[Gay]

Not sure exactly how to say this so I'll just up and out with it. I'm sort of happy the way things are now. No worries, no time having to spend straightening things out or going for some sort of goal. The couple of places I have now, are essentially worry free. No spammers, no having to ban anyone, as they are hmmm.... well mannered places. There's nothing to prove, no need to play anything other than janitor. That's about as laid back as you can get.

Taking on another site would at some point take probably more time than I would be willing to give when I start back into my graphics and sooner or later, I will be back into them making new.

If for any reason I've given a wrong impression of looking to take on another place then I am sorry for the misconception. It was not with that purpose in mind that I mentioned past history.

Call me content for the time being.

Who with sane thinking may think that you want to take on another place? We haven't internal competition here (maybe, because we're only a dozen of people around in the last years), and you are so welcome to have your place here among us.

I think it was posted already, but I'm not very sure and I will maybe repeat it. We still have a lot of free subdomains and we haven't many good ideas for new websites (if I'm not wrong, currently, we host only 9 or 10). Therefore you are not only invited to have your unique place in this forum, you are welcome to have your free website on a new subdomain (for example like this: mojo.seo-forum-seo-luntan.com or mojoart.seo-forum-seo-luntan.com) and it will be free for you (no catch, no hidden bills). So, if you need a free website + a free subdomain for your art or for something else good and cool, it's our pleasure to give you them. 

[SEO]

If for any reason I've given a wrong impression of looking to take on another place then I am sorry for the misconception. It was not with that purpose in mind that I mentioned past history.

Of course I know it. I only allowed myself to have a 'sweet dream' how this forum flourish in a healthy and natural way and my dreaming take me to a possibility when we need something like CEO (a director, a boss in charge, a general manager) and I imagined you in this role, because you're very active, educated and experienced. From time to time I like to dream in this way. I hope you will get it only as a real respectful compliment. We haven't 'places' here, nor hierarchy, so practically the competition here is impossible. Well, maybe, one day, if we really need a general manager and there are 10 candidates we may call it a competition situation, but it's still very easy to choose the right one objectively. (Also, I said it and I'll re-said it again: to deal with a giant forum isn't a piece of cake. It's a hard and responsible job and that's why I'm sure there are no many people to will to do it, so I can understand both: the one, who will say he doesn't want to be so busy with this and another one, who will say it's a great job opportunity. Because it's like both true. )

For the free hosting and the free sub-domain: I want to re-confirm it, as soon as you wish and you have some good idea, we welcome you to have your own website with us. We already have some guys, who use our sub-domains and hosting in this way and it's all free for us and for them. We have busy 11 subdomains so far, and we have 189 free. So, if you have between 1 and 189 good ideas, they are all yours! Really.

[Non-SEO]

Well, we have spammers sometimes. The last example (and I warned already): http://www.seo-forum-seo-luntan.com/seo/what-is-the-seo/msg27249/#msg27249. They're getting bans soon.
It's a clean place here and the negative users are not able to survive without bans long time. Usually after a few bad posts (spammy, aggressive, dirty, obscene, etc.) the ban is granted.

We have a lot of space, we have many places and we do not compete, so everyone, who is a good person as you, surely will feel himself (herself) very well here.

[Alexa]

Mojo, your place here is as the place of the Sun in our galaxy. There is enough galactic space for other suns and for: planets, comets, asteroids and... dust.

[mojo]

Again it seems to be that I need to apologize for misunderstanding.

In lots of places over the years, one way or another, there have been lots of attempts to errr... co-opt my participation into places. Some I did willingly, some I would not touch with a 10 foot pole. In the process I've gotten leery when folks want greater participation.

In some places it worked out well. I had one where the owner of a WordPress site just wanted me to come in and write up an article from time to time, dealing with security and computers. Any topic I chose was fine, full admin privileges granted for access. What impressed me about that one was the full admin privileges. That's a lot of faith put in someone you don't know all that well, not to ruin your site. His faith was well placed in this matter as I have never wanted to just tear up someone's work for the heck of it and would never have done so. But it was the trust that probably impressed me the most. I stayed at it till eventually life moved on and he closed the site due to personal obligations in his life.

