This announcement applies mainly to owners of businesses that are currently advertising on our site who will also be receiving this via email, as well as new prospective traders/service providers.
Firstly I'l like to thank those who have supported our site by advertising on here and maintaining their accounts timeously, the income we have received has helped tremendously with hosting and running costs. On the same token we have accounts that are long overdue but in order to service the community we decided not to pull their ads and rather chase them for settlement. This exercise has been costly in terms of paying for hosting out of my own pocket and time spent by my accounts lady to expedite payments, who incidentally seems to have her email blocked by a number of debtors.
We as founding members of Sareptiles see the need to move onto a dedicated hosting server in the near future considering website access issues we've experienced recently. This will not be possible under the cash flow circumstances we currently find ourselves in. We have decided to sign up with Google advertising to help cover our costs which means:
1) There will be visible changes to the site in the form of Google ads placed strategically to maximise ad exposure as well as minimise distraction from the website content.
2) We will be phasing out private advertising over the next while, how long has not been decided on yet, but will continue promoting local herpetology associations and events.
3) People who wish to advertise on Sareptiles will need to sign up with Google Adwords where they can specify where they want their ads placed.
4) We will no longer have control over what advertising will cost which will be dependent on the amount of traffic on the site and determined by Google themselves.
Sareptiles.co.za has grown from strength to strength and has become a major force in the online reptile realm. We are indebted to the people that spend time with us contributing and learning, the people that help maintain the content on our website, as well as the techies in the shadows that keep this big machine ticking over. As our website grows so do our needs and this decision has not been an easy one but ultimately one of survival and one in consideration of future growth.
If you have any questions/suggestions please feel free to post in the suggestions forum in this section, pm me or contact me on admin@sareptiles.co.za. - edit: I think you can reply to this announcement too, not sure on the permissions.
Thanks.