Fordebating.com will not see a substantial gain in membership based on the site owners advertising..

Thank you coveny, for the quick response. I'll start by addressing his note at the beginning his round 2. I am okay with his note as long as it includes the whole title of the resolution listed in the beginning of round 1 that he agreed to. Saying he will not ever see a substantial game, is semantics and not what I was proposing. I am proposing he will not see a substantial gain in advertising if he continues to use the methods he has on debate.org. This is specifically talking about accruing membership through debate.org, through his past advertising methods, not other methods, or if he later changes his methods, which I genuinely hope he does for the sake of his site. The clarification is to prevent semantic issues, but I am sure my opponent will agree to this. Rebuttals "Substantial Gain" To begin this argument, we must first understand what qualifies as a substantial gain. What is the general goal post for a website to be successful via ad revenue, and how does that reflect on the resources including time spent on the advertising? To look at a group of very very small numbers at to create percentages out of them, it's easy to create the illusion that a "substantial" gain has been made. But out of context, these percentages mean very little for the success of his website. For example, my opponent doesn't have a way to verify that the 1 person who joined the mail list, the 2 people who subscribed to his channel and the 10 facebook followers actually stemmed from his advertising through controversy (his main method as self admitted of late that he claims will bring him success). However even granting him that these very small number increases occurred through advertising with controversy, he still has to prove how they are a substantial "gain". To paint a picture here I will give some ideas of what minor success is qualified as. As a business venture in which the owner wants to make money from, especially when one has presumably put a few grand on their investment, you would expect to see a significant growth over a short to long period of time. Let's use adsense as an example as it is a fairly commonly used advert among new business owners. While the site's owners projections for income would probably need to be higher to factor in costs like server maintenance, paid techs to fix bugs and/or other issues, hosting fees (larger considering needed server sizes), we'll start with saying earning 3k a month is a pretty low ball standard to shoot for in the beginning year of profits. To achieve this, you would need to make about 100$ a day from membership gains. Chris Lee says the following: For me, I was able to reach a full-time income when I was consistently getting over 150,000 visitors per month. I wasn’t just getting that with one website though. Traffic was spread throughout about 20 sites, with 3 of them generating 90% of that. (1) Success was achieved through 20 sites, which demonstrates that to be profitable from one website it clearly needs to more than the 150,000 visits on just the single website he is planning. You can calculate percentages of revenue by visitors with something called "RPM", which is a calculation of how much profit a website gets per 1000 visitors. If we were to assume that every single member of his mailing list, youtube, and facebook were all unique visitors (unlikely, we're just giving him the benefit of the doubt) His total visitors according to his own "stats" as of 1-13-18 is 57. It takes 100 unique visitors to even equal 1$ in adsense revenue, so we can see that a 50 cent gain in revenue really isn't all that enthralling. While there are potentially other unknown factors for revenue Coveny has planned, it is unlikely they will yield a significant profit from just the member base that is assumed from even his highest margins. Being profitable is an attribute to a significant gain, so if we were looking at ad revenue by itself, the margins for his sales are pretty meager. All of this aside, even if we are assuming these numbers are relevant and will reflect his actual site membership and join rate, the website isn't even released yet. Using these percentages doesn't prove anything until the website is actually released. Just because you've enticed a lot of facebook friends to like your page, doesn't mean that all of them are going to join the website, or even stay as an active user. Having 4 people on a mailing list doesn't show how many of them read your emails rather than marking it as spam, and finally having 6 youtube subscribers doesn't mean all are interested in joining the website. The image posted by my opponent that contains a list of views for each video doesn't prove anything either. I clicked on a few of them myself (mostly to see who this guy was). But a simple view doesn't prove the individual watched the entire video. Secondly it is incredibly easy to boost view counts on YouTube. Point being, these views don't correlate with anything tangible nor should they be considered "Stats" for an un-published website. People supporting Coveny's Behavior This point is a fairly easy one to refute. First and foremost, simply defending coveny doesn't mean you will become a user on his website. This seems like a fairly simple point to grasp so I won't spend too much time on it. Mostly this explains itself. I personally have defended coveny in instances where I felt he was being abused. I've reported Emilrose who harassed his wife, and I publicly shamed her for doing so, even so I still am taking a position in a debate against him. Inferno expressing a liking for an individual isn't a signed contract that he will be a member of his website. Leaning in the same post that coveny partially posted said this "Even if someone is unpleasant or a detriment to a community, don't they still have a right to be a part of it?" The topic was specifically about kicking coveny off the website, and even I agree that this was blown out of proportion by Mikal. Talking about whether someone is an unpleasant detriment to a competitors community is a stark contrast to meaning "I am going to join your website". Zmikecuber was actually being sarcastic in that thread, as mikal called out early on. He has a history of being facetious in this way and making public jokes, even on his friends like Emilrose (where he jokingly accused her of being a male). While it was probably a joke and not intended to cause conflict, even granting it is serious, no where did zmike say he was joining the site over it. Me and airmax defending Coveny in that video because unstoppable was being an emotional and using false logic against you doesn't mean we are signing up for your website. This point is none of the examples cited are relevant to attracting members to his site, and thus this whole point is irrelevant. Advertising based on strengths I feel like this is a fairly easy point to refute, so I won't spend a ton of time on it. It is not my goal in the debate to prove that "Everyone hates coveny because he has no good personality traits", or even to say that he is hated by anyone at all. This whole argument is a pretty big non-sequitur. Just as with the last point, simply having a friends on the website, or having people defend you doesn't mean they are going to join your website. I've argued with you myself extensively in the forums, and while the arguments get tedious and feel as if they go in circles, it doesn't mean I or others don't think you have qualities that make you a good person. No one is supposing you are wrong all the time in the arguments you've been in. All of this is irrelevant.At the end of the day, coveny needs to prove how his strengths are working towards getting him customers (members joining his website), not how many friends he is earning on a competitors website. Not only does he need to get written testimony to these people joining his site, he also needs to show how he is making a substantial gain from those people. How many people are we talking about here that the "advertising" is appealing to? You've spent multiple hours of your personal time "advertising" here, so there needs to be some sort of demonstrable pay-off for advertising through these personality traits in order for this point to be valid.4. Strategies other than controversyMost of the same points from the last two points also apply here. Making friends=/=earning customers. I made a website sub-function for Debate.org called DDOfans.org in 2014. I was the DDO president at the time, and felt like I had a good plenty of friends on the site. When I first unleashed the site, it was popularly used for about maybe 1 week. After that, people kind of stopped caring about it, despite me putting in new features actively (like history archives with links to all DDO shows, articles about major posts with polls in them, presidency election stuff, etc). I think it's great your are making friends and connecting with people in a non-negative way, and continue to endorse that behavior, but frankly I don't see it being a fail proof marketing strategy. This debate isn't about a coveny popularity contest, it's strictly about marketing and advertising. 5. Marketing techniques I have already responded to most of this in my opening arguments that I am sure Con will get to in the next round. Due to character restrictions I will refer you there, and in the meantime quickly re-touch that controversy does work for certain markets, in certain situations. It is not my belief that drama works in situations where you are trying to build a community environment like social networking. It works for people who look for the controversy as their main source of revenue. That is not what one tends to look for when wanting to build a social profile in an online community. I am now out of characters, and will allow my opponent a chance to respond to my arguments as well as my rebuttals to his. Sources 1. https://www.rankxl.com...