Would you pay a small fee to eliminate ads?

John, i specifically remember Seb beating you about the head with a fish carcass to get the sharks in closer...

So I said to Bertran "Isn't it a bit risky holding the fish bait in your hand?"

"Poof!" he replied. "I have been doing it this wayt for ten years."

.......

How many stitches was it?

hi,

i think the pay option without ads is a great idea, i spend most of the year using poxy dialup

from my laptop, when and where i can get to a connection, and wetpixel is currently

by far the slowest site i visit, and quite often stops me using it, and others when i need to

post something or read up on something it fails to load.

i pay about 40 -50 dollars a year to be a member of another nature photography based

forum and it's money well spent. those pages never fail to load, and even being in the archival

years of dialup i can still maintain a good level of presence in that importatn web source.

i would definitely prefer to pay a yearly one off than monthly however.

mark

I find the advertisements on Wetpixel to be pretty helpful when looking for expeditions, vendors, and other commercial information related to our wonderful avocation. Its almost a one stop shop for links of most things underwater photography related without having to memorize or search for all the links you need.

Like many others have said, the ads are more benefit to me than burden. Their presence one way or the other isn't enough to rule out whether I would consider financial support of Wetpixel. Though I appreciate the cost of running Wetpixel in both time and money, there seems to be little incentive to donate a little cash other than ensuring the continued growth of these forums.

So in the context of this particular question, I'd probably pony up the $3/month without expecting much in return. On the other hand (and probably much suited for another thread), I'm sure there are other ways of raising capital which might be more rewarding to the membership while still keeping with the free and non-commercial spirit of Wetpixel.

Ideas like the coffeetable book, t-shirts and calendars are more attractive than pay for an ads-free version of wetpixel (to me)...

My 2 cents.

I never really used to worry about Ad's..But now I think there great..

Especially 'Gates' and 'Amphibico' who are (i think) considering loaning me a housing for the new V1 and FX7 cams to shoot my Pike spawning in 2007..Jeez these guys are FAB !!!!

Dive safe

Dean(dreaming)B

Not sure how succesful it actually is but a lot of the successfull discussion boards on t'internet offer exactly this - ie people pay not to have ads served to them on the site.

Personally I have no problems accessing the site in the UK and also have no issues with the ads so the pay option is of no interest to me.

For those with dial-up or slow connections that don't want the frippery of a bells and whistles site, you can always use the lo-fi version which gives you a text only version, a very 'retro-web' feel - you'll find the link at the bottom of very page and it's easy to use and naviagate around. Simply book mark this version for when the bits are down!

Hey guys. I've just made some site changes incorporating a second server, and I'm now getting render times of 3-4 seconds, which is pretty fast for Wetpixel. An experimental no-ad version is rendering in 1.7-2 seconds (on par with nearly all other sites). I'm measuring render speed with the FasterFox Firefox plugin.

I have yet another machine that I'm going to bring into the fold early next year, which should help a lot, too!