Posted by AdminGCG1 on July 19, 2011, 12:28 pm, in reply to "what happened?"
Normally we are inclined to refrain from responding on a thread such as this, but we feel the need to explain this particular situation in our defense.
At the beginning of summer, the owner of Dairy Queen or a representative of Dairy Queen posted a thread announcing the concert series "On the Patio" in the Discussion Board. He posted dates, times and the scheduled entertainment.
The post was deleted and the poster was contacted to see if this was a non-profit event. Our email went unanswered and the same information was posted again. Again it was removed. At this point, we sent another email explaining our advertising costs and invited Dairy Queen to join our list of sponsors. We received no reply.
The concert series is NOT a non-profit event. And while it has been a big success, it is only profitting the owner of Dairy Queen. We have first hand knowledge from an acquaintance who has performed there, the manager told him that the store had earned an additional twenty six hundred dollars the night his band played.
While our intention is not to take anything away from Dairy Queen and what they are doing to increase their business, it is our policy that only our sponsors are allowed to freely promote their businesses within the Discussion Board.
It is not only our policy, but our goal, to give all non-profit organizations and events advertising space on our home page and in the Discussion Board, free of charge.
We hope everyone understands that there are expenses involved with generating and maintaining GraniteCityGossip.com and keeping the website completely free of charge to all of our visitors. Many, many hours are devoted to our labor of love, including by not limited to, continuous monitoring of the Discussion Board alone.
We believe our advertising costs are minimal when compared to other media. We make ourselves available twenty four - seven, through email and by phone contact. We receive countless emails throughout the week from people asking for information, people making suggestions and people making requests.
While we love what we do, we require some way to pay for the costs involved and hope this explains why these posts have been removed.
on July 19, 2011, 12:28 pm, in reply to "