I have found a new trend, something a lot of you have either seen or do yourselves on your own board. I really don't want to ruffle feathers here but why do you require people to post your ad on their site in order to post on yours?

Being an admin takes time and I know a lot of people who find that rule to be very insulting and I understand it. When you go out and advertise your site and you come across a site that says you can't advertise there unless you advertise for them.... it makes you think "I am going through the trouble to advertise my site... are you saying that you can't do the same?"

It comes to mind that you might do this because it is more efficent, which is true .. for the site that is getting the 'free ad'. Its one of those things that only works if everyone does it, which will never happen.

Food for thought, on more and more sites I see that people will not allow places that require ads back to post anymore. Not that anyone reads the ad rules. I have a rule on my ad board that says "Please do not use center tags, they do not work." On almost ever ad on my board there are ads that tried to use centered tags. I don't delete them, even though I say if you break the rules I remove your ad but honestly, its an advertising board and as long as its an rpg and it has a link, I'm not really going to delete it....

Okay, end rant on the frustrations of advertising.

I understand where you are coming from and you have a very good point. I will admit that my boards have that "Will not advertise unless you advertise us" but its because it has worked and been efficient.

As well as that even though the rules state that if you do not then your link will deleted I never do. Partly because I just cant be bothered to go through removing the tag but also because I feel that I am advertising an RP through my board which people have obviously visited because they are interested in it. Because of that why should I be worried about the other site that I am linking too not having my ad if the person seeing thiers has obviously come to my board first.

Make sense?

We don't require that the other site post our ad, but we've had to start requesting a certain number of posts before you can post an ad. I know a lot of people disagree with this, but we found people were signing up to advertise then disappearing and I was left with all these adverts for 'weight loss tablets' and other inappropriate adverts from spammers.

Spammers don't stick around to post before they can advertise. :D

On my HP RPG everyone was free to advertise. The only rule I had of course was that I should be able to advertise on the forum that was advertised on my RPG, but the admin itself wasn't required to put up my advertisement, I can do that myself. They only time they need to do that if guests aren't able to post, but that's logical.

And Turkfox, those 'ads' sound as Spambots instead of actual people signing up.

So yeh, I disagree with that rule, and also if you do it yourself, yo ucould change an advertisement to the surroundings your advertising in.

I agree that it seems kind of lazy to require your own ad posted first. I've also seen a few who listed as a requirement that you had to affiliate them before you could post an ad (in a guest forum). That's really lame.

(TurkFox I'm not saying you do this) I've also had some roleplay sites with 'members only' ad forums post ads on my site (even though the very short rules list says you have to have a guest-friendly forum for me to post back on). I can understand keeping the security of your site and only allowing members to post in all forums, I would object to having someone post an ad in my ad forum where I could not post back freely. That includes resource sites, although I would be glad to discuss affiliating or a listing in their resource directory.

Basically, I look over ads to make sure they are decent, but otherwise I don't police it too much.

Oh, I've seen this, too. It wouldn't be that bad if they put up your affiliation button as well, but no. They just want their button to go up on someone else's site.

I don't like sites which say that the advertiser has to post the site's ad on the advertiser's board. It's just lazy, and you're no more special than everyone else.

Do you find this hurts you in getting members? I have always wondered that, how do you go about advertising for new members when you don't allow guests to advertise on your own site. Most admins, like Ros said, will delete any ads by sites that they cannot advertise on themselves. Do you rely on places like RPG-D? Word of Mouth? Or do you advertise on places and post a link back on your site?

Pure curiosity.

Well I can under stand why people have this rule. On my sites I have no advertsing unless a member has a admins say so. This is because I haev a history of people joining my sites, then posting a link to their sites and then just dispearing. On my Midnight breed site, within the first weak of it being open, three people did that.

Well, I came online yesterday to find that one of my Gmods had been onto the NPC account (admin-powers) and added the line 'or have permission from an admin' to the description of the adverts area. So I'll see what that does.

But normally I don't really encounter anywhere that requires they post an ad on my site in return. Either they're sites I'm a member of anyway, or they require me to put up their banner. So it's never really come up.

I have had bad exsperience with advertising on other sites. If you mean require every member to advertise your site to role play there, then I say stop. Sure, you might get more people this way. But you have no idea what they are going to do. Where they will advertise.

Take for example my old Star Wars forum. Our downfall was having our button on another forum with guys were downright rude, and said behind our backs that we owned a terrible forum. They went on our forum though, and then made a mess. It was like...ugh! They ruined our forum, and we had to close.

You don't know who will come on your forum, and you don't know who they are going back to. For example, I have a girl on my forum, and she advertised us at this other forum (will keep forum's name secret, since the person who runs it comes on here). I don't like how the person runs their forum, nor do I like their members since are about the rudest people ever. But now, since the girl advertised us there, we are getting some of their members, and it stinks.

You should be the only person to advertise, because this way you can look at the forums yourself and see if it's worth advertising there (or even affiatling).

I hate it when they do that. I've encountered a few sites like that, and I advertise there, but I don't advertise their site on mine. Haha. Like you said, if I can take the time out of my 'busy' schedule to advertise MY site, then you should do the same. Even if they delete my ad, at least it was on there for a little while. XD

And like photoshop_girl_ said, you should definitely not trust strangers to advertise your RPG.

Oh, I am certainly the only one who advertises my rpg. I try to stick to sites that are either new or have a similar genre to my own just to keep things simpler.

One thing I am wondering though, for those of you who don't have advertising boards at all, how do you do your advertising?

I do my advertising, by signing up to AddPro or something like that. And going to different sites to advertise my plot there. And if they dont advertise their plot on my site. Then, it just wont get added, unless me or my staff is just in a happy go lucky mood that day. -lol-

I do not have an advertising section on my board. I did have one, but it sat there empty for nearly two months, so I took it out. All my advertising is done by affiliates, top sites, submitting to search engines, fan listings, and all that jazz. It seems to be working pretty good since I starting doing it.

thats the only way I can even imagine working an advertising area of a board. I've never allowed guests to advertise and have always had very strict advertising rules. Posts minimums, some sort of link back to my site, and I have to personally approve all of them, though that last one is specifically to sift through people that have the audacity to rip my site and then advertise on it.

I like working it that way because it seems to me like its just a small way to appreciate the members. If you're going to join my site and be active then you deserve to be able to advertise any site of your own without having to searcxh through twelve pages of guest advertisements to find it.

Well, I've always had very strict aadvertising rules and I've had over 800 registrations on my RPG so I wouldn't say there's any real connection between the two.

I have an easy fix for that: I just let members bump their site threads, and don't allow guests to do so. That way members' sites get more attention.

You have obviously had a lot of success without allowing advertising on your boards but the second part of the question was how do you advertise then?

well, when we first started out I added my site to directories like this, topsites, and larger sites I belong to, such as pandoras closet and the dark arts. Once I had a pretty established member base, I just ask them to advertise. I made it easy by providing the codes for advertisements and making graphcis they can keep in their sigs at other sites.

At this point though, I don't do too much advertising. I pretty much rely on word of mouth, so to speak. I affiliate with new sites I like sometimes and still ask members to advertise a lot of the time, but thats about it.

One thing I did do that I found very successful was hold competitions. I've had multiple competitions on my site and one of the possibilities to earn points is always to post an advertisement and get referrals. Its quite efffective ^_^