Comments on: Ads and directories

By: Dave Farquhar

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 02:57:00 +0000

I see nothing at all wrong with ads (I have an Adsense block on my site). What’s irritating is when they move and blink and otherwise try to distract you from the reason you visited the site. People visit my site because they want information to solve a problem. A tasteful and appropriate ad just might help them solve that problem, in which case, that ad was a good thing. If the ad is irrelevant, I hope it was unobtrusive enough to ignore easily.

I think you should try a block of ads, see how it works out for you, and if you don’t like it, you can always end the experiment and turn them back off.

By: Matthew Davidson

Matthew Davidson — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 01:20:46 +0000

This article recommends turning off ads for regular visitors, which I thought was an interesting idea. I suppose you could get even more tricksy by only displaying any one ad a certain number of times for any one user, on the assumption that if someone’s seen it three or four times and hasn’t responded to it, they never will. Advertising become less morally murky if you’re polite and considerate about it, and I’m seriously considering something along these lines myself for an upcoming project.
Of course the cognoscenti use Firefox’s Adblock and Filterset.G, and someone recently kindly pointed me in the direction of Remove It Permanently which can expunge arbitrary page elements, so even Google ads are a thing of the past for me. But then I’m cheap, so advertising is wasted on me anyway. I need all the money I can get for the precious beer.

By: sil

sil — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 19:02:14 +0000

Steve: makes me slightly sad that you know how to motivate me so effectively ;)

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 18:10:44 +0000

Lets put the ad revenue into perspective - it pays bar tabs. I put adsense on the Color Palette Creator back in November and its paid my way through several late nights since. I wish I had done it earlier rather than stuggling with the same “but will it make me a whore?” dilemma.

Think about the beer, Stuart. Think about the beer.

By: Chuck

Chuck — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 15:29:39 +0000

I think it comes down to what I put in Jono’s blog when he asked a similar question.

For your personal site and projects, it’s whatever you feel comfortable doing.

For a project site, such as Jokosher, you need to follow the will of the community that supports the project. After all, without them it’s not much of a project.

By: Giacomo

Giacomo — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 15:18:55 +0000

Ads are perfectly fine, text ads especially so. Ads-haters already use Adblock anyway, so you’re certainly not alienating anyone, and if it helps pay the bandwidth… On DD, it’s entirely your call; that kind of thing used to be more relevant before blogs came around.

By: mattl

mattl — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 12:59:49 +0000

Why not leave the ads, but offer a cheap support option for people who might have questions? I’d happily give you a fiver if it meant I’d get a response to a question about your script.

Also, put up a tipjar on the download page.

By: Gary Fleming

Gary Fleming — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 12:39:11 +0000

There’s nothing wrong with unobtrusive advertising. Big flash things that cover the content up until you pay attention to them are bad, but simple text ads that are out of the way are fine.

As for DD, at best I’d advise them to have a blurb and link to sorttable. I know I wouldn’t want my code reasonably associated with them.

By: Thom

Thom — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 12:32:14 +0000

Why not donate a certain % of ad revenue to a good cause (e.g a software freedom foundation)? This would sure ease the guilt somewhat :)

By: sil

sil — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 10:55:07 +0000

brothercake: I’m not too worried about licencing constraints, because all my scripts are MIT licenced anyway…