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

**Note**Pro is both “okay with his note” and “not what he was proposing”. This is the first of pro’s contradictions. As judges, you will decide if the use of the continuous tense means that the resolution of the debate is “he will not ever see a substantial gain”, but my position on the matter has not changed. Saying “will not see” means the future, had the topic state “has not achieved” I wouldn’t have accepted the debate. Then we have Pro’s first attempt (vague and ambiguous as it may be) to move the goal posts: “his past advertising methods, not other methods, or if he later changes his methods” which Pro is sure that I will agree with, and I don’t. The advertising methods I used in the past (or the “other methods”) changed and adapted, I assume Pro is referring to advertising through drama, which is not, and has not been my only form of advertising I used on DDO and my other forms of advertising are within the resolution of this debate. Pro attempting to move the goal posts and narrow the debate to encompass only drama when the resolution I agreed to, does not state this debate is only about drama. Foul I cry, foul. Rebuttal – ReachPro contradicts himself again here. The implication is that I haven’t achieved “reach” going so far as to say, “we have to consider how many active members are even aware of his posts.” Then later he says, “If there's one thing to credit coveny on, it's his Brand Awareness for the website.”. So how can active users be aware of by brand, but I haven’t reached them? It’s not possible, and this is another point where Pro refutes his own claim. Pro also moves the goal posts again here. The resolution clearly states on debate.org not other platforms, and yet Pro argues my time should be spent advertising elsewhere “where this time may have been better spent advertising elsewhere”. Although I am spending my time elsewhere, when Pro attempts to extend the goal posts to encompass my advertising on other websites, again I say foul. Rebuttal – Sales and profitsWhile Pro misrepresents me with “Coveny believes that by simply being a presence” I’m going to continue showing how he moves the goal posts. Nowhere in the resolution does it say that I need to be profitable, and I am selling nothing. The resolution is about membership gain, and yet here (and in round 3) Pro is moving the goal posts to a successful profitable business. Proving that is not the resolution of this debate. I need only show membership gain has or will have substantial gain. I have stated numerous times that my expectation is that the ForDebating.com statistically should fail financially, and that even if it is successful it will take years to grow the user base. (more on this later) Rebuttal – Brand AwarenessLet’s move back to Pro’s contradictions now. Here are a few of Pro’s comments about how important I’m viewed by the community is in round 2: “controversy is driving away the same members he is or should be trying to appeal to” or “the majority of a community tend to dis-agree with you or think you are an "@sshole" (this source is a troll debate from the self-professed troll queen of DDO, I’m glad the troll queen thinks I’m an @sshole) or “hear some oddball theories. Is that what people in a debating community are looking for though”. Then in round 3 Pro does a complete about face referring to people who have supported and defended me on DDO “This point is none of the examples cited are relevant to attracting members to his site, and thus this whole point is irrelevant.”. In round 2 how people viewed me was Pro’s whole claim, and when I prove he’s wrong, Pro contradicts himself as he changes his stance to that claim being irrelevant. Rebuttal – Substantial gainAnd back to moving the goal posts. The resolution is not if I’m making money, it is not about how many people have signed up for ForDebating.com (because that site doesn’t exist yet), it is not about being successful, it’s about gain. I don’t need to prove that I will earn a living off Fordebating.com, that’s more of Pro misrepresenting my intentions, all I need prove is the goal posts I agreed to in the debate. It’s about substantial gain in membership. The goal posts don’t move from membership to join rate for ForDebating.com, FD isn’t online yet, I can’t have a gain in membership there. But I can, and have gained membership on Facebook, YouTube, and my mailing list.Back to contradiction. Pro states “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” but earlier states “Using these percentages doesn't prove anything until the website is actually released.”. So I can’t prove anything because the website isn’t actually released, but I must prove there is a payoff for my points to be valid. Back to goal post move, Pro would like to define substantial gain as profitability as I’ve just shown, and with that Pro moves the goal posts to what a fully functional successful business would need to achieve and states that as the yardstick. I am not running 20 websites, nor do I have any intention of running 20 websites, and yet to discredit my gains Pro compares me to individuals running 20 websites and requirements of 150k in visitors a month. The article even states “I wasn’t just getting that with one website though.”, on top of that Pro knows (because he has access to the development website) that I’m not using ad words so not only has Pro pitted FD against 20 websites, the pricing model he uses isn’t the one FD is using. The whole thing is ridiculous. Back to contradiction Pro states “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.” As a way to discredit the gains I have made, but earlier Pro also stated “I'd be surprised if there are more than 20 people in the forums who even know about or care about the drama on top of that.”. I’ll remind you Pro already stated in his brand awareness section “when Coveny is brought up, the automatic thought is to place him as a the head of a website” so the logical conclusion from people automatically think of my website when it’s brought up. So if only 20 people aware of me, this leads to Pro believing there are only 20 active people on the forums. Yet 10 is a “very very small number “. Converting 10 of the 20 users on DDO to members of my Facebook page. (that’s a half according to Pro) Again this is just a debate about Debate.org and if 20 active members is all I have to pull from, then 10 is not a small number in comparison. And that’s not even me going into the timeframes of 10 users in a month growing exponentially, or the fact that a user base must start out small, and grow slowly. (they aren’t coming in chunks of 50k) Rebuttal – Friends =/= membershipCombo Pro’s contradictions and moving the goal posts. This debate is about substantial gain. Gaining friendship, gaining respect, and gaining support are all progress toward gaining users. Pro seems bitter about his failed attempt at a fan site, but he does contradict himself on the point of friends =/= membership when he says “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.”. So Pro is stating that he had plenty of friends and the site was popularly used. (membership) Now I should clarify that there is a difference between getting people to join (membership) and getting people to stay. Here Pro attempts to move the goal post from getting membership to staying on his site, however contradicts himself with the “plenty of friends” that made the site popular, therefore by Pro’s own words friends = membership. (even if he had nothing to offer them once they got there) Pro concedes with “Alex Jones certainly is a character, and his outlandish views and beliefs certainly bring him an audience, even if a major portion of that audience deigns to listen to him knowing he is absurd to make fun of him” that advertising through drama will bring people to FD even if it’s just to make fun of me. Therefore allowing me to include the people who don’t like me as part of my substantial gain in membership. ConclusionPro is against drama, and yet creates a roller coaster with his arguments stating that I have both reached and not reached, users opinions are important and not important, I’m driving people away and it doesn’t matter if they support me, and back to it matters if users like me, and it does not matter if users like me. I feel like I have whiplash from watching a high-speed ping pong match as Pro moves goal posts and goes back and forth on positions. I hope that the people reading this have the take away that Pro will say whatever he can get away with saying to win, and doesn’t care about the truth. I care about the truth, I care about creating a community, care about debating, I have a passion for debating, I believe in what I am doing, and I’m not creating ForDebating.com to make money. I am doing all the things Pro states successful business owners do: “Casey Neistat, or successful business owners, all have to have a vested interest in their product, show, and believe in what they are doing, and the money comes later.”. I have gained a following, I have gained membership in every metric, and I will continue to change my advertising (as I have done here) trying different options to what works best. I would hope that users can be objective about the gains that I have proven, rather than listening to the ping pong of Pro’s argument.