Hades, if you choose to do that, be careful about the whole COPPA type stuff.

I appreciate it… but after looking into it, I found this:

"The Act applies to websites and online services operated for commercial purposes that are either directed to children under 13 or have actual knowledge that children under 13 are providing information online. Most recognized non-profit organizations, are exempt from most of the requirements of COPPA. However, the Supreme Court ruled that non-profits operated for the benefit of their members' commercial activities are subject to FTC regulation and consequently also COPPA."

Since we aren't in anyway attempting to benefit commercially, I would think it wouldn't be an issue. But still something that I will investigate further.

While I very sincerely hope that yuo're entirely correct, I'd still advise caution and maybe some sort of disclaimer to CYA..

I've always thought that the whole COPPA thing just smacks of government interference in our lives. If parents aren't responsible enough to monitor what their kids do on the net, they have only themselves to blame. They should stop running to the government every time junior puts his email address into a contact form or on to a web forum for all to see.

TBH, i always just clicked yes, i am 13 or over.. =P. of course now i am 13 or over so thats irrelevant, but its not actually going to stop anything. :TBH, i always just clicked yes, i am 13 or over.. =P. of course now i am 13 or over so thats irrelevant, but its not actually going to stop anything. :[

But Big Brother has to protect you from everything… :rolleyes:

i was talking more about coppa being useless :i was talking more about coppa being useless :[

Getting back on topic, the Frontier has utilized a lot of paid advertising in spurts over its four years in existence. As pointed out by others, the trick is where you advertise. We ran ads on TMS, Mudmagic, Mudconnector, MPOGD, SomethingAwful, and a few other gaming sites with great results. Particularly cost-effective was SomethingAwful's forum ads ($15 for linking to a topic), it drove in all kinds of traffic. If you run ads at the same time you post to sites that are in the same theme/genre as yours, you can really see a huge blast of traffic.

It just takes some tinkering to find a combination that works well for your game. I'd advise trying to pace yourself and keep a lower number of ads up and running every month rather than blow a huge chunk of money on a bunch of different sites for one month.

Sometimes I glance at the Iron Realms banner and say, "Wish I had a banner like that…. or a banner at all…."


Zenn the Admin is losing his mind.

That's why we have free banners with the mud listings. All you need to do is create one and submit a listing for your mud :)

I suck at artwork, even in the slightest, I'd enjoy taking advantage of the free banner posts, but that would require me to make a banner, and it would be really lame. and anyone who saw it would be like 'OMFG, that is SOOO LAME, the mud must be just as bad'

so i'd rather not have a banner and leave it a mystery till they log in, then they can find out that its lame…. :P

Lol, that's pretty amusing :p

Why don't you try to get someone to make one for you?

I just happened to have had a neat idea for mine and ran with it… I'm sure if you had some ideas, someone would be willing to help you out.

Oh, I already have a banner. Just not posted anywhere. And I have more pressing matters at the moment. Like buggy code :cry:

Well I can't do graphics for squat, so my banner looks like ass too. People have told me the mud is ass, so I guess it fits…. :)

All I did was copy chunks of another logo we already had and ran with it. It doesn't quite conform to the image specs though.

Neither Dragona nor I is a graphics person so we just went with what we could produce at www.cooltext.com. :shrug:

Cooltext.com…. lol For the Graphically Challenged. I've used the site a few thousand times myself so can't really say much ;)

Then, what are you saying?

I used Xara Webstyles to make most, if not all, of my banners. It's a nice program, but it's not free. You might be able to use a demo version of it long enough to create the banners you need/want.