Bitcoin Forum

This forum is active mostly from signature campaign participants who want to earn their weekly payment, including me of course. These users have an additional incentive from making high quality posts and thus, they do. This forum is consisted of users that want to help each other, whether they actually want it or they just want to get paid from doing it.

In other words, this forum converts the greed of some (if not all) campaign participants to common good. The newbies that need your help, get it, you get paid from the campaign manager and he/she gets paid from the person that runs the business that you're wearing.

If we exclude the businessman, everyone is happy. Participants and campaign managers get paid and other users get the help they want (or whatever they want to discuss). Thus, new information circulates every single day on this forum and this is what keeps it so alive. This is a factor that keeps it one of biggest forums out there, the incentive.

There are businesses that are advertised on bitcointalk in the long term. For example, for more than 1-2 years. Usually, these are the businesses that run high-paying signature campaigns. It is clear that these businesses have a huge profit, from the entire process, otherwise they wouldn't pay that much.

Each of these businesses, whether they're here for the long or the short term, want to be on users' signatures. And not just any user, but those that contribute the most. The reason may be that other users might click on the signature. Or they may want to rank up on SEO, since bitcointalk traffic is significantly big.

---

But I'll focus on the first one. Since these businesses keep running, then the obvious answer to the title's question is yes. I have personally clicked on some signatures, especially those that are advertised from "Legendaries"/Forum experts. But I haven't moved further, I just visited their website. I'd like to read, though, if you tend to visit these exchanges/mixers/casinos/<everything else> that are advertised and if yes, if you go further than that.

The companies will better be the best to give more accurate information about this, there are some signature campaigns that do not last long, probably because their aim has been achivee or because no much further progress after advertising. While some will be long term because they are having much increase of users and other people that are not even users but using their platform when they bring up their campaign here. Many of us will registered on some of these companies and make use of their services. But it is the companies that will tell us what progress they achieved after bringing campaign to this forum. The ones that last long see many people that click on the signature while many out of the people that click on the signature still go further to make use of the their services.

I sometimes click on signatures, although not as much as I used to (as I'm already familiar with some of the popular websites advertised). I only go further if their product or service proves attractive enough. I've experimented with some casinos but only a few have been able to keep me hooked for a long time.

I would say it usually happens the other way, where good users are given the opportunity to earn from their habits. Any user who is attracted purely by the desire to earn will find it difficult to rank up

I think that what you are asking is somewhat misleading / not well asked.

I am here on this forum for some years now and at some point my signature even had my referral link in it. Back then I was disappointed, since my referral got only one click, I think. And I was thinking "why signature campaigns then?"
Later on, I've studied my own behavior. I do go now and then to advertised websites, especially if it's in my area of interest. But most of the time I went there directly, not by clicking on the signature.
So I'd conclude that most the businesses earn is awareness and the "leads" from signatures could be a very poor unit of measure.

I'd also add that imho if a signature is here for years, people know that the business is stable and reliable, hence there's bigger chance to choose them instead an unknown competitor.

To be honest, I mostly do this especially if it's new to me and there are some description written on the signature being advertised by the user whether it's just plain text or those fancy and colorful BBCodes. We don't know how long this will last in this industry or who might be the last one standing but I'm just thankful at least for some reason we earn but aside from that there are learning as well that we get here especially reading some insights of other users.

Facts are those who last here for long are those gambling kind of signatures and I guess mixers do tend to be on the second then exchanges.

Despite of shit- and spam-posts from bounty hunters that have bad contributions on the general quality of the forum's community posts. I see some good things from signatures (skip annoying factors here).

• It shows you a trend in crypto market. The companies run their advertisement on the forum via signatures which have key words on what their projects are all about
• If you leave the crypto market, the forum for a while (months ?) and come back one day, you can scan around the forum and look at what are commonly advertised via signatures. You can find out quickly the trend: ICOs, IEOs, DeFi, gambling, mixers/ tumblers.
• It takes time for you to experience and notice it.
• You definitely don't need the free signal if you are always actively in the market and on the forum

Users and unregistered visitors of this forum definitely click on the signatures, because if it were not so, would anyone use such a service? I initially had my own signature with a ref link that collected several hundred referrals, and after that I repeated the same thing in a paid signature campaign that allowed a ref link in the signature.

