Full-page ads are really obnoxious.

Alexa stats haven't been valid since 2003. Besides, you have no idea what you're talking about.

This website costs $492 a year to keep up, plus $140 for the Javachat, plus $180 for the vBulletin license.

You clearly have a deep understanding of what I do and do not know, I'll give you that.

You don't have to browse through many threads to see enough Premium members, cost paid there.

According to the forum statistics, there's 1,283 active members(unique visitors within the last 30 days based on Vbulletin's default setting, most ad carriers count 24 hour periods to determine unique visits). A website with 1000 unique visits/month should be getting at a minimum $30 a month even from google Adsense(and by many reports, AdBrite pays more). This get's a lot more than 1000 the way they're counted, several times that. Even without premium support, it should be more than self-sustaining. If not, what else can i say? you're doing it wrong.

By your own words(or at least the official voice of the forum:
# Removal of Advertisements from the Forum

* Our standard skins will be advertisement supported. I personally hate adverts, but since this forum is run for the community, by the community, we need to be able to pay to keep this website up. By being a premium member, all advertisements on this website magically disappear! Your donation allows us to offer an ad-free existance to you!

Since by the cost figure you yourself gave(which is very high at a note...you should look into that), we can clearly see the website is consistently paid for, and then quite a bit more. So where is all this extra money going? and with that in mind, what is the consideration for enabling a new even more obnoxious type of advertisement?

How is the "community" benefiting from revenue above and beyond operating cost? and why was it a necessity to try and make even more?
 
Honestly dude... how much extra does he have then (without the adds) if Premium members ARE actually paying it all off? Show us some of your figures as to what money he is "hoarding" from "us".
 
Only needs to be about 35 premium members.

Is there more? Y/N?

This isn't exactly complex, that you can observe just casually browsing posts and counting stars, though only the admin staff is going to have an exact figure.

It isn't about "hoarding", it's about intention behind the activation of these new obnoxious ads. If they're not needed to maintain the site, then what purpose do they serve?(and the "incentive" for premium is bunk, and why do you need more premiums beyond that needed for maintenance?). The money is going somewhere, and if it's just going to Jaxel he can at least be upfront about it, instead of lines like that I quoted about it being for the community, by the community.

I'm not accusing anyone here of buying a ferrari with revenue from the site, but there's a clear discrepency.
 
Well lets see. How many Premium members are there? At $20 for a Yearly subscription (which not everyone gets) That means he would need at least 41 members with Yearly memberships to cover the cost.
Figuring for the 812 he said before. How many are there?
 
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