Ad Blockers
As you might have noticed, there are advertisements running on the site. I run these ads to earn income to pay for things like rent, health insurance, food, heat, car insurance and all of the other necessities. The ads also pay for the site’s bandwidth and hosting costs. I wanted to clarify a few things about the ads and the possible use of ad blockers by some of my readers.
The Ads
On this site you’ll find CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions) image ads and CPC (Cost Per Click) ads.
I get paid per 1000 impressions for the CPM image ads. Each time an image ad loads in your browser, it counts as one impression. So, as you can imagine, it’s necessary to generate a lot of impressions to make enough money from the CPM ads to pay for the site’s costs and to pay me so I can pay my own bills.
The CPC ads (Google Adsense and Vibrant Media) pay me per click. You may also see an occasional interstitial ad, from time to time.
Please note that if you do a search you will see Google text ads at the top and bottom of the search results page. Those text ads appear in Google’s default colors and they are also CPC (Cost Per Click) ads.
Ad Placement & Coloring
I hope you will notice that I have tried to be very careful about how ads are placed on this site. I have kept the image ads away from the actual article text. You will find image ads at the very top of the page, in the sidebar and at the bottom of the page after the article.
You will not see image ads loading in the article text itself. Instead I’ve placed Google and Vibrant Media ads in black text in the article page.
Why black? Because I don’t want to disturb you while you read. Keeping the text ads in black means that you can see them but they aren’t in an obnoxious color that detracts from your experience by constantly grating on your eyes. The Vibrant Media ads default color is green, but I had that changed to black immediately after the ads went live on the site.
I’ve taken great care to try to keep the articles easy on the eyes while also trying to reasonably monetize the site to cover my costs and pay my bills.
Ad Blockers
Ads Pay the Bills
I know that some people really hate advertising on sites so they use ad blockers to filter out all of the ads. If you are one of those people I hope you will please consider turning off your ad blocker or white listing this site in it. As I noted above, it takes a lot of ad impressions to generate enough money to cover the site’s hosting and bandwidth costs, and to pay me so I can pay my own bills. So each time an ad is blocked, it really hurts the site (and me) financially.
Cookie Blockers Instead of Ad Blockers
If privacy is a concern for you, please consider using a cookie blocker or cookie manager instead of an ad blocker. Blocking cookies while still letting ads load in your browser is perfectly fine and does not affect the money I earn with the ads. There are numerous cookie management tools available for most browsers. So do a bit of Googling and I’m sure you can find a cookie manager that will work well for you.
Make a Donation
If you decide that you really don’t want to turn off your ad blocker then I humbly request that you consider making a donation to the blog by buying me a cup of coffee once per month. You can do so by clicking the coffee cup in the sidebar. It doesn’t need to be an expensive Starbucks cup of coffee either. I’ve always preferred the cheaper coffee to that stuff anyway. Heh.
Thanks!
I thank you in advance for understanding and I’m very glad to have you as a reader. Thanks so much.
Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below. And please drop by the DLR forum and say hello there too.
(4.75 out of 5)
I’d disagree with you over disabling ad blockers for your site – here’s why:
If I run an ad blocker, even if I were to let you show your ads I guarantee I’m not the kind of person to ever click on one of them.
Also, the ad ranking system with Google (and I understand some others) is more likely to give you higher paying ads if your click percentage is higher. So, even if I let you show your ads, it’s only going to reduce your ad revenue because I’ll be reducing your click percentage!
Just my $.02 worth that I’ve learned over the years of running ads on my own site.
Hi Tony,
Thanks for dropping by and sharing your thoughts.
In addition to the Google ads, there are also image ads that load on DLR. Between the two of them they help me pay my bills every month.
So blocking ads does hurt financially and it makes it harder for me to put more time into writing content for the blog. That’s why I ask that folks please consider turning off their ad blockers when they visit DLR.
If you prefer to block the Google ads then please consider letting the image ads load while you’re here as that will still help support the blog.
There is also an alternative way to help support the blog and that’s the coffee cup in the right hand nav bar. Folks who prefer to block ads can leave a tip once a month to help support the blog. I suggested the price of a cup of coffee as that’s pretty reasonable if people feel that DLR is providing some value to them.
Anyway, thanks again for the feedback.