While I don’t want to go in the direction of discussing whether campaign signatures are good or bad in some sense and what would happen if the forum didn’t have them - I think in the end everyone benefits from this way of advertising. Of course, there will always be those who will abuse such things and play unfair games - but that is another story.

Ironically I don't click on signatures since I've disabled them shortly after joining although I have one on my profile currently ;D


Yup, those gambling sites thrive quite well. Although I've seen some that quitted shortly after like several weeks because their socmed platform has better ROI.

*I never click the signature...
if so, is the signature useful? of course useful. what I found was that the signature was not to be clicked on, but was proof that the developer had a stable capital and signature is prestige for a campaign.

That's an interesting way of looking at things around here, but I'd argue that some of the most helpful members I've seen on the forum aren't in signature campaigns (though certainly a lot of them are).  Vod and Philipma1957 come to mind immediately, and I don't think the latter is in a campaign. 

But I wouldn't call participating in a signature campaign as being greedy necessarily.  A lot of members would be posting here no matter what, and it just makes sense to make a few satoshis in the process.

I don't personally click on signatures.  I have them on ignore, just like avatars, because I hate looking at them over and over--but obviously a lot of people do click on them.  If they didn't, there would be no reason to run sig campaigns at all (though I haven't seen any data as to how effective they are at generating business for the campaign owner).

I think this is an interesting topic that can for sure create discussion regarding the main reasons that make people join the forum. From my point of view I consider that there are at least 2 types of users that decide to click the "register" button on here:

• The "narrow" field of vision ones /generate passive income "easily" spirit - Users that heard/discovered about the campaign publicity that runs in here but didn't decided to explore what it means/implies to wear a signature for such campaigns. They rush into making random threads about something that happened in the world with generic themes or spam post comments that sometimes may not match with the issue that is been discussing in thread just to see the post counter go up. They fail to see that in order to reach the requirements to integrate the campaigns they have X requirements, the main ones tied to account progression. From their point of view the amount of effort that it takes isn't worth and they quickly loose interest and end up never logging in again (they were looking for a source of income that was easy to establish).
• The ones that actually want to take in the discussion/development of BTC as a currency - The "type" basically describes the purpose. These are the type of users that do try their best to give their voice whenever they see fit, try to contribute/establish relations with members here and even try to come up with original ideas that haven't been discussed before. From within this class of user may originate two sub-classes : The ones that decide to combine their positive thinking/activity with campaign services (which is valid by itself) and the ones that decide to follow the same path that they were making without "vouching" for such service.
  Each has their own reasons ,and each of them is valid, so long as the goal of both is the same : contribute positively to the growth of the forum (I tend to overuse the word "organic" but I think it represents the way that our growth should be).

Regarding the campaigns themselves, while I don't believe we will never get any kind of numbers from the managers/whoever is running the service (from a business perspective it wouldn't be wise to share) I do believe that this forum being the "belly button" of BTC, they end up getting a lot of attention/leads.

If not, the simple fact that you see (as long as you have signatures enabled) so many times the same services advertised ( ChipMixer comes to mind) also reinforce the trust rating that these kind of services have from our members here. I guess it's a win-win scenario for both parties as it promotes organic (no no I shall not say it again!) positive growth and leads to the services themselves.

---

If you have avatars on the ignore list, how will you find out if there's another cycling club being established?  :o There should only be one fox to rule them all! ;D

On a more serious note, thank you for reminding me that signatures/avatars can be turned off. Will definitely consider this as an option going forward.[/list][/list]

Advertising obviously works, but to what extent I'm sceptical. How often do you go and check out or buy something you've seen advertised on a billboard on the street/road or on a passing bus or something? Most of them just blend into the monotony of life unless it's something either truly eye catching or relevant to your interests, though maybe the advertising works more subliminally than we think. It's the same with youtube. I skip probably 99% of ads on there but every now and again there's something that catches my eye and I'll watch the full ad and/or click the link to check out the product further, but if I do I rarely ever purchase something. Same goes for the things advertised here. 99% of the time I'm not interested, though I have become aware of several products/coins/services through them that I might not have know about otherwise. One of the first things I noticed upon joining this forum was the PrimeDice sigs everywhere and for the first month I didn't even realise people were getting paid to post by them, but it was something I definitely checked out and even used at one point. Who knows if I would have known or checked out PD or things like Chipmixer without them, but whether they're worth paying out as much as they do is debatable, but it's obviously something many companies are prepared to do. Companies like PrimeDice did stop their campaign for quite some time but at one point they were pretty much paying anyone and everyone who joined, but I think Stake is still going in some limited capacity.

