Should we have advertising on EuroGA?

That’s a very good point.

Probably, the much wider use of advertising on the US sites of just about everything related to GA, from bug removal wipes to complete engines, reflects the much easier availability of installers (often freelance A&Ps) and thus getting stuff done and signed off, than here in Europe where the vast majority of owners have no choice but to use a company, and there in most cases nobody wants to be on the hook for anything unless they have an STC.

And who owns most EASA STCs? Garmin and Garmin

But even Garmin stuff cannot be sold to non-trade customers, in Europe, because they can’t install it, and installers dislike customers who free-issue the stuff because the installer then doesn’t make the dealer margin on it. There are firms who sell avionics direct, and it’s interesting how they work, given stuff like this; I reckon most of the installations are either off the books or there is no AFMS etc

So the range of items which can be advertised in Europe is relatively narrow. Probably, most adverts would be from maintenance companies (this is actually evident, looking at other sites) and AFAICS the biggers advertisers there are ones with pretty bad reputations…

The email re donations gets sent out after Xmas

This topic was prompted by a continuous (daily) stream of requests to advertise here generally, plus some specific small GA businesses asking.

Don’t worry – we will not have advertising here, for a number of reasons; for example:

• Currently we get donations from a number of individuals, and some of these are extremely generous. Collectively, they do fund EuroGA, paying for hosting and for some small software updates. I would expect these donations to dry up if we carried adverts. And if we did just the sort of European GA businesses which enquired about it, any revenue from these would be far less than the current level of donations.

• Adverts pay you only if not adblocked; you get paid for the referrals. One can detect ad blocking at the server and then either put up a polite request to turn it off, or do what most newspapers do and block access completely. I personally do not visit sites which do the latter, so I would not expect anyone else to do it.

• Advertising compromises the site mod policy. Firstly, one needs to have a “non bashing” policy and for fairly obvious reasons the implementation of this has to be covert. Secondly, one won’t get (in Europe, with its GA community make-up) enough advert revenue unless one allows aggressive posting, including personal attacks – because such posts (and the individuals who make them) draw in a big audience and drive up advert clicks 5x to 10×.

• The European GA business scene suffers from deep structural issues, in the areas of technical competence, project management, and customer service. And negative comments spill out onto social media. Accordingly, most businesses really dislike social media and especially participating on it, even though – some past cases have shown – smart participation would bring them a lot of business. So one ends up in a situation where companies just want to advertise without participation, get upset when negative comments are posted, and sometimes threaten litigation. And the companies with the worst reputation would be the first to advertise Again, this is something I don’t want to be dealing with, especially as I am not getting any money for it

This of course touches on the general matter of mod policy, I believe our mod policy – which is unique in this sphere – to be correct even though it has over the 10 years caused a certain amount of hassle for the mod/admin (mostly me). What typically happens is that X (a colourful individual with a vast posting rate) arrives (mostly from the 3-4 national forums, all of which encourage offensive posts) in the hope he can do the same here, and then he makes a lot of noise when he discovers he can’t, so he departs, taking with him a bunch of his countrymen in a show of solidarity Then he slags off EuroGA on his domestic site(s), and certain “private” sites. We’ve not had this for a couple of years, which I think is rather nice. It is generally an impossible situation for a mod/admin to deal with because one move produces one exodus while another move produces another exodus. It is extra difficult on an international forum, with the national dimensions involved.

Regarding the Marketplace section, how to grow it has been much discussed e.g. here. It remains difficult to develop because there are lots of places where you can dump a “headset for sale” post and where the admins are keen for traffic so they don’t remove it. I have in the past directed advertising enquirers to Marketplace where they can buy an advert for a period of time.

It is a very good point – thanks for that – that we should have a link to Marketplace on the home page; I just need to find a way to edit it

Putting Marketplace in the home page banners (and having it auto updated) would be a much bigger job and would cost thousands – like this which also has no clean solution. It would also displace some threads which have been promoted to the home page, and that is important since this is a major driver of participation.

Sadly, taking the ~200 group which posts each month, less than 10% have expressed their view on something so important. Nobody turned up on Zoom either. This is exactly how we get the highly intelligent, capable, and absolutely honest and trustworthy politicians who run our countries

@Peter, having followed your reasoning, and thankyou for such a detailed account of how you have come to your decision, I can only say I.bow to your superior knowledge of social media and totally support your no ads policy.

Having no ads makes reading and posting on the forum possible in far away places where the internet is slow.
I have no complaints.

I have now added the Marketplace link to the home page.

Re phones, I wonder how the hell one would end up with a reasonable layout on a phone if adverts were present.

Peter gave a veeery good explanation why it is better not to have any ads here. Thanks – I’m sure we all agree that we let you to decide because nobody else understands so well the needs and musts of maintaining this forum. In my opinion this ga is a wonderful place to read good ideas, ask help for problems and give advice to others – and thinking how widely this is read (the whole Europe and even in America and who knows where) it is actually an incredible achievement. Great work!

I agree with the current policy of ‘forcing’ advertising to be paid for by forum participation, rather than money. The classifieds format of the marketplace is good, e.g. ErlendV’s IR books there, which is a permanent advert rather than a one-off for a particular item.

In the past I’ve found aircraft type-specific websites with a directory of recommended suppliers to be useful, especially the more niche companies with poor or nonexistent websites. Hopefully members will post if they find something or someone worth recommending.

Peter wrote:

less than 10% have expressed their view on something so important. Nobody turned up on Zoom either. This is exactly how we get the highly intelligent, capable, and absolutely honest and trustworthy politicians who run our countries

It could be apathy, but on EuroGA it could also be trust

Thank you all for the positive comments.

I regard the small prices for Marketplace adverts to be a donation to EuroGA

Most type specific websites are in the US. The European GA scene is too diffuse, too fragmented, by culture, language, a certain amount of nationalism, and actually most of Europe has almost no GA activity. The US scene is about 5x to 10x bigger, depending on how measured; various numbers can be found here.

Just considering how smoothly the website loads on poor connections via phone. The lower bandwidth due to lack of GIF and spangly adverts really makes a difference to me.

I have always liked Peter’s approach to it all.

I like it without adds. 2022 dues sent.