Advertising on surfcams
how about a subscription? I can live with the ads but maybe if there was an option to pay five bucks a month for no ads instead? could be a winner?
Hi,that's great news for those who live near the new cams.Is there any news on upcoming cams on the south coast of N.S.W? There is two cameras one located at South Wollongong beach which takes morning stills at north beach Wollongong? The second at Mollymook.The problem with the two cameras is they are located at positions which pick up very little south swells the dominant swell source in winter.Even on s/se swells and se swells these places are not a very good indicator.The classic south swell of July this year is an example of how the cameras didn't really show what was happening.I'm a bit like yourselves in that I've gained knowledge over many years on weather patterns,ocean swells etc.But for friends of mine when I tell them it's 5 ft cranking offshore and they go to your site they look at me and wonder what all the fuss is about.Is swellnet considering other cams for the Illawarra or South coast?Also surf reports are needed for south of Bass pt on an open beach such as Bombo for example.Happy to help if your interested.Keep up the great work!
@sandspit - it's a possibility I suppose, but needs to be mapped out in great detail. Slapping a subs fee on the existing site wouldn't work.
@redsands - thanks for the nice words. Finding an appropriate south-facing beach on the South Coast for a surfcam is a little difficult, but I'll scout around and see what possibilities there are (it's not on our short term radar though). However, population density also comes into play - it's more cost effective for us to have surfcams near major towns, as they do better traffic. The surfcams are expensive and therefore need to be economically worthwhile.
Yeah your right not that easy.The Illawarra is one big horseshoe in shape.I know of a few spots though!
If it were at all possible a cam over on yorke's would be awsome.Possibly Pondie? It is a little out of they way for the majority of the population although many a friday arvo dash for a weekend surf trip has resulted from little to no info on surf condition. I don't think the advertising on cams is a real drawback especially if your upgrading the network as a result. As long as they don't become anymore obtrusive than they already are i'd say run with it. Afterall we all benefit for free. Those scroll adds are all over the net these days, its hard not to watch a video and not have one come up.
A surfcam at Yorkes is highly unlikely to ever happen, Pauly (well, not at any of the decent breaks anyway). If nothing else the logistics are quite problematic.
Agreed but worth throwing the idea out there. Thats probably the reason that there is basically not one there now. Plus the yahoo factor of vandalism etc.
We've recently started displaying pre-roll ads on our surfcams, so I thought I'd start a thread to provide some background information.
When an advertising campaign is running, the pre-rolls have been configured to display only once per browser per day. This means you should only see the pre-roll ads once every day.
Unfortunately, the system isn't always perfect so there may be occasions where the ad shows more than this - but from my end it seems to work pretty well (and I look at the cams a lot, as a part of our daily monitoring).
Some of you may have also noticed some recent improvements with our surfcams. In short, we're upgrading our entire surfcam network, and we're adding in some brand new locations too. This is a costly exercise but we're stoked with the quality of our new surfcams (check out Burleigh, Noosa and Portsea) for an example.
We have received a couple of negative emails about the surfcam advertising ("You guys sold out badly!!!!!!", "If you want to me to keeping coming back to your site you'll need to get rid of those surfcam ads!"), however Swellnet is a free website that - just like any other business - has bills to pay every month. Surfcams are not particularly cheap to buy, install, maintain and stream either - hence why there are only a small number of websites in the world that have ventured down this business path.
Anyway, I hope you all like the upgraded vision from around the country - we'd love to hear any feedback you may have.