I believe that the purpose of an advertisement may not be making you click it. I don't know about youtube, since I have adblocker and I nearly watch some of them from my smart tv, but once advertisements take place on bitcointalk, the thing changes. I'll talk about ChipMixer, which is the best example.

There are thousands of pages containing posts from ChipMixer participants. Tens of thousands of posts above the ChipMixer ad. Whether you'll click it or not, you know what mixer you'll use if you ever need one. And that's because it is advertised by the most trusted and helpful users of the forum. Every user that will make an account on bitcointalk will find out about ChipMixer sooner or later. Even if you won't click it, as long as you're discussing, you'll continuously read the ChipMixer logo until it's officially "stuck" in your head.

ChipMixer is everywhere, which means that it has achieved the main purpose of an advertisement.

The only time I've ever clicked someone's signature is when it's advertising a project they're working on and I wanted more information.  I have never clicked a 3rd party advertisement, nor would I.  I tend to think if an advertiser has the money to spend on signature ads, they must be making a whole lot of money off the people they're advertising to, and I'd rather not fall into that category.

It's all about creating association and prevalence. Of course you don't expect the advertisement to work with immediate effect: marketers are not hypnotists... though, perhaps over the long-term, you could make that sort of analogy.

Consider, also, the demographic that you are appealing to: users that actively post or read a forum that is dedicated for Bitcoin discussion (+ alts) are likely to be active participants in blockchain use as opposed to other spaces like price consolidation/portfolio websites. It's also a broad enough platform to host a variety of sites. The gambling and mixer sites function well due to whales that can cover the majority of the profits gained from the campaign, whereas places that can't handle high volume may need to rely on much greater mass appeal to gain a return.

Perhaps that's why those are the main ones you see: it's the structure of the advertising platform and ecosystem that create the ideal competitor. You could call this analogous to the concept of dominant archetypes in biological ecosystems.

---

I don't personally have qualms with the gambling industry but surely it should be difficult to say that it's not just a case of, "the rich get richer"? Casinos are capitalism maximized: create an addiction for your consumers so that their capital shifts towards the greater sum - yours. You can argue this or that about entertainment but the pedantry required is quite an abominable mess. At the end of the day, your pay comes from someone else's deposit.

Do you purchase every time you see an ads on the television or billboard? Not at all but when you want to buy certain product, that ads play little role if you have watched that ads closely.
And in the same way, signature campaign works here too. When we see the ads, for example when I first time saw the chipmixer ads, I had no idea then. I checked what it is and later on once I had to use mixer and the first name came to my mind was Chipmixer. That's how it works.
If any campaign is here to get click and evaluate the campaign output with clicks, they will never have the best result.

Sometimes I click on signature links if I become curious about a platform. But do you believe the platform owners advertising the forum just for clicks? I don't believe it. It's called branding. Here all users are somehow related to cryptocurrency. So all crypto-related platforms want branding their platform among real crypto users. Advertising via a signature campaign doesn't mean the user will be registered via that link. But if they often see that advertise most likely user would join throw a direct website link or from friends/family referral links. That's how I believe projects have been generating revenue and advertising their platforms continuously.

As a campaign manager, I have worked for multiple platforms. In the beginning, I told them I driving lots of traffic from the forum is quite impossible. Slowly propels will notice your platform then they would join via your links or from the direct website, I can't guaranty any click from the forum. If you expecting too many clicks then please move into the PTC site, so that you will get lots of clicks from there. Finally, a different project runs their project with different duration. So, I believe the platforms are getting benefits from the campaign, otherwise all long time campaign wouldn't run here.

Where is this incentive to make high quality posts?   There is none.

I'd say 90% of signature campaigns do not post high quality.  I've tried too many times to start intelligent conversations and within a day it's filled with non-connected random posts.  But I understand if you can make $200 for copy/pasting a link, why not?   (And I hope you are not hinting that because I don't have a signature, my content is poor lol)

Well, if I need a service and if I find a good and legitimate service provider, why not? when you actually need a service related to crypto, this is the place to come and search for what you need. I have used a few services advertised in signatures, so yes, signatures are good if they provide a good and useful service, they are bad if they are advertising scam coins and shit coins.

