I'm not keen on adding 'yet another' segregated area for ads personally. It would end up with us mods having to move threads and people getting pissed off when their threads are moved etc.
As for the actual eBay ads, that's a different matter.
eBay is currently the main resource that allows me to keep this site free :tup:
eBay links on here account for the majority of the income generated monthly by the site to cover it's costs and allow for future expansion, new hardware etc. etc.
I'm not going to shoot the bill payer.
Whenever a link to eBay is posted on here it's automagically converted to an affiliate link. For each click of a link RnS essentially "gets paid".
Obviously this goes into a whole different level of detail depending on if the person buys that item, browses and buys other unreleated stuff or just never goes back and such but that's another essay lol.
If we block eBay ads or split them off into an area where they might receive less traffic then it puts the site at risk. Although we have the forum section sponsors, once those revenues are split out across the year it quickly dwindles away. eBay provides that regular income needed to keep things ticking over.
Don't forget, along with hardware costs i've got software costs to cover, licences, hosting, bandwidth, development, pizza, pepsi etc. with the majority being monthly outgoings.
In short, eBay allows threads like this to be filled mainly with usernames that are in white :tup:
They might grate on people a little but at the end of the day they give you this site to use :tup:
As a side note, they can't piss everyone off because on an average month there is £40,000's worth of sales (sales not profit) going through eBay where the people involved have at some point within that month clicked on a link via here.
) then a click and purchase that way would be classed as high quality traffic and increase our potentials :tup:
