Are you seeing more adds?

[screamday]

Here is what I was talking about, the ad in the reply:





There was another on the same topic farther down the page.

Tom

Wow.....haven't seen that.....yet.

[Moparnut72]

Yesterday I had ad's everywhere, today only the two. However the big space at the bottom is still there. Weird.
kk

[Zoom Zoom]

As Luap already mentioned, adds help pay the bills. For that reason, I disabled my ad blocker for this site, and every so often, click on something that catches my fancy.

Having said that, I wonder if different browsers show these adds differently. On my phone, I see adds inserted into the middle of a post and sometimes between them, along with the top and bottom adds. (Chrome)

On my PC, I get stuff at the top and bottom only. (Firefox)

Not sure about this but if it helps keep the board going then I'll survive.

John Henry

[Lannis]

As Luap already mentioned, adds help pay the bills. For that reason, I disabled my ad blocker for this site, and every so often, click on something that catches my fancy.

John Henry

I've always wondered about the sites that say "Turn off your Adblocker to visit this site".   

If a site has content I like, I'll pay for it, like I do WG.  But I (like many others) hate intrusive ads the way I hate robo-calls on my phone.   Just a natural reaction; if someone is trying to shove something down my throat, I react very negatively.   Any vendor is much more likely to get my business if I DON'T have to look at their ads being waved in my face when I'm trying to do something else.  I'll go out of my way to NOT buy something where the advertiser assumes I have the IQ of a retarded chimp.  So "Turn Off Your Adblocker" is one of the stupidest things I see on anyone's site.

But obviously most people don't think that way, so advertisers pay webmasters to run their ads.   But I'll bet that the advertisers "Pay by the Click-thru" ... in other words, the site's ad revenue depends on how many times people click on the ad.

Maybe we could use this "feature" to run a little "fundraiser" for the site.   Everyone turn off their adblockers, reassign their Android DNS from "private:adguard" to "auto", get a soda and a snack, and spend 15 minutes just clicking on ads.  Click, let it start loading, cancel, click again, lather, rinse, repeat.   If a few hundred people did it a few hundred times, that would be tens of thousands of clicks even if you never looked at an ad .... ?   It would make the site's stats look really good, and maybe there wouldn't have to be so many for the folks who can't/don't block ads .. ?

Lannis

[Tom H]

How ironic





Tom

[n3303j]

Absolutely buried in advertisenent when viewing this site on an android smartphone.

I do pay for data and over 50% of any post I view is data not related to the post.

I stopped donating to the site when it became top heavy with advertising. I use the money instead to pay for some of the irrelevant data the site pumps down the line along with each post I view.

[pebra]

Yes, pretty sure there are more ads now.

[Lannis]

How ironic





Tom

I just now looked at the list using someone else's computer and now I see what you're talking about!    Everything perfectly normal on mine, no irony or bronzy or goldy anywhere .....

Lannis

[Luap McKeever]

Here's what happened and I've been working like crazy to fix it. It has driven me well....crazy. Coupled with the fact that I'm going on 2 months without my MGX-21 and you can bet that I'm getting really pissed off and edgy right about now.

Anyways, onto the explanation:

Google implemented their new "auto ads" feature and it overwrote a lot of what I coded. Just another example of corporate greed perhaps. Anyways, I was able to manipulate the pages to get it to where it 'should' only show ads at the bottom of the page. Each browser interpretation is different, so your results may vary. That's the skinny of it.

Now the thick of it is this. It's October and we still have not met our goal for the year. I anticipated this last year and upped the ante on ads to hopefully fill that void, to keep from asking for more money. At the current donation pace, I'll be surprised if I can keep this thing alive after 2020.
Example:
To date this year I've received roughly $2400 in donations (around $300 of that was kept by PayPal). I've also received roughly $1100 in ad revenue. Total combined so far around $3500. We're still a hundred or two short of our goal. Without ads, we would not be that close. We'd be roughly $1100 short at this pace and I would not be able to eat that amount so would be forced to let it go under. Hopefully, it won't come to that. So, if you click an ad that interests you every now and then (hopefully just at the bottom of the page), it will help more than you know.