The direct answer to your questions is yes. On several occasions I have picked interest in some certain casino and project as a result of them been advertise on the forum. Assuming I didn't encountered them on the forum, they probably won't have recieve my patronage. The observation from my view as a campaign managers is poor short term that's mostly because most project wants an immediate impact since they're spending money for the advertising but that shouldn't be the case. For a project to receive patronage from the forum they have to earn it and this comes with reputation that's earn over time.

I think majority of the users here careless about what's been advertise. They're only interested in getting paid for been active on the forum, engaging in conversation. This can been easily observed in the bounty section but that of the bitcoin paying signature is quite decent as more effort are put into the contributions.

I have personally gotten to know and use a half a dozen services due to long term exposures from signatures here. The services I ended up using mostly were advertised over a long period. I don't want to list them but most have been casinos and a couple of Bitcoin mixers.

The long term advertisement for a service comes with a feeling that a service is trustworthy and can be relied on by a possible consumer/customer. To be honest, I think short term advertisers don't feel the impact because it takes time for the consumer to get familiar and comfortable using a service. So before users even think about using the service, they have already pulled out their signatures, and they get forgotten faster than they even advertised here.

Some campaigns such as Bustadice do have a reward pool for the top X constructive users.


But how that "constructive" term is intepreted is up to the manager though ;D

I often do clicking the signature of services that I used such as Chipmixer and Bestchange. I don't know but I always want to visit the website whenever I saw the signature from member here while browsing in the forum.

I clicked mostly gambling signatures. I find it more convenient sometimes since I don't have to search for the casino's ANN that could be on the second or third page of the gambling board.

I have actually done this when I wasn't on a campaign and I had it enabled after I started. I realized it would be hypocritical to get payment week after week while "hating" on forum signatures.

after realizing people are posting even after all possible answers are provided already, I chose to hide users' signatures from my preference view, even without this setting, I still wouldn't have clicked any of those banners.

To be honest, I rarely click on signature links. Most of the time that I click those signatures, it probably because I misclicked. I just type the website on the url section of the browser then browse it. I click more those linked photos than clicking on signature links.
I know it's one point for the sig campaign to gain more  clicks and loyal users. But they still can just by having seen their company details on user's signatures specially if they are high ranked members.

I think more than just clicking and making some new users registering on their websites, signature campaign companies actually think about the long term implication of visual representation of their ads on users mind. Not every user out there will go and click on the signatures and register and make a revenue for the websites, but since bitcointalk is such a popular forum, it makes sense that visual representation of any company for the long term will generate a great number of users in future because it works on a psychological level! For my personal experience, I clicked on a gambling website signature once and registered and actually won there :P but then I continued to be a user there on a frequent basis :)

You have already answered this question that signatures are being clicked by many people on this forum. That's the reason companies run signature campaign on this forum because they get real traffic and business from this forum. If this was not the case, we would not see long running campaigns here.

As far as i am concerned, i do click on the signature if i found it appealing and something related to my interest.

I don't click on signature links that are obviously just there to gain campaign payments. I don't believe that most posters use the products, or have even verified the offers. If I trust the poster, and I am interested in the offer,then I may click the link.

Yes, but not all signature. Only signature that i find its interesting and most of them are services such as exchanges.
Its really helpful to find some interesting service that i can use for long term from signature.

That is why if you were the advertiser it is important to know where to post and to know what to post.

Ex: you were advertising a gambling site. By commonly using our sense we should be ramping our post in gambling area because users that are posting there should have the common interest and can be converted into  a lead generation (that is how it is supposed to but unfortunately those sections are also has more trash posters than in the other sections).




10% goes to the highest paying signature campaign that is currently running in the forum I guess?

If the user is getting a lesser amount then the quality is also degrading. That was based on my personal observation

When you are interested in something, I guess you want to check it. Same applies to signatures, when you see something new with interesting text for you, it makes you to click on it and get the information that you are intrigued by. That's what signature has to do in order to gain your attention and get traffic from the website, their aim is to make you click on it and then try their best to turn you into their customer.

