Please Don't Block Wrong Planet Ads

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I think it wouldn't hurt to re-instate a donation system. I'm not real fond of paypal though - too many bad stories. I'm not very sure what all the alternatives are.

I think I'd like to see something like

running costs per month nnnnn
and maybe a breakdown into hosting, bandwidth perhaps

ad income per month nnnnn
and a break down between different sources
ie if one source is particularily annoying (for me that is intellitext), but doesn't pull much money - then maybe trash it. I've got nothing against the google syndication - they can be good.

donation income per month
maybe special credit to people who donate more than $nn per month
- when donations start to cover all the income for ads - then they could be dismantled from the most annoying and least profitable to least annoying and most profitable - you could still have a dedicated ad page for anyone who likes them.

I too have no problem with the site coders taking money for themselves - they could include it as a running cost at a nominal rate per hour, what ever is comparable to paying someone else to do it.

There are people who will sponsor the running costs of sites like these, but they like to see what the costs are. They like to know where their money is going and feel the numbers make sense to them. If they know if they donate $xxxx that the site could run ad free for a month - they might do it.

I do have several problems with adverts. I find the intellitext ones render the articles unreadable to me. And overall they make the page load way too slowly. for me 20 seconds is a fast load - and that is ad free. With the ads its like....
go make a cup of coffee
drink the coffee
go to the toilet
make a couple of phone calls
read a book
hmm... still loading
watch telly for a while .... still loading - is my computer broken - ok reboot everything, the modem, the gateway, the pc, no improvement...
To me, the site is unusable with the ads. Sorry.

When I buy something off of the Internet, I like to just enter my debit card number. I hate anything where I have to go through this elaborate sign-up stuff, such as registering and then having to wait for e-mails and so forth. I just want it to be simple, and that's it. PayPal used to be ridiculous, but most sites I see now are using PayPal and others, where you can just enter in your debit card information and that's it.

- Ray M -

I think Amazon offers a way to support a website using their store. I remember seeing it on an site about the NYC Subway. That may be an alternative to Paypal.

There's a discussion on Slashdot right now about whether or not non-profit sites should use advertising to generate revenue and how to do it without alienating all of the users. The general consensus is that IntelliTXT, sound and flash are all site-killers and should be avoided if at all possible, but that text-only adds such as Google's AdSense are OK. Many people suggest using PayPal for donations and offering value-added subscriptions. Follow the story at

http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/30/004243

P.S. Some people are suggesting that non-profit sites that request money (or ask users to view ads) should publish their income and expenses for everyone to see. It's OK if a commercial site keeps that stuff secret as the owner is expected to make a living, but a non-profit isn't supposed to be generating excess revenue. The other point of the income/expense statement is that people are more likely to spend the money and enable the ads if they know where the money is going. I'd happily view ads if it was to pay for bandwidth, but Alex has already said that bandwidth is a very small part of the expenses. That leaves us wondering what *is* costing all the money. I'm not going to watch ads just so Alex can pay for professional portraits, hire lobbying teams, pay for unwanted content such as interviews, etc. This is a COMMUNITY forum. All we want to do is talk....

One of the best suggestions on Slashdot is to reward loyal and/or contributing members by giving them an advertisement-free site. For example, show people ads if they have posted less than 250 messages or have averaged less than one post per day. People who are posting more than once a day and have posted more than 250 times should be rewarded for providing the content that makes the site successful in the first place.

I know a couple of sites that have subscriptions - you can pay an amount about the same as a magazine subscription rate to view the site without ads. I think Slashdot itself has a variation on that theme. You get to see stuff sooner and post sooner if you subscribe.

So here you could have people who subscribe - their new topic posts go up immediately, and if they don't then there is a 30 minute delay perhaps.

Intellitext ads - seem irrelevant to the context for the main part - they don't supply a meaning of the word they have linked which is contextually accurate or useful - and neither are the things they plug.

But I like the slashdot ads. They are very geek orientated for the most part and often related directly to the article being discussed - ie if you want one of these or want to know more - click here.

I don't have a problem with most of the ads here. However that "Help me!" screensaver ad was VERY annoying. And there's one, which I don't think this site has but many others do, which yells "HELLO???" As long as the ads do not interfere with the operation of my computer, including spyware, I'm okay with it.

That being said, I'm glad the Vonage ads here don't have the "whoo-hoo" mantra like they do on TV.

<<post removed at request of user>>

I don't have a problem with Alex making money out of this website. He has clearly put a lot of time into this website, so if he worked out how many hours he spent, and multiplied that by a web programmer rate - he is probably still making a loss at the moment.

But the myspace says "money from (his) web ventures" which could easily be interpreted as including the money he gets paid setting up websites for other people who are willing to pay for it.

What should really scare you is that his new passion is acting and TV. If that becomes too time consuming this website will die from neglect.

Wobbegong,

First, you are right that Alex does deserve to be paid a fair salary. I think Web Programmers command about $60/hour in the US with the rate being higher in the DC area (please note, this would be for contract work and the amount includes benefits). I do think that a unbiased review of the books however would show that Alex is really operating at a loss and would help to explain the ads to others.

Second, I think what caused the problems we are experiencing now is that for a while, Alex did neglect the boards and then began to run them again.

The forums are once again broken. If I use IE I can get into the forums and see the topics (along with far too many advertisements, popups, etc.), but if I use FireFox I get a blank page even if adblock is turned off. I can only assume Alex is banning all FireFox users from the forum as a way to enforce ad-watching?

I'm using Firefox right now and everything is working fine. Second of all, we have no popups. Third, I can still browse the forums when I enable firefox's adblock extension.

Google adsense is starting to outperform traditional CPM ads so you may not have to bear looking at any graphical/animated ads in the near future.

Maybe something is wrong with your firefox install or you are blocking something that's causing a problem.

I just installed the "UserAgent switcher" extension and voila, WP works 100% OK when FireFox lies about what kind of browser I'm using. I have all the same advertising/javascript blocks. The only thing I changed is what kind of browser I'm reporting to your web server. That means it is delivering different content based on whether the member is using IE or FF, and in my case that results in blank pages for FF and working pages if I either really use IE or if I simply tell FF to falsely report the browser type.

On prior occasions when the forum was blocking my forum access it would draw the rest of the page but simply omit the forum contents. This time it's simply returning an empty page.

Lol, I also have user agent switcher installed and set to IE. I'll turn it off and see what happens. I have a feeling its related to intellitext which is disabled in the forums but still loads.

Incidentally, I tried all of the other possibe UserAgent headers, and the ONLY one that will satisfy your server is IE6. If I report my browser type as Opera, Firefox or Mozilla then I get a blank page. If this isn't intentional then there's some bad mojo in your browser-detection and handling.

Of course, a W3C compliant site wouldn't even *need* to check for browser type....

Update. I'm able to experience the same problem. This is actually probably related to something other than ads as I recently changed some stuff.