What large offsite stores ban outside adverts?

RDNA - No offsite advertisement, period.

DAZ - No more than 1 advertisement per week, threads can (and are) removed at staff discretion even if they are only one advertisement per week

Content Paradise doesn't even have a place where offsite vendors can advertise.

The simple fact is this...if you go in there now, and look at all of the posts in there from before the policy change (many of which are STILL on the front page, so you don't have to dig far), a lot of them are advertising product from those 3 sites. 

As for the community aspect...

Our local Borders store is pretty awesome when it comes to being a place to sit, meet people, have a conversation, talk about your favorite book, have a coffee, even host a meeting for your group (3 local pagan groups, a women's book club, a father's rights group, and many college groups meet there on a regular basis, for free if they don't advertise, for a small charge if they'd like to put up advertisements and/or sponsor a coupon for new members).  However, I doubt, even as community minded as they are, they'd let Barnes & Noble advertise at their store.  And I highly doubt they'd let authors advertise at their store that "Hey, I have this book, I'm selling it at Borders and at Barnes & Noble.  It's $10.99 at Borders and $8.99 at B&N."  And I'm pretty sure that "I have a book that's exclusive to B&N, check it out!" wouldn't fly.

In a way, a lot of the offsite advertisement was really taking advantage of the site, and not in a good way.  Obviously, like any business, we want you folk to stay here to do your shopping.  It keeps the lights on.  It keeps the forums and the galleries going.  Pays the bills.  If people don't shop here, this site no longer exists, unless some of y'all want to just throw money at us for no apparent reason (welcome, obviously, but, unnecessary while we have a store.  We'd rather earn it than just take it).  Using site bandwidth to steer people to other sites is a huge loss-leader.  If you'll look at the posts in the Marketplace Showcase, with the older posts, not many of them were going to smaller stores.  They were almost all going to either DAZ, CP, or RDNA. 

In our view, this is more of the fact that it's not fair to our merchants.  Merchants here pay a percentage to the store for hosting and advertising.  When offsite stores and merchants are able to do so for free, it really hurts THEM.  Especially the non-exclusive and not top 50 merchants, who have lower exposure anyway.  Not everyone can be top 50, because there are only 50 slots ;). 

In the end, yeah, there are ways you can advertise on Renderosity without violating the TOS.  Email marketing@Renderosity.com, and purchase ad space.  Our merchants here pay for their advertising out of the cut they pay to Renderosity.  It's only fair that offsite merchants pay for their advertising, too.

Jeni

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