I've not made a single penny off this site, and it owes me quite a bit in return yet... if it were a business, it would have been closed several months ago.
the ads are set up- all affiliate- meaning, if someone doesn't click on one and buy something, there isn't anything in it for the site. Still, I hope at some point they will generate some coin, because as of right now I'm in the hole on this thing around $10k..
i 'could', and maybe 'should' based on the sentiment, load up some invasive trackers that follow y'all around- you know, like the 'old scout' board did... they had more than 300 individual trackers on their page- easily in the top five as far as 'invasiveness' is concerned of any page i've ever encountered. they collected data on you guys and sold it to ad agencies, making quite a bit of money off of doing so and all the while you guys were never notified. I 'could' do that, but... it ain't my way. as it is i think there are 10 trackers here, each of them guarded and driven by amazon, flex, and google- and so i can collect analytics on how much time and what content is viewed... i share nothing with them otherwise. i've spent money on scanners to keep the site clean and combat hackers/script injects, unlike the old scout board who made practice of loading contaminated scripts and never mentioning it you y'all... and the time? I have a crap load of time invested in this place.
so... don't like what i've done here? go somewhere else. this is a free ride for y'all insofar as cost (which includes protecting your privacy which i refuse to compromise) and done solely to keep the community together- at a significant cost to me in dollars and in time- the dollars i can live with, but the time? i've lost in excess of 2k hours in the last year building and maintaining this site- time i could have spent with my family... so nothing personal? guess again.