As much as I'm protective of GU and I want everyone to like everything we have here. I realize that everyone has a choice in the sites that they visit and support and there's little on my part that I can do to influence people's decisions.
GU is completely open and I hold no prejudices against anyone if you're interested great, if not...oh well. We try to make the site as appealing as possible. Having everything for free would have been a great appeal, I understand that. (Though, if you're just after the knowledge, posting photos and sharing with others, everything is free!)
As much as I'd like to offer everything for free, the problem is that at the end of the month I have a bill to pay. The big difference how the site was before and now is that the previous owner was a gecko breeder/seller so weather the site did or did not pay for itself did not matter because his gecko business more then picked up the slack with sales generated by this site...at the same time, he used a shared host with all free software which comprises a sliver of our current costs. Since the site revamp, we've picked up much more traffic and members.
We've overhauled everything on this site with a lot of custom scripting and web development, paid scripts, mods and forum software itself and we're running on a dedicated server. I did a lot of it myself, but what I didn't have time for, I contracted out. I am certain that I did not recover the cash and time that I've sunk into GU. Just recently I put a new hard drive into the server, which ads about $40/month to the monthly bill. To put things into perspective, we made almost $20 last month on google ads!
I understand your wedding jitters and I know it's a financially stressful time. I've been there done that and paid for it myself too. At the same time, my wife is due in 2 weeks with our 2nd one. It's pretty stressful, especially with a 2 year old running around the house, a full time day job, side business and 5 other websites to worry about... My schedule is packed.
If I offer everything here for free, it's not you who will take the loss at the end of the month. It's me and my family. I can't allow GU to be a financial burden on me. I do everything that I can to make this the best site possible, but the key is that it has to pay for itself. Despite what some may think, GU isn't a project on which you can retire, and any improvements and changes are a major time hog.... and if it turns out that I come up with some extra coin from it and take the family out for dinner on GU, woo hoo... what a treat after spending thousands of dollars and 100s if not 1000s of hrs on it. If it turns out that all of the sudden we're able to coast on google ads alone, then fine, I wouldn't have a problem bringing back the free classifieds. Many would probably much rather pay a buck just to weed out the junk ads and clutter associated with free ads. Plus it seems when the ads are paid, we have people who are much more serious about the hobby participating. Enough of me ranting and if you seriously can't afford a buck for the ad, then as a wedding gift I'm sending some free credits your way.
WOOT WOOT!
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