[Clipart] Advertising on your site

[Nathan Eady]

Nicu Buculei wrote:

> I think we need statistics for us, not for advertisers, why bother if it
> would bring only something like 2$/month?

If it would bring such a small amount as that, it would be better
not to clutter the site with it, unless it is something we *want*
to advertise for reasons related to the library's own purposes
(e.g., Inkscape).  $2/month doesn't even scratch the surface of
the time we put into the site (although, I must admit, that in
the last month or so I have not been pulling my share of the
weight in that regard).

I *suspect* (though I don't actually know) that at this time,
the OCAL probably does not get enough traffic to generate
advertising revenue worth pursuing and worth cluttering the
site over.  That may not always be the case, and I don't know
that we want to say "No paid advertising ever" or anything,
but my gut feeling is that right now, practically everyone
finding the site is specifically looking for either a clipart
library related to the open-source community, or a clipart
library in SVG format.  Both are such targeted niches that
unless the thing being advertised is very closely related,
the advertising space is unlikely to be worth much money,
in my estimation, at this time.

Give it a couple of years and let the collection grow to
a hundred times its current size, the tools and community
grow to handle organizing a collection that large, and the
site's position in the major search engines rise to the
top half of the front page of results for searches like
"clipart" (which, incidentally, is for reasons I don't
fully understand a highly competitive term), and the
considerations may change.

Of course, if an advertiser of a product we wouldn't mind
advertising were to offer an amount of money such that
it would be worth our time to deal with it...