How is it funded

Well the majority of this site is run from my own pocket why because the servers were originally a playground for me and a convenient place to put the Parkflyers site when it started. The balance is obtained from donations from you the users. Being a community the donations and expenses are listed publicly on the home page of the site.

Obviously the site is growing we are getting more members and at some point these servers will need to be upgraded. We do work at optimising the site where possible and trying to keep the resourcing as efficient as possible as the longer the original servers can hold the site the less running costs it will incur.

Advertising on the site
This has been a controversial issue for me personally. The main reason is that when we started we wanted to be vendor neutral i.e. we did not want to be placed under pressure by a vendor should they not agree with something that was posted on the forum. We prefer two way dialogue which has happened in the past on the site. That and I don't want a site cluttered by adverts.

However recently we recently assisted a Parkflyers member by allowing advertising on the site to raise some funds for a trip. The feedback from this has been positive towards advertising and in one case asking for it as long as it was model related.

As a trial we have enabled a small Google advert on the site to see if it can supplement donations to the site.

There are currently two adverts on the site trying to find the best placing for the adverts while not clustering the site. Please provide your feedback in the forum about what you think of the placement etc.

Update : Current feedback is the banner at the top resulted in the banner at the top being removed. Looking into how we can get Google to focus the adverts more on the flying hobby rather.

Can our club advertise an event on your site?
Yes Clubs are more than welcome to advertise there upcoming events in the advertising slot. We won't even charge for them, donations won't be turned away either. ;-)

Will we allow vendors to pay for advertising?
Again this one is tricky, we have had great support from vendors on this site allowing them to advertise there product in the vendors corner and taking feedback from the members of the site. It has been a good two way method of communication allowing members to ask questions and get answers without fear of their posts being censored.

If we were to allow vendors to advertise directly on the site there would have to be a list of strict conditions applied such as if said vendor asked us to remove a post or moderate that we would instead remove the advert.

It would require careful thought and more discussion. We are not closed to the idea but we will sleep on it a bit longer.

During the Google ad trial over the last 2 days we have averaged a $1.50 income a day. This would on average give us $45 pm which currently meets and exceeds the current running costs of the site. We would be looking at setting the rates to something like this to for vendor advertising.

Proposed terms and conditions for potential advertisers
NB these are proposed terms and conditions and nothing is final yet.

The main idea here is to ensure that the Vendors get a fair deal while the site does not come under pressure to change the current running of the site.


 * 1) Purchasing advertising space does not grant any permission to dictate change to the site.
 * 2) * Any attempts to dictate change will be published on the forum for public viewing and comment.
 * 3) * Repeat offenders may lose the right to advertise on the site and lose the balance of advertising as a forfeiture.
 * 4) Any attempts by a parkflyers member to have a vendors advert removed will be published on the forum for public viewing and comment.
 * 5) Adverts shall pertain to the hobby and related aspects.
 * 6) Parkflyer and/or club events may be advertised in this space.