![]() ![]() For now, I earn money from occasional self-served ads (that is, ads that I place as images with links, but with no other code), sponsorships, and affiliate income. ![]() I get about 250-400K page views per month, and I could probably make a lot of money with Google Ads. I’ve been thinking about the best way to monetize this website, and I’ve hesitated because so many ad options would harm the experience my readers have on this site.Don’t blame readers for not wanting to put up with these problems. But the current model of inundating readers with ads, and making web pages hard to read, is simply wrong. I would happily embrace a micro-payment solution that would allow me to pay a few cents when I read an article on the web. Viewers adapted to this by recording shows and skipping ads, and the same is happening on the web. Now, a one-hour show has 42 minutes of content, which means that 25% of the hour is commercials. I remember when a one-hour TV show in the US was 52 minutes long it left eight minutes for ads and station identification. I use Safari’s Reader view to be able to read pages that are too cluttered.I use an ad blocker with my web browsers.I use a tracker blocker (Ghostery) with my web browsers.I use a pop-up blocker with my web browsers.I ignore the ads on the back of supermarket receipts.I avoid buying clothes with logos when possible.I avoid televised sports, because there are too many ads.I ignore billboards with ads when driving.I don’t look at ads on the sides of busses.I turn the pages of magazines and newspapers too quickly to assimilate ads.I throw away ad sections of newspapers when I buy them.I throw away inserts with magazines I subscribe to without looking at them.I throw away junk mail without looking at it.I skip through commercials when watching recorded TV.I go to the bathroom when TV commercials are on.I turn off the volume when TV commercials are on.If you think that blocking ads on websites is wrong, tell me how many of the following actions you take to avoid ads. ![]() In any case, I made a list of the many ways I block ads in my life. But the Fortune web page is a perfect example of everything that’s wrong about ads. I’d rather not block ads like this to help websites pay for the content they provide. So I’m not against ads overall if they fit with a site, and aren’t just scattershot, or bottom-feeding Google ads, then I don’t mind seeing them. I have turned down countless offers to run “sponsored articles” and text link ads. I also run other ads at times, but I am very careful which ads I accept, and I refuse to use any animated ads, or ads that slow down page loads. And I have a couple of Amazon ads at the bottoms of pages, where they aren’t too disturbing, to earn some affiliate income (I wish Amazon had smaller ads that would fit better on my site…). These ads are as discreet as possible: they don’t flash, move, or otherwise animate, and their layout is sober and minimalist. I am currently advertising for a new Take Control book (up on top), and for my own books (in the sidebar), as well as for my iTunes forum and my podcast. If you visit my website, you know that I do offer ads. He was unable to do so easily, because of an ad on the site.) (For a similar ironic problem, head over to Khoi Vinh’s website, where he recorded video of him trying to load a New York Times article about ad blocking. Ghostery reports that the page has 19 trackers. With ad blockers on, the page is 6.6 MB, and takes me 16.95 seconds to load. And I don’t have Flash installed, so there’s one ad that I don’t see, which is replaced by a sleazy “Your System Status” box telling me that I need to update my Flash Player. It contains a number of animated ads, caused Safari to beachball, and made it impossible to even scroll for more than one minute. Note that the Fortune page I link to above is, on the desktop, 13.2 MB, and took me 1.5 minutes to load with my 4 Mb connection. Many of the people who complain – such as this person who equates blocking ads with robbing an Apple Store – are forgetting that they, too, probably block a lot of ads. There has been a lot of righteous indignation since iOS 9 was released, and ad blockers have been allowed to integrate with the Safari web browser. ![]()
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