There have been others, that I left. One such, you sort of had to earn your standing by posting quality posts. Never had a problem with that, easy to do. But later on it came out that the donations to the site became the owner's personal pocketbook. The treasurer of the site posted the receipts where the owner had taken the money and spend it on personal things not involving the site. I promptly left as you can't depend on the site remaining up under those conditions.

So it is with things like this where offers are made that I remain standoffish. This has nothing to do with well intentioned offers but rather with on line experiences over time I've run into. I find I am always looking under the covers so to say at what might be hidden out of sight.

Once in a great while you run into the honest, well intentioned, offer. It collides with the past experiences and it becomes hard to identify those well intentioned with those aiming for ulterior motives.

[MSL]

Mojo, I'm 'your man'. I only want to summarize an answer to your last reply in these two points as follows:

• All of the sites' owners are eager to have FREE content and when this free content is a quality content as the demonstrated one of yours here, then, believe me, they'll be extremely happy to have you there. (But, according to my experience, most of them are comparatively young people -- teenagers and youth -- they have no idea how to respect, how to be reciprocal, how to negotiate, etc. And, the result is -- they usually will lose some or MANY of their good-and-free contributors. No need to mention Voat.co or some another website, I hope. )
• To have a good, responsible, free of charge and clever man as you in a website/forum/blog/social net/and so on AND to ask him to pay/to donate is the highest level of the idiotism. I don't know what this men were thinking about. But I know some pity examples of people, who post for free + donate money to somebody's else website, so I'm not surprised at all; I just can't stop wondering HOW THE HECK is it possible.

All I like is the fair game, the reciprocal and the normal way: you deserve = you get; you deserve = you don't pay; you get paid (if there is such a possibility).
 And (I hope I'm not the only one, who thinks so) you don't need to apologize in this thread for anything. Cheers! (I drink some Chinese and Japanese beers. )

[SEO]

Very interesting answer (post) of yours; makes me think more and gives me reason (inspiration) to share things that without you I hardly will find the positive 'impulse' to post here.

At first, I'd like to say my "THANK YOU" for sharing valuable online experience with me (and with all of us over here)! It's like a good feedback and sort of knowledge that we could never get in this form, without you (at least not now; who knows when someone will share something and even shared it, it wouldn't be this unique and clear!)

I'm not surprised that there have been lots of attempts to co-opt you. Except the sites, who doesn't need content (comments, articles, etc.), every website owner/owners (when they really cares about their websites) is going to value a user/member, who is posting good, than others, who just do nothing special there. I think it's very clear that you here are more useful than someone, who just register to make a profile with anchor-links in the signature and then left forever. I think it's also very clear that you're more useful and valuable than others, who post only 1-sentence posts. There is why, you're like a 'treasure' for every community that respects its quality content and quality growth.


 You've gotten leery when folks want greater participation? I'm the opposite: I feel leery when folks don't care about it. (Once you show them you can be a very good member, they are going to want more and more. (I mean the normal webmasters, not those real fools from sites mentioned in our forum too, who lose many of their best members, because they don't care about the problems in their websites!) So, I think every website owner is going to like greater participation, but I'm against it to bother and to insist. It shows lack of good manners. That's why our ethical code here is to value and to help people like you, but you'll never get pressure about how many posts to post, how many times to come back in a week/month or where to post/not to post. It's all up to you and this is the way it has to be, because we're free people and we do respect the normal freedom. )

Full admin privileges. The real full admin privileges are, if you can control the control panel. There you can delete all the website or to take a full backup and so on. This is just for common information. I do agree that any kind of admin control (full or not full) is a great faith and responsibility.
I have to add that many of the site owners (in case they can't write by themselves or have no time to do so), HAVE TO ORDER/HAVE TO PAY for articles (or posts). There are different prices, but just for example: probably 1 article will cost you USD 5.00 and one post will cost you USD 0.01. Some people work as online copywriters and they can earn some money from writing. That's why I wonder how some of the others are able to spend hours in free work like in Wikipedia, where they don't get money AND EVEN some of them have to DONATE money! I don't understand them. Time is money, money is money. (And it's not only in Wikipedia. You can see the same behavior in Reddit, for instance. Isn't it?)

