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Austin

Austin

Blame Canada
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Joined
May 1, 2020
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3,113
Loc
St.Louis, MO
One of the core goals of the site has always been to ‘bring back the tech”. Aside from the builds and bibles everybody has been contributing to, I’m talking well documented tech articles and product reviews. Billavista type content. I feel that people that write and contribute that kind of content, and do it well, deserve to get compensated for it. With the PBB takeover … some these types of people got burned. If you’ve been on here since day one, you’ve probably heard of my idea for Blue Skulls. Blue Skulls are people in the wheeling industry and they are content creators. On this site, Blue Skulls will keep any ad money earned from ads on any pages, articles, builds etc they start here. This gives them a way to get paid directly from ad revenue without it even passing through irate’s hands. No funny business about it.

This new software has opened the doors to make this easier which is another reason we made the move. I’m excited to announce that we have our first Blue Skull, or at least our first Blue Skull Guinea Pig as he puts it lol. JimmyJet10 from the Snail Trail Podcast is going to help test this new functionality and see where we can take it. He recently bought a ton of Toyota axle parts from the Parts Counter and just started a thread about converting his 2wd 3rd Gen Toyota Pickup to 4wd.

We have a few things that we’ll be working on our end over the next week but plan to have him up and running soon.

So..... what changes are YOU going to see?

If you are a numbskull, you already see ads and you won’t see any more than you already do.

Red and Yellow Skulls who do not see ads, will only start seeing ads on Blue Skull member’s content.

For anybody running an ad blocker, you’ll see a message asking you to turn it off and a message explaining why.

I’m excited to be able to provide the Blue Skull member option to people in our industry and thankful for Jimmy to help us test it. I hope once it’s all running smooth, we can start pulling in a lot more industry related articles and product reviews from our wheel'n peers.
 
Props for this, Austin. I started lurking PBB in my late teens and stuck to it because of the best tech there. Awesome to see IBB leading the proper way for us all.
 
Awesome idea Austin. Nice to see people who actually create get compensated for it. Can we maybe get a clown skull for idiots like me who contribute nothing but stupidity?
 
This is awesome. I really enjoy reading tech and having tech discussions on the full spectrum of topics. Don't know if my additions will end up qualifying for a blue star, but I couldn't be more excited to see additional motivation for people to bring the tech.
 
Another Jimmy numbers? Are thornbirds the best tires ever?

Thanks Austin!
 
IEATRKS84 said:
Real talk, why give blue stars to "Tech writers" when chit-chat threads pull in orders of magnitude of more views?

Example; my build thread has 3k views, makes it #3 all time in the chevy forum.

I have atleast one or two CC threads in the 100k views realm.
Click to expand...
because a tech writeup is actually useful :flipoff2:

i think its mainly for the "google search" hits

if i take the time to document and writeup about chevy 63 leaf swap onto a toyota hopefully google start ramming my article down everyones throat for the rest of eternity (kinda like old pi--rate threads)
 
IEATRKS84 said:
Real talk, why give blue stars to "Tech writers" when chit-chat threads pull in orders of magnitude of more views?

Example; my build thread has 3k views, makes it #3 all time in the chevy forum.

I have atleast one or two CC threads in the 100k views realm.
Click to expand...
also you could buy a blue skull and just use it as a rant and rave blog, right Austin ?

trail reviews, weekly whatever updates, house projects, your manifesto
 
rockyota83 said:
do you have to apply to become a blue skull? can we nominate people? skipped_link, jnhescher, hydrodynamic should get one
Click to expand...
Sterlingfire said:
Austin this is a great question..
And I'm sure others may want to know the answer
Click to expand...
IEATRKS84 said:
Real talk, why give blue stars to "Tech writers" when chit-chat threads pull in orders of magnitude of more views?

Example; my build thread has 3k views, makes it #3 all time in the chevy forum.

I have at least one or two CC threads in the 100k views realm.
Click to expand...


Those are great questions, the short answers are:

1 - Anybody can become a Blue Skull
2 - This is to reward for tech contributions, not chit-chat.

Now a longer reply to be as open and clear as possible…..

Anybody can become a Blue Skull, only you can determine if it’s worth it to you. We touched on this before, (search newb :flipoff2:), but the gist of it is… are you going to make enough in return to warrant the cost of the Blue Skull. I provide the platform; you’ll have to make it work for you. I don’t think it’s as easy as some picture it to be. I certainly don’t want to discourage anybody, but I also don’t want you to think you upgrade to a Blue Skull and then you’re making it rain. Until we get this first one up and running or a bit, best I can do is give you some educated guesses, here are some random thoughts on it…..

For those that don’t know, Google Adsense is a platform that automatically places ads on a site. If you see ads here, that’s where they come from. There is no configuration or requirement to sell, just stick some code on the site and ads appear.