People click on the signature I think that there is another reason why some companies run signature campaigns for 2-3 years and even more. The more you see the same thing every day, the more you remember it. For example, I see the chipmixer here for more than three years with aggressive marketing, they have a lot of participants. When I read the word "Mixer" somewhere, chipmixer is what comes to my mind despite the fact that I knew other good mixers before them. Now, for me, chipmixer is associated with the word "Mixer" and I would say that their marketing worked very well despite the fact that I don't click on their signature link.

I would say the same on Bitsler, Crypto-Games, 777coin (yeah), bestchange, betcoin.ag, Fortunejack. The colours play a huge role too, colour psychology is a great thing, maybe that's why I didn't remember Bustadice (they run sig campaign from 2017) as well as others (but still remember because I just reminded them :D )

CHIPMIXER SUPREMACY!!!! *evil noises*

https://i.imgur.com/hrQxKAz.png

---

Regarding the topic of the thread, I definitely click signatures, it makes me curious you know? Half the time I spent on this forum, I end up clicking on things and get distracted way too easily. It tickles my pickle ok? dont judge. IT IS right there :/

So its more of a personal preference for each person. Like I can assure you that there are people here who click on signatures just to see if the link advertised is a scam/shitiest of the shitcoins/contain malware. Not everyone clicks the site and uses it for what the site is intended for.  At the end of the day, the signatures get impressions which matter quite a lot, so win-win.

I click on signatures, but very rarely. Mostly I click when I see some new service advertised. But I can say that I signed up and started using on several services which been advertised through signature campaign for a long time. So, I can say that advertisement worked, but not in direct way. Similar like billboard in the streets
I always been wondering how effective signature campaigns is. It's not very cheap way to advertise and most campaigns don't even have tracking tags in links on their signatures. But maybe it's not about just direct clicks. I'm not expert in these things, but maybe it's also about backlinks, SEO. Also, they want to stick in peoples head, like billboard or ads on TV.

Personally, I find such things really strange. As said above, it looks hypocritical.

Thats it, as some other posters mentioned the sig. campaigns are about awareness,
if someone clicks on them its a bonus. I occasionally click on them when they are new but
only when I am on the PC or laptop, not on the phone.

I liked the OP, some really good points made about posting because you are wearing
a signature and how it creates its own ecosystem and keeps the forum alive eventhough
there is a lot to wade through.

The thing about signatures on Bitcointalk is that they all advertise the same things. We don't have that many types of services that are advertised via bitcoin signature campaigns:

- Crypto casinos
- Mixing services
- Exchange services

It gets boring with time. I do my sports gambling on the same two casinos/sportbooks all the time. Therefore, I don't need to click on new casino signatures because chances are very slim that they'll win me over as a player.

It would be really nice if we got some more variety when it comes to signatures and advertisements. That would arouse my interest, and I would click on the links to see what is on offer. I do remember two signatures I definitely clicked on, but for different reasons: ChipMixer and WolfBet.

ChipMixer was and still is advertised by the best posters on the forum and I wanted to know what is so special about it. I thought the blue WolfBet avatar looked cool and it got me to click on a signature to check out the platform. I have also clicked on the BestChange FAQ when the site started its signature campaign to learn more about the features of the exchange.

I used to visit gambling sites by clicking the signatures not from google search simple to avoid entering into fake gambling sites.This is the biggest crypto community ever so there is no better place than advertise any service related to crypto than here but I am not sure they are making money from clicking the signatures on bitcointalk but they are profitable so they can afford to spend long term for their advertisement.

Can't blame the advertisers. High competition and the discussion topics are pretty limited to technical and Bitcoin, aside from the local languages.

So naturally the whole thing isn't able to expand to other businesses like food delivery, unless maybe that service offers Bitcoin as a payment. But in the end, those won't last long either.

I rarely click on the direct link on the signature. if the signature has a link to the ann thread, I visit the ann thread first.
sometimes I google it first because I need to know what people say about it.
the signatures might not get my direct visit, but still, the brand awareness makes me research more about it.
I almost did it for most of the signatures that I've seen on this forum. 9/10, mostly non ICO/IEO signatures campaign.

