Advertising on the site

[Charles Kozierok]

Those of you who browse the main part of the site may notice that I am now running more types of ads on the site. Including pop ads.

I feel pretty bad about this, kind of like I have "sold out". I was one of the few sites that didn't run pop ads, which cost me many thousands of dollars in lost ad revenues. I did this because for a long time I had a steady advertiser that held a run-of-site box ad on the left side of the screen. I also had an advertiser on the forums.

I lost both of these advertisers in the span of a few weeks and as a result, revenue from the site plummeted, so I had to do something to carry me through until I finish my current writing project. The ads are only on the main site; I can't run anything on the forums, advertisers generally don't like putting ads on forums because it is too many page loads from the same people. I was lucky to have RAM but no longer.

Anyway, I wanted to explain myself. If any of you encounter any new ads that are particularly heinous or more annoying than usual, please let me know here and I'll see what I can do.

In the meantime, if you want to console me on my going over to the dark side, feel free. ;) The ad serving company said their code limits them to serving only one pop ad per day per user no matter how many pages they load. I figured this wasn't all that bad or I wouldn't have agreed to do this.

Charles

[mjc]

So far they haven't been too obnoxious, a couple for Earthlink DSL, one for AMD and a Navy ad....

They keep like that I don't think things would be too bad.

[Budfred]

Thanks for letting us know... I can understand the need and, while I regret that you found it necessary, do not resent it. I also go by the Hunger Site every day and they have a popup that adds a little extra to support for their sites and I don't resent it at all because I know that it is serving a purpose and it is generally not any of those seizure inducing flashing awful ads that some sites use.

Another point/question. Most of the regulars around here probably have popup blocking in place, will this effect your revenue?

I hope you eventually have a better way to fund the site and your work and I appreciate that you continue to maintain the site in spite of such difficulties...

[Charles Kozierok]

Thanks guys.

The ads don't seem too bad and I do have the ability to block ones that are really problematic.

Do ad blockers hurt the site's revenue? Sure, but only by a tiny bit. There aren't that many regulars of these forums and so the impact is negligible. Don't worry about it, you guys contribute more than your share via helping around here.

I may find some ads to run on the forums eventually, and may also end up doing a sponsorship thing after all, as we all discussed months ago.

I haven't really been keeping the main part of the site up, because I have been doing so much writing. The first part of that will come to fruition next month when I publish my first new e-book since The PC Guide Disk Edition. Hope it does well or I am going to be flipping burgers. :)

c

[Whyzman]

I'm just a bit curious about RAM Electronics...

I did check with them regarding a couple of items I needed, but their pricing was not in line with other sources...

I was wondering if they were getting "hits" from their advertising with you, just not translating into sales??