I almost 100% guarantee there is a general opinion that once Google ads are on a site like this you’re rolling in the dough. I wish.

Here is a screenshot from IBB’s Google AdSense account for Jan-March:

Screen Shot 2021-04-28 at 10.05.43 AM.png


That’s the Adsense income for the entire site, now think about that in relation to your build or tech pages. I could start a whole other thread why that’s so low, but the short of it is… small number ads, Red Skulls don’t see ads, most run an Ad Blocker and Adsense don’t pay what they used to. If I wanted to vomit ads all over the page like VS does I could, and that number would be higher. In fact I about shit when a consultant I hired told me how much the site should be making but thats another topic, but the point is Adsense likely won’t be a big revenue stream by itself.

Where the platform will shine, is for advertisers that you get yourself. Meaning they pay you directly to show their ads on your pages. In this situation a Blue Skull goes into the backend and does something like “place this company’s ad here for so long, then fall back to adsense ads.” Make sense? A few examples off the top of my head: .... Say you’re wanting to do a product review on a Warn Winch. A Blue Skull would say

“here is my style of writing, here are other reviews I’ve done, pay me (or give me a winch) to do a write up and I’ll also place Warn related ads on the review as well.”

Or

“I’m doing a build of XYZ, I have a ton of people following me on FB, IG and IBB would you pay to advertise across all of my platforms since I’m using your products”​

Those types of scenarios are where the Blue Skulls are really going to earn their money. Not just AdSense ads. AdSense is simply a fallback for when you have nothing else to put in that ad slot. Basically, I’m saying, aside from the content you create you’re going to have to work to sell the ads as well. IBB has nothing to do with it aside from providing a platform capable of allowing you to do that.

Now, this is all an educated guess based on how I see things at this point in time. This first trial run of a Blue Skull membership could prove me wrong; we’ll see.





As Far as the traffic you generate in Chit-Chat …. That’s cool, it keeps us all entertained and busy at work, but I’m not looking to reward that. I don’t want the site to be known for how many memes you post or political or history debates you start. The goal is tech. That’s why this Blue Skull feature only works outside of gcc.
 
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IEATRKS84 said:
Real talk, why give blue stars to "Tech writers" when chit-chat threads pull in orders of magnitude of more views?

Example; my build thread has 3k views, makes it #3 all time in the chevy forum.

I have atleast one or two CC threads in the 100k views realm.
Click to expand...

Seems there are a lot of fags out there.

:flipoff2:

I think the intent here is for people closer to the industry's "state-of-the-art" , or hard core builders that know as much (or close) to write stuff up.

The industry guys can do great write-ups if they're pure tech and not "look at my bigger dick". Those would be product specific, and everyone (here) can smell bullshit if "claims" are made over other applications.

Saying that: industry peeps would be interested in blue skulls because they're selling. Home builders, maybe not; hard core home builders that are doing it to race, get sponsors, etc, etc, might be interested.

Is my take 20/20 on this?

Either way, the site (meaning us) profit from knowledge, and possibly get exposed to things we didn't know existed.
 
Another use I envision for this platform, is to add to the IBB Racers Program. We already have a program set up to help race teams get the parts they need. If they have the same access to this ad platform then they could be like "Hey Nitto, help us out with the tires we need and we'll put your ads on our build pages and race reports" ... just a little something extra to help with their race expenses.
 
Guess I should explore my ad blocker settings. And I think it is cool for tech writers. Have you contacted Billavista? Best written articles on the net.
 
Im not taking the ad condom off for anyone, especially not if he is only making $300 a month on it. 😂😂

Austin, these are cool ideas and you are doing them for cool reasons. Thank you
 
Awesome idea to generate good tech related content and reward them for it! I also think the possibility of race teams getting to use it is a fantastic idea!
 
Anyone who has had sponsorship of some sort can probably tell you that sometimes you have to work harder to get free stuff vs buying it regular price with your own hard earned money. I could see the blue skull being the same way. If you enjoy doing the work then go for it, but I don't see it as a business venture that pays out.

What I don't want to see happen is a bunch of blue skulls promoting their paid brands just like most of the off road shows and magazines that have turned into infomercials. Readers can see right through that biased garbage and tune out. Blue skull threads could become a sign to skip the paid ads thread and find a regular thread.
Most good threads are not because of the Original Poster either. Usually the OP is lost and multiple members bring in good info. Or a thread can be highjacked and derailed and have nothing to do with what the OP asked or was talking about, but it can be loaded with good info.

I don't think anyone knows for sure what it will look like, but it is worth having a run at it and then evaluate if it should stay or go away. I would much rather see ads for something off road related than a stupid Denny's breakfast ads, I haven't eaten at a Denny's is over 20 years and hope I never have to.
 
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