Good point. I also play on few crypto and few fiat sportsbooks, and as long as I'm satisfied with their services, it would be difficult for me to find reasons to switch to new service.
I'm also a bit bored about advertisements on Bitcointalk. We have just gambling websites, exchanges and mixers advertising there in general. I'm sure that there is more kind of crypto business with deep pockets, but for some unknown reasons they don't come to Bitcointalk to advetrtise here.

Do I click on signature? Yes, I do but before clicking on the signature I usually read the site ANN thread see the positive and negative review of people who have once use the site to understand what's in there for me if I am going to visit the site or not. I could remember when Bestchange came into the forum, on a normal day if they didn't host a signature campaign I won't have trust their services abit due to fake a lot of exchange sites out there.

Depends!

If the signature is somewhat on the fancy side or the first time i do see it neither it is a gambling site or mixer or any other services then i do click out those signature for me to check on what it is.
Overall, signature wont really be existing into this forum if it was irrelevant nor wasnt effective at all.There are long time running campaigns here on this forum
which does signify that they are really benefitting at it.

Hi, you have a vision based on personal experience but is leaving the reality of the marketing objective in all its context.

From the point of view of income in "advertising", clicking on a banner is something complex, although it seems easy, which in theory it is, but not in practice...

... when one of the largest companies or sites began to selling advertising on the Internet they paid and I think it still pays $ 0.001 for each click, you needed 1000 clicks to earn $ 1 on your website, the owner of the site wins for those clicks but the owner of the campaign wins for having a space on your site.

In the case of the ads owner banner has something called "impressions" and if you look at the statistics of Any site, as a general rule if you have 100,000 impressions could have 1000 clicks, this "relationship" is quite "complex" and is subject to things such as the content of the site or blog, region, specific days, events, etc.

But the campaign has gained 100,000 views or impressions, if you have never had the opportunity to see these statistics you can do it with (e.g.) Twitter, you can go to Tweet Analytics.

So the point is,there are many appreciations to think only of the click on the signature.

In fact, In conversations in the offline world I have sometimes recommended some servicies of the firms that are promoted here, the proven scientific effect that advertising leaves on the psyche of people due to the unconscious effect of impressions, whether visual, auditory.

Yes, I do usually clicking signatures especially if I need to look up something from that website for checking information currently on my signature campaign I do usually visiting my account just to play gambling so I don't need to get too much hassle for clicking another tab and type the website again. But sometimes if I don't know about the signature Im not rarely checking or clicking the signatures also to my security itself.


As Pmalek gave mostly I visiting with the crypto casinos or gambling platforms.

I guess yes I click a lot of signature ads here in the future and mostly if I'm curious about it or if it is something new and I want to try it.

Also, I find some signature ads when I need to go to that website because obviously there are some fake websites if you want a legitimate website you could just click the signature ads like if you're going to use Chipmixer, there are tons of fake Chipmixer website if you need the legitimate link just click the ads.

The signature advertisement works, it is not really all about just clicking the ads but also more as we could see it, the more we see the signature the more it will affect us, search how advertisement works there are also  psychology stuff as well.

Signatures are about visibility, Tracking the clicks on signatures doesn't show the whole picture, and it doesn't mean that an ads campaign is unsuccessful if it doesn't generate plenty of clicks. You see the ads, you move on, but they get saved in your memory. The next time you feel like gambling, you ask yourself: What was the name of that casino I saw last week? Oh, yeah, It's XYZ casino. You enter the name in your browser and that's how an ad turned out to be successful even without generating a click by the player on the signature.

---

On a different topic, has there ever been a case where a user decided to modify his signature to redirect to a fake site, malware, or something like that? 

It's possible if the user isn't part of the signature campaign and decides to maliciously promote on his/ her own accord. Meanwhile for the rest of us, there's no point sabotaging our reputation when we worked our way to establish our accounts.

Also, for someone with a good eye to go through every signature on every thread because there's NBTD, it's impractical.

I agree with adding more varieties of campaigns. I guess along with more popularity of Bitcoin and the forum, and acceptance of crypto in major stores, we would be able to see businesses like Walmart, Starbucks etc can come place their ads here too. I guess, they just don't know about our forum yet, but once major companies start to accept crypto and it gets somewhat stabilized, we would surely see advertising companies rushing here like hell! If they can pay for those stupid YouTube ads which most people skip, they will pay highly for ads placed on the revolutionary Bitcoin official forum!