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SnakeSmithS

SnakeSmithS

SnakeSmithS
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What is up with the recent proliferation of pop-up ads on this website? I never experienced this problem until a week or so ago. Perhaps it is just my browser and not an issue that everyone is experiencing... IDK. It is really annoying though. Is there anything that can be done about this issue?
 
SnakeSmithS said:
What is up with the recent proliferation of pop-up ads on this website? I never experienced this problem until a week or so ago. Perhaps it is just my browser and not an issue that everyone is experiencing... IDK. It is really annoying though. Is there anything that can be done about this issue?
Click to expand...

Google Adsense somehow enabled what they refer to as "vignetting" style ads on this site, and I had them removed very recently. I'm not real crazy about them neither, and as best I could tell, they weren't providing any additional income for this site. So I got rid of them.

I am also trying out a new ad campaign company, to see if the income they provide is worth having their popup ads at the bottom of pages. So far they seem to be a reasonable return for allowing them to use this website. So they will probably remain. I may have them only visible to visitors and regular non-contributing members sometime in the future, but for now I need to get a baseline on what they are providing financially for this site.

These are BUSINESS decisions which I need to consider and implement as I see appropriate and worthwhile for the financial health of this business.

Sorry, but with paying members, sponsorships, and paid advertising dropping off lately, I have to find other means of generating revenue to keep this site running. Yes, I understand that they may get in the way of some people coming to this site to buy and sell their animals and merchandise. But does anyone think it fair that they can use this site to make money for themselves, and yet I should be prohibited from doing the same? How would that be fair? I seriously hope you all don't think I am independently wealthy. Heck, I retired my SerpenCo business and am on social security. That sure isn't raking in the bucks.

Posting ads in the classifieds sections here is for *free*. Sponsorships and other advertising avenues are, I feel, very modestly priced for those interested in helping to support this site. Apparently less people are willing to do that now than they used to. Paying membership costs (and all other offered income producing functions for this site) haven't increased a dime since I implemented them nearly two decades ago. Most member functions are for *free*. Does that mean I should also work for *free*, and pay for the expenses of keeping this site here out of my own pocket and out of my retirement funds instead of trying to earn some money myself from the fruits of my own labors? Do you think it has been a picnic running this site all these years?

Yes, advertising can be annoying. I can't say that I am all that fond of it myself. But if anyone has a better idea about how to earn revenue from this website in a more non-intrusive manner less labor intensive manner beyond what I have already tried, or am trying, I am all ears.
 
Thanks for the detailed response. That makes sense. Certainly this cite is a valuable tool for those of us buying and selling herps and it's only fair that your hard work be compensated in some fashion. If that means having to close out ads every time I visit the site then so be it.
 
Thank you for the supportive response. It is actually refreshing to engage in a conversation of this nature without having someone trying to chew my head off. :eek:
 
I recently changed the types of ads being displayed via InfoLinks to see if they work better than the popup ads at the bottom of the screen. Looks like revenue dropped a bit, so I figure I should check with you all to see if the new method I am employing is better than the previous method. If it doesn't make any difference to most people, and I am losing revenue as a result, I may just go back to the original style of ads.

So speak up, please. Otherwise this will be a one dimension decision for me.
 
Personally, I am annoyed more by the pop-up style ads on the bottom that have to be closed out or ignored. However, since you do all the work here I'd argue you have every right to choose the ad type that generates the most return for your investment in time and energy. Cheers!
 
You shouldn't be seeing the popup style ads at the bottom of the screen now. There should be a bar at the top with some text ad links that do mouse-over popups, and a static clickable image ad at the bottom of the screen.

Are you seeing something different?
 
I see the bar with ads at the top these days rather than the one at the bottom that was superimposed over things and had to be closed out ...which is definitely an improvement in overall experience. But again, if you need to reinstate the annoying ads at the bottom to keep the site up then please don't let my personal preferences stand in the way. The important thing to me is to have this resource for finding and selling herps. Thanks!
 
SnakeSmithS said:
I see the bar with ads at the top these days rather than the one at the bottom that was superimposed over things and had to be closed out ...which is definitely an improvement in overall experience. But again, if you need to reinstate the annoying ads at the bottom to keep the site up then please don't let my personal preferences stand in the way. The important thing to me is to have this resource for finding and selling herps. Thanks!
Click to expand...

:exactly:

I use my phone to do just about everything now. I turn it horizontally for a better view, and the ads at the bottom were annoying. But however you need to run your site is fine by me. I can deal with ads, if it means that Fauna stays up and running.
 
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.
 
OK, I implemented all four options for ads from InfoLinks, and will let this run for 24 hours or so to see what sort of results I get from them all.

I can tell you right now that I don't like it at all, and it is very, VERY doubtful this will remain after the test period.
 
If these are the ads that show up on the left and right sides of the screen then the one on the right totally covers/blocks the featured ads from the paying members.
 
The pop-up ads I'm seeing today, on the lower left of my screen, are huge! The ones before were small, and situated at the bottom of the screen, like a stationary news ticker.

