FaunaClassifieds - View Single Post - Pop-up ads!

05-11-2021, 01:32 PM

Well, since I changed the style of the ads from InfoLinks, that revenue has been cut in half for the last two days.

Unfortunately, advertising WANTS to be in your face and prefers to be unavoidable. Honestly, I have been to sites that had so much advertising of every style imaginable, I just quickly exited the site and forgot about pursuing whatever it was that brought me to the site in the first place. Is such advertising still profitable to the website owners? Certainly you would think there is a point at which diminishing returns takes over. Advertising efforts fail if there are no longer any viewers to see the advertising. Advertisers will not pay for advertising if they don't see results from the money they are spending. So companies like InfoLinks are going to try to provide methods that earn THEM money via the advertisers THEY are trying to attract. Honestly, the herp business is a very small pond, and targeted ads for this industry/hobby are hard to come by. So what we see as apparent "spam", is just the advertising company putting anything, rather than nothing, into those advertising slots. Some are targeted via YOUR interests based on websites you have visited. For instance, I went to B&H Photo looking for something, and now I am inundated with ads from that company. Sportsman's Guide is another one that sucks you down into the black hole of their advertising efforts. So at least they are trying to provide you with something that may possibly be of interest to you. But who wants to get smacked in the face with 10 ads all from the same company on a single page?

So the line I need to walk is probably pretty narrow between earning enough revenue to help, and chasing away viewers because it is just too much and gets in the way of what they are here to see.

I have never had in mind making a lot of money off of my sites. I have no desire to get rich, just reasonably comfortable in life. I never buy anything that I can't afford to pay the credit card in full when the bill shows up. Of course, I discovered that I need a new roof on the house which is going to cost a pretty penny, so that means dipping into the retirement savings. But I guess that sort of surprise expense is exactly why you need to save money in the first place.

But that sort of problem is not the responsibility of the revenue from this site. The goal is for my sites to be self sufficient, financially, and quite honestly to earn enough money to make it worth my time and efforts to keep it running. Quite honestly, if I were to be just breaking even, why in the world would I keep on doing this? Getting rid of the Board Of Inquiry was a big load off of my shoulders, but there is still crap that needs to be done to try to keep things running smoothly. Quite honestly, the moderators help out tremendously here, and without their help, I seriously doubt this site would still be here today. I try to weed out as many potential scammers and spammers as I can, but they are the ones who catch most of them via context of what they may post on the site. My checking IP addresses can only do so much, and it is child's play for someone to spoof an IP address via VPN services and the like.

Anyway, back to the issue at hand.

Just for giggles, I may enable every ad function from InfoLinks for a day or two just to see what sort of difference that makes. I do apologize in advance for this, because I am pretty sure the results will be horrible for viewers. But I already know what zero ads from InfoLinks provides for revenue, and I now know what two of the options separately produces. Of course, such experimenting won't show long term effects, as it cannot take into account the people who will see all the ads and just say "Screw this! I am out of here!", and two months later traffic has died off completely.

So bear with me, please. This stopped being a hobby for me long ago and became a business with all the associated headaches and necessities. Just as this site needs to work for the people coming here to sell their animals and merchandise, running this site has to work for me too to make it worth my time and efforts. I would seriously like this site to be successful (or at least useful) for both yours and my sake.

05-11-2021, 01:32 PM	#10
WebSlave	Well, since I changed the style of the ads from InfoLinks, that revenue has been cut in half for the last two days. Unfortunately, advertising WANTS to be in your face and prefers to be unavoidable. Honestly, I have been to sites that had so much advertising of every style imaginable, I just quickly exited the site and forgot about pursuing whatever it was that brought me to the site in the first place. Is such advertising still profitable to the website owners? Certainly you would think there is a point at which diminishing returns takes over. Advertising efforts fail if there are no longer any viewers to see the advertising. Advertisers will not pay for advertising if they don't see results from the money they are spending. So companies like InfoLinks are going to try to provide methods that earn THEM money via the advertisers THEY are trying to attract. Honestly, the herp business is a very small pond, and targeted ads for this industry/hobby are hard to come by. So what we see as apparent "spam", is just the advertising company putting anything, rather than nothing, into those advertising slots. Some are targeted via YOUR interests based on websites you have visited. For instance, I went to B&H Photo looking for something, and now I am inundated with ads from that company. Sportsman's Guide is another one that sucks you down into the black hole of their advertising efforts. So at least they are trying to provide you with something that may possibly be of interest to you. But who wants to get smacked in the face with 10 ads all from the same company on a single page? So the line I need to walk is probably pretty narrow between earning enough revenue to help, and chasing away viewers because it is just too much and gets in the way of what they are here to see. I have never had in mind making a lot of money off of my sites. I have no desire to get rich, just reasonably comfortable in life. I never buy anything that I can't afford to pay the credit card in full when the bill shows up. Of course, I discovered that I need a new roof on the house which is going to cost a pretty penny, so that means dipping into the retirement savings. But I guess that sort of surprise expense is exactly why you need to save money in the first place. But that sort of problem is not the responsibility of the revenue from this site. The goal is for my sites to be self sufficient, financially, and quite honestly to earn enough money to make it worth my time and efforts to keep it running. Quite honestly, if I were to be just breaking even, why in the world would I keep on doing this? Getting rid of the Board Of Inquiry was a big load off of my shoulders, but there is still crap that needs to be done to try to keep things running smoothly. Quite honestly, the moderators help out tremendously here, and without their help, I seriously doubt this site would still be here today. I try to weed out as many potential scammers and spammers as I can, but they are the ones who catch most of them via context of what they may post on the site. My checking IP addresses can only do so much, and it is child's play for someone to spoof an IP address via VPN services and the like. Anyway, back to the issue at hand. Just for giggles, I may enable every ad function from InfoLinks for a day or two just to see what sort of difference that makes. I do apologize in advance for this, because I am pretty sure the results will be horrible for viewers. But I already know what zero ads from InfoLinks provides for revenue, and I now know what two of the options separately produces. Of course, such experimenting won't show long term effects, as it cannot take into account the people who will see all the ads and just say "Screw this! I am out of here!", and two months later traffic has died off completely. So bear with me, please. This stopped being a hobby for me long ago and became a business with all the associated headaches and necessities. Just as this site needs to work for the people coming here to sell their animals and merchandise, running this site has to work for me too to make it worth my time and efforts. I would seriously like this site to be successful (or at least useful) for both yours and my sake.