Regardless of what the topic is, if you find yourself having to “educate your customers”, you need a new business model. The RIAA/MPAA have been educating for years. All they have done is annihilate their reputations.
I use an ad-blocker. I will continue to use ad-blockers. The Internet is a very pleasant place this way. If you don’t want my kind around, block us.
Seriously, it is time to overcome this mentality that “I have always made money this way, therefore I deserve to continue making money this way”. Well, I’m sick of ads. Put up a paywall.
Hi BuzzSaw,
I see the link from the Ars article is working.
I’d rather not try to use a pay wall. I doubt many readers would want to pay for yet another subscription and I also don’t like the idea of having to force people to pay directly to read this blog.
However, you can leave a tip via Paypal if you wish rather than letting ads run in your browser. Just go to this link.
A voluntary monthly or whatever tip is something that any reader can do and I’m sure most sites would appreciate any kind of contribution you could make. That’s one way of helping to support the sites you read without loading ads.
As far as other business models go, that’s a tough nut to crack. I don’t think anybody has a good alternative that doesn’t involve forced subscriptions or fees. Maybe a per article fee? I’m not sure how many readers would really like that though.
So for now ads are still the main business model for web publishing.
I read your comment at Ars, and because you asked, came here to rate your adblocker policy. To be honest this isn’t my sort of site so I probably won’t be back, but it won’t be the ads that chased me away!
That said, I think your adblock policy is perfectly fine. It’s respectful. It clearly states your boundaries (the kinds of ads you WON’T show) and that’s a good thing. It explains how allowing the ads to show can help your site even if no one looks at them or clicks on them. It gives regular readers a way to use their adblockers and still help you pay the costs of running your site. Best of all it shows real effort on your part to reach a fair compromise.
But that probably doesn’t matter to most of the folks out there who use adblockers, as we see here (TheBuzzSaw’s comment) and as we definitely saw in the 50 pages of comments on the Ars article. Many of them will find any excuse to justify an attitude which I translate roughly as ‘Give me free stuff on my terms, or FOAD.’
It’s sad, but people of that mindset don’t seem very willing to walk in the other guy’s shoes for a moment. To take the time to consider that even if a site publisher wants to give away the fruit of his labors, that site publisher still has bills to pay. It strikes me as the ultimate in selfish to make up all these excuses for what is essentially the unwillingness to spend even the millisecond of one’s time required to simply look away from the ad. But there it is: those folks feel that way, they don’t want to hear anything else, and like it or not, they’re gonna do what they’re gonna do.
I’m especially dismayed by the “find a new business model” folks. They never seem to suggest one that works – often they seem completely oblivious to any requirement other than that THEY shouldn’t be bothered with such mundane concerns. OH well. Once again, they’ve found their excuse, it sounds good to them (whether it works in the real world or not), and they’ll be doing what they want to do anyway.
So in reality I think the only real answer to people like this is: give them what they asked for. If they block ads, show them a page kindly asking them to unblock or make a donation. If they don’t want your content, they’ll move on.
By the way, I had to write this comment in a text editor and then paste it into your comment box. Your site seems to refresh the page every so often and when it does, that completely blows away whatever the user has typed in the comment fields. REALLY ANNOYING. If you want thoughtful comments, you will need to fix that!
Welcome to my whitelist. You’re in good company, as your site only shares it with a grand total of 4 other sites on the net. I find your reviews worth it.
Thanks, Beelzebud. I really do appreciate that. The ads help pay for my rent, food, heat, health insurance, car insurance and all the other usual stuff.
If you enjoy the content here on DLR, you might also want to check out JimLynch.com. It’s mostly opinion columns on that site, though occasionally I do a review too. See the sidebar under the coffee cup here on DLR for links to JimLynch.com current articles.
Where is link to “powered by WordPress” ? They deserve their money and bandwidth as well, don’t they?
WordPress, see the Meta widget in the right column. There is a link in it to WordPress.org. There’s nothing that says “powered by WordPress” though. If you know of where I can get a graphic or something like that, please post a link to it. Thanks.
Jim,
I appreciate you taking the time to explain your revenue stream and asking nicely that people think about it before blocking the ads.
I use an ad-blocker, always have done since I first found out about them many years ago (pre-firefox) and probably always will do, but if I end up coming back to your site regularly over the next month or two (today is my first visit) I’ll be sure to you buy you a cup of coffee.