Also, what's up with the random, orange super-font on seemingly random words?

I know you have to do what you have to do, but if there's a way to still bring in sufficient ad revenue, and not irritate everyone, that would be nice 🙂
 
This is a test. This is ONLY a test.

It will end at midnight EST tonight. I want a full day of stats to look at, please. Then I may be able to figure out where that line is in the road I need to walk with this advertising stuff. Quite honestly, I don't really like this myself, but I have also seen existing sites that were even much worse.

As a FYI, my programmer suggested that I eliminate the ads from paying memberships, but I told him to hold off till I get some base figures under my belt. I want to see what difference such a plan would make by having enough stats to compare. It was also suggested to me to have the ads ONLY displayed to unregistered visitors, since quite honestly, the greater bulk of visitors to any of my sites are unregistered or not logged in. But I need facts and figures to be able to make those kinds of decisions.

What I have here today is not going to remain, of course, because it is just way too overboard and a general pain in the butt to have to wade through to even see the website. The sidebar ads even cover over existing advertising that I have in place, even though they may very well be the major advertising vehicle used by InfoLinks, based on just the variety of ads I see on them. But yeah, they would have to go for obvious reasons.

I also use Google Adsense, and compared to InfoLinks, I like the more unobtrusive nature of them much better. But Google has been deplatforming sites at an outrageous rate, and I can't afford to count on them in the future. It should also be noted that Adsense is a "pay per click" method whereas the InfoLinks method is a "pay per impression" style. So with Adsense I only get paid if someone clicks on the ads, and with InfoLinks I get paid just for people viewing the ads here.

Quite honestly, I would much rather be paid for providing an advertising company the opportunity to have people view their ads, no matter what they are, rather than via the Adsense method of not getting paid unless THEY provide ad content of interest to anyone who might thereby click on their ad. The "pay per impression" method puts the total burden of producing interesting ads on their shoulders if they want the clicks. If their ads are uninteresting, and no one clicks on them, that is their fault, not mine. With the "pay per click" method, well, the reverse is true, as Adsense can pick any old garbage ads it wants, and if no one clicks on them, too bad for me.

Also note that I run my FaunaAds advertising completely different from either one of the above. That charges for ads via a flat rate daily charge, regardless of impressions or click throughs. I guess there are pros and cons for any of the above. But FaunaAds hasn't been drawing in very many advertisers lately, neither, so I have to make plans accordingly along with the drops in paid memberships and sponsorships.

Anyway, sorry about the excessive detail about the WHY of what I am doing. I am trying to burn off the remnants of a migraine headache I got yesterday. If I just sit around thinking about the headache, it seems to just make it feel worse. So having to think to post something is helpful to keep my mind off of the dull thudding going on.

Also, there may be mistakes in my typing above, as the brain ain't firing on all cylinders, so please excuse the mess, if that is the case.
 
FYI, what I have settled on, at least until I decide otherwise, is to remove what appeared to be the most irritating of the four options and leave those ads that appear to be less intrusive, yet able to generate a decent return on the space they use on the pages on this site. Yeah, there is still that popup banner at at the bottom of each page, but from what I can see, it is the best of the bunch in the cost versus pain in the butt category.

Is it perfect? Of course not. But if you were or are expecting "perfect", I am sorry, this isn't it. But as soon as I discover that planet, I will let you know.

Thanks for putting up with my experimentation yesterday.
 
Well, now it appears that Google Adsense has changed something and is putting a HUGE horizontal ad at the top of the screen. :face_palm_02:

So far I haven't been able to figure out how to get rid of it, so I have asked my programmer to take a look at it.

I sure would hate to lose the Adsense revenue, but if that is what it takes to get rid of that garbage, then that is what will have to happen. It is REALLY getting on my nerves. :hot:
 
So, this is obviously a work in progress.

First off, my programmer has already had those Google Adsense ads blocked for all members at Contributor level and above. I have asked him to do the same for the ads coming from InfoLinks too.

I have been playing around with the options in Google Adsense and I believe I found a section that gave me some flexibility concerning the actual pages such ads will show up on. So I believe I have disabled the Adsense ads from showing up when regular members (in addition to the paying member levels) are either creating a new thread (ad) and when creating a reply to any thread. I believe that at that time, they are just highly intrusive while someone is trying to type in text or otherwise trying to put their thoughts down in a post, so I want them to be out of the way.

I have asked my programmer to look into the possibility of implementing the above block during content creation with the InfoLinks code too. I really don't want anything here discouraging any members at any level from posting.

Of course, I cannot test this stuff in the mobile version of the site, so I just have to trust the changes are being reflected there. As I have mentioned before, I ONLY use my desktop and laptop computers for all my internet activity.

So this is just a FYI as to what is going on with this advertising stuff. I know it's a pain in the butt, but it has become a necessity here that I had hoped could be avoided. Over the years I have tried to keep any third party advertising here at the barest of minimums to help this site financially. But things have changed, so I must change my attitude and strategy too. Even so, at the very least, I want the current paying members supporting this site to be spared the intrusion of those now necessary banner ads.
 
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