Thread: CAG toolbar - its importance to this website

The take-up of the CAG toolbar is low - and we really do need some help.

If you haven't downloaded it then please have a look. The most important thing for us is that you use the search function because it will generate some revenue for us if you click the sponsored ads.

It doesn't cost you anything at all. The money comes from the sponsors of the ads.
You can download the toolbar from here

We have bills to pay and it is very tight at the moment.
No one gets paid except one person who does admin for us.

Donations are very down. Book sales have become a trickle and the couple of advertising links that we have don't produce anything much at all.

At the moment, any revenue of any use is produced by our search boxes at the top and the bottom of the forum.

We think that we can increase this if you use our toolbar on your browser and get into the habit of using it for your normal searches.

The revenue problem is a problem for the CAG and it is a problem for all of the people who come to us for help because it means that our existence becomes precarious.

You would imagine that with over quarter million registered users and 700,000 unique visitors per month that donations would be flooding in and that everything would be hunky-dory.
Well it's not like that at all. Hardly anyone donates. Some people donate £10 but most people who donate are now donating £1 or £2. I appreciate that for many people even these small sums are a sacrifice but after paypal takes its cut, there isn't much left. And of course, the vast majority of people just don't contribute anything at all.


How can you help us?

Of course, if you can donate then that would be great. But if you can't afford it, then don't worry. Don't get yourselves back into debt on our account - but what you can do, at no cost to yourself, is to download our toolbar and use it to make your web searches. If enough people did that it would make a big difference.

How else can you help? Refer to our toolbar in your forum signatures and let your friends know.
You could even include a link to our toolbar page in your emails.

Whatever you can do to help.

Just a suggestion might not work but might not...

Keep registration and access free; keep the donation system and book selling.

However would it not be sensible to say to each person that clicks to start a new thread they must register there bank details and take a direct card payment for starting the thread or bank payment? So in my case when posting my default notices cerberusalert instantly looked and gave advice the advise would still be free yet to start the thread you pay £1.00 or £2.50. That would stop people starting silly or multiple threads and make people read more on other threads giving the site team more time on each thread. Possibly charge a fee for a resource book (collaboration on basics on challenging debts) For example no need for complexed book just a summary of previous cases, letter templates comments by say Pt2645 or someone else. Some people don’t like searching lots of threads and reading page after page of comment they would possibly want to save time by buying the summary for say £9.99 or £14.99 if you included say how to deal with DCA and some legal issues...Sorry if you already do some of this just trying to help.

Possibly even a VIP area “coffee room” where if you prefer to only have you questions answered by the site team or authorised contributors the you pay say a standing order for monthly access and post your questions so on that may appeal to both more educated people that want an intelligent response and also to people who find the whole thing difficult and want to have there hand held a little.

Thanks for the suggestion.

I think that if we did this, a huge number of people would not bother to post at all. This means that the information base would become outdated and the resource would die.
Also we have always kept completely away from anything which might discriminate between or distinguish between rich and poor (so-to-speak). So access is available on an equal basis for everyone.
We don't award badges or colours for people who donate and we don't operate VIP lounges or any other system of privileges to reqward contributors.

Finally, it would worry me that the Min of Justice might say that we are giving advice in return for payment - not to mention the risk of incurring legal liability for peope who suffer loss for relying on the advice here.

At the end of the day we have to rely on people's own sense of value
(and that doesn't seem to be working too well at the moment!!)

Oh, well I won't embarrass myself further. Just to say all the best I will donate when I get a new job (interview next week.)

This site is amazing and I think that what you have done is fantastic. I suppose I just hope it makes you some money so that you can keep it going and provide for your family.

One last thing what about a separate business using your servers to provide a web hosting service?

Best of luck

DBNS.

Thanks for the good will.
We don't make any moey on it - we don't get paid.

The kind of business you suggest is very interesting but we only have one server and our disk space is limited.

Also, running this forum for nothing is personally very demanding. I don't think that we have the personal resources to run to another business.

The CAG is quite enough!!!

Originally Posted by BankFodder

The kind of business you suggest is very interesting but we only have one server and our disk space is limited.

That wouldn't be a good idea tbh - you'll get a lot of support issues etc and if you don't have a strong team behind you then it will fail, and cause you more hassles than it's worth.

I will be sending through a donation over the next week or so, as soon as Barclays and Lloyds transfer the refunds to my account. Also, know what you mean about PP fees, pretty much suck up anything under a couple of pounds (have you thought of direct bank transfers, as I'd prefer that).
Also, you might want to check on the link for the ad banner on the left (the yellow one on baliff law) as when I clicked on it I went to a 'restricted page'.

Yes you're right. That won't help us.

I don't know what went wrong but it is corrected now.

Mind you I see that you are a recent Cagger.
We always appreciate a donation but we generally recommend that you have a win and a payout before you start giving it away - even to us!

Originally Posted by BankFodder

Yes you're right. That won't help us.

I don't know what went wrong but it is corrected now.

Mind you I see that you are a recent Cagger.
We always appreciate a donation but we generally recommend that you have a win and a payout before you start giving it away - even to us!

Bankfodder, was that aim at me? I had a couple of 'wins' early in the year but didn't need to start a thread as I grouped some together - anyway I sent a cheque the other month.

Oh and Tatsuyace - what's a 'web advertising strategy'? Adwords by any chance? What CAG needs to do is create about 1,000 pages of content approx 750-1,000 words long and link to different threads on here - then they'd get more 'love' in the search engines. It would then be 'easier' to moneytise those posts than placing ads all across the forum, as a lot of the ads on here won't be viewed and their clickthrough rate will be rubbish due to 'ad blindness'.