As you know LawsonTalk will be two years old next February.
In the past year and half we've received some donations from generous members which have helped to pay the ad removal fees for hosting this site and other hosting and maintenance related fees.

We now have a tiny bit of cash in our LawsonTalk account which could potentially be used for advertising the site on Google or Yahoo. These pay-per-click type campaigns can be very effective for getting new members. And as they say, the more the merrier.

So since the money came from you, the members, we thought you should decide if that would be a good or bad idea.

This is not an ad campaign on the site itself! It would be a campaign on Google serving our LawsonTalk ad to users who search for things like: "Lawson Discussion Forum" ... It would make it easier for users to find our site. Again, it's not to make money, rather to spend it on getting new users.

Feel free to tell us what you think in your reply.

"The more the merrier" is certainly true. And what you do with the money we've given you is your business - so long as you keep the site open you can use it to buy left-handed hammers if you want!!

My only comment is to remember that you are playing to a limited audience. There are only about 2000 each S3 and M3 clients. After looking at the mailing addresses of the current membership, are there enough Lawson clients left unserved to make the expenditure worthwhile? I haven't looked (don't even know if I can!) and don't know. Run a quick cost/benefit analysis and go with the numbers.. or go with your gut.. Heck it's cheap, and if we pick up a few more folks who like to ask or answer questions then we all benefit by it.

Either way, *I* love the site and am proud to be a contributing member. Let us know when you need some more cash and I'll click the PayPal button again.

It might be true that there are only 2000 clients, but at each client there may be up to 20 or so users and the users are the ones that use the membership.

And that doesn't even include the consulting companies, the recruiting firms, and Lawson itself. I think the number is considerably bigger than 2000, maybe larger by a factor or 100. :nix:

I think advertising is a good idea personally but only as long as it's very well targetted, otherwise you'll waste a lot of money.

Is there a more cost-effective way to reach potential users via the CUE and mini CUES and regional user groups? We would seem to be a very small potential group for using something like Google or Yahoo; I doubt they much are about our audience size as in getting their $$$ for the ads.