jake
06-04-2005, 04:47 AM
What's with your signup process! So many questions and advertisements! - Andrew H.
Andrew,
The short answer is:
Membership is free, you only have to do it once, so please forgive the signup process, and enjoy the lifetime of free drivers/firmware/tech support.
The long answer:
Sites with free content are forced to walk a difficult line. On the one hand they want to make their site the best it can be, giving as much as possible to their users, and creating the best user experience they can. On the other hand, they've got to pay the considerable costs of hosting, development, licenses, etc., and the most common way to do that in the context of a free site is to present the users with the option (and it truly is an option) of accepting various offers, clicking on various advertisements, etc. The trick is to find the offers most likely to be of interest to users (which will make the offers the least annoying, and the most remunerative), and to present them in such a way that people won't just tune them out (since most people are so accustomed to seeing advertisements on the web that they just tune them out). We readily admit that the balance is difficult to achieve and that we could no doubt do a better job than we do of striking the right balance between annoying our users and generating revenue from them. Most difficult of all is that we are somewhat limited by the advertising partners and their ads available to us. To make matters worse, advertisers are paying less and less for advertising, while our popularity and costs continue to rise.
We will continue to work to try to reduce the aggravation factor during signup, and we ask that you please try and keep things in perspective. Regardless of signup annoyance, our site is free. You don't need to accept any promotions offered by our partners, you don't need to click on any ads. And we do not and will not spam e-mail you. So, for a few minutes of annoyance you get a free membership to the largest driver/firmware/support site on the 'net. We are the only site of its kind and scope to remain free, all the others changed long ago to require paid membership. We are very thankful to those who give our advertising partners a look, and who try out their offers, it is because of them that this site continues to exist as a free resource.
In the future we will begin to offer premium services in addition to the free membership. In this way we hope to be able to offer all, free and paid members alike, more features, more drivers/firmware, etc. As we explore that path hopefully we can create more and more value in our site, and find more and more users finding net savings in a paid membership (because of the new tools and data we'll give them), and we can rely less and less on advertising to our free users.
So, please, everyone bear with it. A moment of annoyance for a lifetime of drivers.
Andrew,
The short answer is:
Membership is free, you only have to do it once, so please forgive the signup process, and enjoy the lifetime of free drivers/firmware/tech support.
The long answer:
Sites with free content are forced to walk a difficult line. On the one hand they want to make their site the best it can be, giving as much as possible to their users, and creating the best user experience they can. On the other hand, they've got to pay the considerable costs of hosting, development, licenses, etc., and the most common way to do that in the context of a free site is to present the users with the option (and it truly is an option) of accepting various offers, clicking on various advertisements, etc. The trick is to find the offers most likely to be of interest to users (which will make the offers the least annoying, and the most remunerative), and to present them in such a way that people won't just tune them out (since most people are so accustomed to seeing advertisements on the web that they just tune them out). We readily admit that the balance is difficult to achieve and that we could no doubt do a better job than we do of striking the right balance between annoying our users and generating revenue from them. Most difficult of all is that we are somewhat limited by the advertising partners and their ads available to us. To make matters worse, advertisers are paying less and less for advertising, while our popularity and costs continue to rise.
We will continue to work to try to reduce the aggravation factor during signup, and we ask that you please try and keep things in perspective. Regardless of signup annoyance, our site is free. You don't need to accept any promotions offered by our partners, you don't need to click on any ads. And we do not and will not spam e-mail you. So, for a few minutes of annoyance you get a free membership to the largest driver/firmware/support site on the 'net. We are the only site of its kind and scope to remain free, all the others changed long ago to require paid membership. We are very thankful to those who give our advertising partners a look, and who try out their offers, it is because of them that this site continues to exist as a free resource.
In the future we will begin to offer premium services in addition to the free membership. In this way we hope to be able to offer all, free and paid members alike, more features, more drivers/firmware, etc. As we explore that path hopefully we can create more and more value in our site, and find more and more users finding net savings in a paid membership (because of the new tools and data we'll give them), and we can rely less and less on advertising to our free users.
So, please, everyone bear with it. A moment of annoyance for a lifetime of drivers.