And he closed the site due to personal obligations in his life?  Really? Terrible! If it was a good website (I suppose it was), he could try to sell it. Online there are so many options to sell a good website. (Recently 'good' equals to good traffic and/or good incomes and/or brandable and/or good, brandable urls...)
 
You sort of had to earn your standing by posting quality posts? Well, it's good (from my perspective) to posting quality posts, but 'had to earn' I think is too much. And you can be 100000000000000000% sure  that I mean it, because here we don't kick out even people with 0 (no) posts. Tolerant enough.

But later on it came out that the donations to the site became the owner's personal pocketbook? Wowwww, that's nasty! I already said that I can't see the point when people post for free PLUS donate their money to somebody's website!... And this is one of the reasons that we NEVER implemented (the very easy by the way) option of donations here. All I want is ADS from wealthy people, BUT I don't want to get our members' money and cash. In my 'golden mean' ( the desirable middle between two extremes) is: you folks are welcome to post your quality or not that quality content, but I don't want your money! Ads are okay. And if there are ads, we should use the money to pay the hosting and the domain and the rest -- share, not only one to take 100% of the profit.

Well, I also think that we should always looking under the covers so to say at what might be hidden out of sight. For example, if there are ads (not just Google AdSense, which currently with our insignificant traffic is just around the level 'enough to cover our hosting plan and our domain'), we should show all the incomes clearly (transparently) and then to say: this is for that, this is for me, this is for you and this is for them. This is the way I see the things -- as honest as possible. (So I see it like: the CEO or manager of the site, if you or somebody as you became this, should take a bigger part of the income. This is not a kind of discrimination to others. This is a kind of fair 'game'.)

It becomes hard to identify those well intentioned with those aiming for ulterior motives? Let me give you a hint. Pretty simple and maybe a sort of 'vulgar', but I am sure you will get it straight: They ask you to pay = not very well. They don't ask you to pay = well. They are ready to pay you = very well. (I don't mean only money, I mean the immaterial payments as well, but you got my point: here we're not going to ask you for money and we're going to offer you good payment, if we get the level. I state it openly and in public, so you can trust it.)

Have a good time! I'm going to optimize the forum's stuff like errors' log and others.

[Alexa]

Mojo, how are you doing? I want to take a part of your thoughts (about the websites you already dealt with) and to make a little systematization of all of the existing websites (according to their purpose, which is the purpose of their owners):

• "I want this website to get developed enough and to sell it." They need you, until the website is ready for sell. After the new ownership, your participation is not granted, because he/she may change the rules or just to ban you, because he/she dislike your something (politic point of view, way of participating, color of your hair ... you know people may find 10000 reasons to dislike.)
• "It's just a satellite site for SEO." They need you only to post a certain topics. For example, it may be a blog about fitness. They need you to write fitness articles there. They use this blog as a part of SEO circle (many blogs and other types of sites, that link between each other and/or link to the main website, that needs the better ranking in SERP.) How long will continue your participation there depends of how long they will need this satellite.
• "I wanted this website to be really something, but it gets only 2 unique visitors per day (I am one of them). I can't earn enough even to pay my domain. So I'll drop it. So sorry..." In this situation your participation in that website is very limited, because soon there will be no this website online anymore.
• "We're too big and we don't care about you somebody-nobody guy! We have got enough users and they post for us and they donate! You are here or your are not here, who cares?" I think you and many of us already were there and we know that no one gives a #$^* for you. You can write for them and to help their expansion like forever, but the question is "Why?". You need attention? You believe you'll get fame and popularity? You like to worship them? You just do it, because 'everybody' do it?
• "It's just for fun." Usually experimental and/or hobby sites (for example, private blogs, hobby forums and others). They'll exist as long as the owner is able to pay their hosting plans and domains. Your participation is usually welcomed, but not entirely stable.
• "It's a project that we want to develop endlessly, and it's not for sale." Once this website really succeed and you're a good participant, your place there is granted now-and-forever.
• I can add a special sub-category: websites, which haven't option for netizens' participation. You can visit and use them, but you can't submit/post/comment.

