DevRant is a wonderful community, and the last thing any of us would want it to lose it. I think DR should have ads. To think that DevRant grew so fast and large, yet they haven't implemented ads shows just how awesome these guys are. But, it worries me to think that it's only supported by merch and people paying for collab and avatar stuffs scares me. Just a small ad at the bottom of the screen, I'm sure most of us wouldn't mind, and if it helps these humble and amazing people who created DevRant, I would be more than happy.

No ads, donation plz

No ads please the community Will grow even more and it they will monitize it without affecting user experience.

No ads please.

Personally I don't see anything wrong with both.

Add simple banner ads at the bottom of the pages

Give the option to purchase an ad removal feature

Could also get a little more creative... No ads during your first two weeks or something. Then pop message explaining ads and offer ability to buy out of them if desired.

I wouldn't blink at paying a buck or two or three to support the community and not have to see ads.

@civel it doesn't won't all of us here are developers so it's easy to disable ads by decompiling and compiling again

Well, let's wait for @dfox & @trogus decision. It's in their hand; and although I'm not a fan of ads (I hate them) it's only fair to let them know about your opinion.

I'd rather be able to pay and have a clutter free experience...with a few silly extra features.

I'd rather have donations (like $5+) unlock useful premium features than have them disable ads, and I think it would be more in the spirit of the application and community.
Increasing free & ad-free user -> donating user conversion rate is easier and better for the overall user experience & the community than having new users be bombarded with ads. There's not enough time for them to enjoy and become integrated with the community, ads would increase new user dropoff significantly.

Basically it's easier & better for the community to turn adless free users into donating users than it is to turn ad-viewing free users into ad-free paying users.
Just my 2 cents

I come to devRant to rant and laugh. Not to he bombarded with ads. Perhaps a good idea for future income, but a shitty idea for user experience. The long time ranters won't mind paying or bearing with it (we know devRant), but new users wil bitch and moan.

What about text-only ads Inlined into the rant feed so they're practically invisible?

@ragnarr023 I did originally say a little ad at the bottom of the screen, not like "watch a 2 minute ad every time you click on the screen"

@blastosnr I could write a whole blog post about this but I'll try to keep it short. :)

Yes, we're all devs. Could we get around the ads w/o paying? Sure. Should we? Probably not.

Why?

1. It's not cost effective to do so. Let's assume, as a dev, I make $10/hr coding (this is a low estimate but I'm being conservative). How long would it take you to disassemble the apk, patch it, rebuild it and reinstall it? 10 minutes? I think longer but let's go with that. That's 1/6th of an hour (10 minutes out of 60 minutes in an hour). So you just spent $1.67 of your time ($10/hr * 1/6th of an hour) in order to save the $1 it'd have cost you to buy the ad removal upgrade. Was it worth it? For some devs maybe. For most of us, omg not even close.

To be continued...

@civel try lucky patcher it works wonders

@blastosnr

2. We've already established that most of us are devs. We, of all people, know what it takes to deliver good, quality, software. We know about initial development costs, ongoing maintenance costs, hosting costs, licensing costs, domain name costs, etc. Why would we begrudge a fellow dev of a few bucks to support the software and community that we visit, use and enjoy regularly?

There are other reasons too but I'll settle down for now. :)

One important thing I would add as a note to @dfox and @trogus: If you do add some form of ads, PLEASE give us the option to buy our way out of them.

@civel I am from a third world country I don't even have​ a credit card and I am pretty sure that most devs from Africa here can't afford paid devrant

@blastosnr hmmm, that helps to explain some of the disconnect.

Please don't take any of this as disrespectful; that isn't my intent.

Is my $10/hr estimate too high for a dev in your area? It's been awhile since I've looked on oDesk, eLance or rentacoder but I thought most devs could pull at least that amount globally.

If a user is able to use devRant then they must have an Android or iDevice (or a PC). They likely also have monthly cellular service or home internet (unless they get free wifi somewhere...but I think most places that offer free wifi would expect you to buy something... or pay for the wifi like in an internet cafe).

Given all that, charging $1 or 2 for the option to remove ads from a service that you use on the regular doesn't feel unreasonable. Does it? Am I missing something?

No ads. There's a store. There's paid avatar items. There are other monetization options that are less intrusive, like job postings in a contained menu section, etc. No ads anywhere on the rant views.

We'd be overrun with rants complaining about the ads, even with a paid removal option. If you want to support devrant, purchase within the already available options.