The ads almost completely cover the screen on mobile devices. They will ultimately lose traffic and ad revenue and it will be hard to get users back. Too bad, many sites have made the same mistake and are out or have less than 1/10th of prior users.
It would be nice to know what the owner's (or owners') game plan is for CR. I ended up paying for the lifetime pro membership but I had my doubts CR would survive even as long as it has. From a business/financial perspective, offering lifetime pro memberships created a group of members who do not provide a source of revenue (ie they pay nothing further themselves, and they do not see ads so presumably do not factor into ad revenue) - unless perhaps they indirectly assist in creating revenue simply because their involvement in CR attracts other users who do pay recurring fees or see ads. Further, by allowing the ads shown to visitors (ie those who have not signed up with CR at all) and non-pro members to reach a level where the ads seriously detract from the usability of CR (which was certainly the case a couple of years ago before the pro memberships were offered, and I gather from the post above that is still the case), it must reduce (and would have thought substantially reduce) the number of visitors and non-pro members who use CR, thus decreasing the number of users to whom ads are shown and hence reducinglimiting advertising revenue. So, unless there are a large number of pro members who pay recurring fees (I don't know how many there are but I will be surprised if there are very many), you are left with a group of pro-members who do not pay recurring fees and presumably do not cause ad revenue (since they are not seeing ads), and very few other users (who would see ads). Further, as non-pro user numbers decline, there are fewer people coming through as new pro members (meaning membership fee revenue struggles to grow), and the CR community becomes smaller and less vibrant and enticing to new users (leading to a further decline in users seeing ads and users joining as pro members). I struggle to see how that is likely to be a succesful business strategy. Am I missing something?
My feeling is the first thing which needs to happen, if CR is to survivie and thrive, is the number of ads shown to visitors and non-pro members needs to be reduced so the CR website is enjoyable to use notwithstanding the ads, with a view to increasing the number of users seeing ads and therefore being able to inrease ongoing ad revenue, increasing the number of people who decide to sign up as new pro members, and simply bringing through new users to keep CR vibrant and interesting. I know I used CR for many years when ads were shown but they were not instrusive, so I am talking about a return that sort of approach to the ads. A second thing which might need to happen is that pro members might need to accept seeing some level of ads (yes, I know some of us signed up for lifetime ad-free membership - I was one of those people), possibly even the same ads as everyone else (albeit that may lead to pro memberships becoming a thing of the past).
Maybe I am wrong about what needs to happen - I have never tried to run a website for profit so perhaps there are factors I don't know about. But I have to say that at this point I feel like CR is slowly fading away. It's a lot quieter than it used to be, and there don't seem to be many new members posting. I have learnt a lot from CR's members over the years, so I hope I am wrong about CR fading away,