I'm very tired tonight, pardon me, if I miss some category! I want to believe this systematization may help Mojo and all of the people around the world, who like to join websites and want to know what's 'under the covers'.

[mojo]

First, let me say thank you for the 24 hour status at the bottom. This more than anything tells us without the access to the stats, where we are.

Secondly that's a nice run down on many sites. Some you can pick up from between the lines. I find it a bit harder here to read between the lines what goes on in the staff sections without actually reading them but I tend to chalk this up to differences in culture. It should be readily apparent I've made some serious misreadings on that. As I said earlier, I'll take that as a learning experience. I'm good with that.

[MSL]

 Yes. Now is much better than before.

[SEO]

Thanks for your good words! :-)

I find it a bit harder here to read between the lines what goes on in the staff sections without actually reading them but I tend to chalk this up to differences in culture.

We're trying to be international and to be cultures-friendly. We obey the AdSense rules. AdSense (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdSense) is Google's, i.e. it's American, so I think there is no 'culture shock'. :)

About what goes on: absolutely nothing (this forum is one of the category: 'isn't for sale' and all we want is: this website to get more natural and unique visitors, so one day to be able to provide all of us enough income for living (at least). A hobby + business oriented project.)

[Alexa]

Mojo, it's all about earning money or not earning money. I don't know some culture that is going to exists without money or resources. If you know some cultures that are free of this need, let me know. Our point is beyond cultures. It is strictly biological and economical: you have to earn money, otherwise your project only consumes money. If a project only consumes money and not giving you back money in return, it's a fruitless project.
 
It's a basic law in every society that depends on resources and money (it means all of the known societies). I don't think it's a cultural issue. Cultures are different, but the energy, money, time, efforts, work are all the same. You do something, you expect to get results. You do something and no results, no payment...? How long?

This is the point. For us it's not enough only to waste time posting, communicating. We need some reward for all these efforts. And I am sure there is no culture in the world that will state the opposite. Every website that isn't able to make a profit, will shut down now or later.

[MSL]

Mojo, it's all about earning money or not earning money. I don't know some culture that is going to exists without money or resources. If you know some cultures that are free of this need, let me know. Our point is beyond cultures. It is strictly biological and economical: you have to earn money, otherwise your project only consumes money. If a project only consumes money and not giving you back money in return, it's a fruitless project.
 
It's a basic law in every society that depends on resources and money (it means all of the known societies). I don't think it's a cultural issue. Cultures are different, but the energy, money, time, efforts, work are all the same. You do something, you expect to get results. You do something and no results, no payment...? How long?

This is the point. For us it's not enough only to waste time posting, communicating. We need some reward for all these efforts. And I am sure there is no culture in the world that will state the opposite. Every website that isn't able to make a profit, will shut down now or later.

Don't get the wrong impression that it's only Mojo; it's international: some people invest their writing/posting only in or for websites that are going to pay them back. But most of the people post in the sites like Wikipedia, Reddit, Voat.co and so on, which are not paying back (instead they need people to donate them money, to pay them!). Here, we're ready to share any serious profit with the serious contributors, so it makes some sense to post here. But I can't see what's the sense to post in websites, where it's pretty clear they're not going to pay you, but only to ask you to pay them (donate) money.
 So, it's not a culture-related problem. It's a value-related problem: most of the netizens have no idea that their content costs something and they create it/produce it daily for the others: I know, for example, relatives and friends, who don't make own blogs, forums and other websites, where they can post and possibly to earn some money; they post in Facebook (and others like it), for free. Culture? No. Just lack of knowledge and skills.