much.

Cryptocurrency is now matured to the point you can just put your cryto into a bank and earn massive interest on it with less risk, its all a part of DeFi, (Decentralised Finance)
http://nakamoto.com/beginners-guide-to-defi/

EU just approved cryptocurrency and the Chinese yuan has gone digital.
The worlds changing.

Look at this for an example:

http://www.binance.com/en/trade/LINK_BUSD?layout=pro
Click the 1 hour increment.

Chainlink is in the top 10 cryptcurrencies.
Currently number 8 with a market cap of 3.85 billion.
http://www.coingecko.com/en

It dropped to $7.30 last week and has already bounced back to $11.
That's a 50% gain in a week for one of the top 10 cryptocurrencies.

You can buy 10x on margin.
If you invested 10k last week on a 10X margin,
i.e bet 100K on the bounce, you'd have made 50K in a week.

There's nearly 6000 coins now, many are rubbish but many will go up 100X

What's more, Binance don't charge you $20 or $30 for a buy / sell
It costs nearly nothing to trade small amounts on binance.

All you gotta do is watch crypto videos on youtube to start to understand things but it takes a bit, especially if your not really computer savvy.
http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMtJYS0PrtiUwlk6zjGDEMA

There's no reason why you couldn't create a new site,

- A duplicate of this site all upgraded with added functionality for new members,
- And still leave this old site up for the article archive and for existing members who are happy with the way things are here and don't really care for change.

You may have to back-up and move this website to a different domain though maybe oloarchive.com.au or something so you can free up the onlineopinion.com.au domain for the new site.

In the meantime, you could build and test the new site on another temporary domain, say onlineopinion2.com.au or something and then move that site and discard the domain after you've tested it all and are happy it works properly.

Feel free to respond or contact me via email if you need any pointers setting it up.
I am rusty but I still have a fairly basic understanding of what to do, if this is something you want to do.

I'll even make a donation to pay for the template, if you want.