To make matters even worse, I received notification from the web hosts that their costs will be going up again in 2020. When their costs go up, guess what happens to our costs?...Not sure the amount yet, but will know something within a month or so hopefully.

Carry on,
Luap

[Lannis]

So .... you need about $3800 a year in round numbers to run the site.   

Looks like there's about 1100 people or so who have logged in and said "I'd like to stay on the site, please".   

So if everyone gave $3.50 a year, that would cover all the costs with no need for ad revenue.

But that's probably not realistic, since the very casual would just say "screw it". 

On the other hand, there's over 150 people that have 1,500 or more posts on the system.   That's not "casual".    If just THOSE people gave $25 a year, that would cover the system costs.   And me (and a few others, you know who you are  ,) if we just contributed $0.02 per post, that'd be up to $50 a year, and I'd LITERALLY "get in my two cents worth" ... 

Anyhow, there's no reason we can't make it on donations and not have you and everyone else fighting advertisements.   If that doesn't work, maybe WG isn't our game.   

"I know; let's have a spelling contest ...!"   

Lannis

[Chuck in Indiana]

Nope, Lannis.. I'm not clicking on it. 

[Lannis]

Having stupid ads right in the middle of a post; that must be very frustrating to people with unprotected systems.   

Oh well, we know how to fix it, the question is "is it bad enough that we WANT to fix it?"

Lannis

[Sasquatch Jim]

 I have had ads interupting something I was reading and had an ad butt in on the add.

[Chuck in Indiana]

Having stupid ads right in the middle of a post; that must be very frustrating to people with unprotected systems.   

Oh well, we know how to fix it, the question is "is it bad enough that we WANT to fix it?"

Lannis

Really, they don't bother me at all. I just ignore them. I *have* clicked on adds that seem innocuous here, but the one I posted comes up a lot. Seems to be everything on it from belt sanders to vibrators..
FWIW, a homebuilt airplane forum I used to frequent went to subscription only. Only $12 a year, but I kept forgetting to pony up and quit going to it.

[Lannis]

Only $12 a year, but I kept forgetting to pony up and quit going to it.

I'm like that too, but I have two methods for dealing with my awful memory and the hassle of re-upping every year.

1) For non-automated bike clubs (like the OVBSAOC and Virginia British MC), I just pay five or ten years ahead and I only have to remember once when the warning appears on the last newsletter.   That's been working well.

2) For more highly automated ones, I just set it up for automatic renewal on my credit card.   That way I only have to remember ONCE when the card expires.  Plus it gets me free roadside service from the AMA which I've used more than enough to pay its way (mostly on cars).   This works for AMA, Smugmug photos, and things like that.

OR, like the MGNOC, buy a lifetime membership and don't worry about it.   Although for anything new, the lifetime membership doesn't have the ROI that it used to have, for some reason .... 

One of the British lists I'm on has a good system - up in the corner is a little box with a counter in it to show how many days are left for the list to be "live" before it expires.   If you click on it, you can choose from adding a couple weeks, a month, or a few months to the subscription.   That's not YOUR subscription, it's the whole website.    So we who use it tend to click on it and add a month or two every time it gets below 200 days remaining, or some such number.   That's been working well too.

Lannis

[Luap McKeever]

Really, they don't bother me at all. I just ignore them. I *have* clicked on adds that seem innocuous here, but the one I posted comes up a lot. Seems to be everything on it from belt sanders to vibrators..
FWIW, a homebuilt airplane forum I used to frequent went to subscription only. Only $12 a year, but I kept forgetting to pony up and quit going to it.

$12 per year from every member would be amazing. A M A Z I N G

[Chuck in Indiana]

^^^^^ that's a site with very few members, Luap. $12 a year might cover expenses. Or not. 
Yeah, $12 a member here could maintain the WG helicopter so you could get out to the WG yacht.. Oh, yeah, and fill Dusty's golden parachute fund. 

[oldbike54]

^^^^^ that's a site with very few members, Luap. $12 a year might cover expenses. Or not. 
Yeah, $12 a member here could maintain the WG helicopter so you could get out to the WG yacht.. Oh, yeah, and fill Dusty's golden parachute fund. 

 

 Dusty

[Lannis]

$12 per year from every member would be ......

... would be Guzzi Content ...