Introduction

Generic bulk banner ads suck and they don't pay all that well. GameDev.net gets sponsorships from time to time that allow us to continue to operate the site throughout the year but sometimes we have to make ad deals not because we want to, but because without them we'd have to shut down. To be truthful, it would be awesome to either run the site without advertising OR run it with ads that come from within the community. This article is largely about an idea brought to us by one of our users named StarMire in a discussion about some crappy bulk ads we were showing.

Our Goals for 2015

We have some pretty big goals for 2015 which includes a major focus on beginner tutorials particularly in the mobile development arena. We also understand how hard it is for indies to advertise their middleware to others. Our "Your Announcements" forum has long been one of our more popular areas for people looking to get some support for their development work. This next pitch is for you guys.

Can We Cut The Cord?

Our little site here gets about 1.7 million page views a month and for November and December we will be trying an experiment.. a pretty huge experiment. You see, we have this little subscription service called GDNet+ that has a few features to improve your site experience. It's only a few bucks a month but every dollar goes a long way in helping us to keep running. And for November and December, we're turning all our advertising over to you guys. Can we cut the cord that ties us to silly bulk ads? We hope so.

Every single GDNet+ subscriber will get a shot to have your product or service in our ad rotation. If this is successful we may be able to do this forever! Now we will get bigger sponsorships from time to time, but they'll be the type of sponsorships that interest you rather than generic bulk ads. We'll fit them all in and make our ad space something that would allow you to discover gem products and services that will make you a better developer.

We don't have all the rules figured out just yet so we're going to allow you guys to help us figure them out as we run this experiment.

So go out and sign up for GDNet+, then head over to our store and post your first ad! GDNet+ subscribers will see the price as $0! Thanks for supporting us!

Note:  We're betting everything on you guys for support. Click here to see plans and pricing