CycleChat's revenue comes from two main sources; banner ads via the
Google Adsense program and shopping referral commissions through
Skimlinks.
Guests are the key revenue generators. Since they don't directly contribute to the conversation they are shown banner ads and are also shown two or three merchant links (if products or merchants are mentioned in the text of the page
without a link on them already). For example if a page text mentions
Amazon,
Evans,
Wiggle,
Trek Bikes and
GoPro Cameras the system will check to see if those merchants, products or phrases are currently part of the link program, and if so will add links to between two and four of the words in the hope that the visitor clicks the link and buys something. If they do CycleChat gets a very small commission (
which we share with Skimlinks for providing the system).
The links that are shown to guests are made visually different from regular CC links by adding an
underline to them and displaying "Shopping link added by Skimlinks" when you hover over them; hopefully this helps to identify their origin and nature and gives the visitor a choice as to whether they want to click on them or not (although anyone can opt-out here:
http://optout.skimlinks.com/)
This automatic linking of merchants and products within the page text is
disabled for registered members though; only normal, member added links are visible - but these are still checked on the way out when someone clicks on them and again we will be tagged as the referrer if they point to a participating merchant.
Prices are
not modified as a result of following a link from CycleChat and you won't pay any more or less than if you had visited the merchant's site directly. Equally, links that members create are not hijacked or diverted to other merchants and should point to the same landing page as originally intended - however the merchant may add a referring element to the URL to record who sent the visitor their way (as per your example
@jefmcg).
I've hopefully managed to maintain a good balance between providing an excellent service, generating revenue, and having a clean layout by creating a symbiotic relationship that is neither invasive, nagging or visually spoiling of anyone's enjoyment of the site - member or guest; and whilst I generate less income than I potentially could from CC, I feel the set-up we have is preferable to going down the route of giant-sized header ads, pop-unders, pop-outs, sidebars, video overlays, full-screen take-over ads, paid subscriptions, ads disguised as content, newsletters, selling of visitor metric data, minimal content with 20 ads per page, and ... well, you get the idea.
As to the revenue generated - it pays for the on-going running costs and updates, and goes towards servicing the personal debt I've amassed during the development of CC (
which has been worth every penny).
Cheers,
Shaun
