I think this thread is turning into a discussion of how we’d have made the survey

1. There probably is a difference in number of visitors between BA and my site. I would never go so far as to say that there is a “vast” difference, though.

2. My site uses templates that have been optimized for quick downloading to visitors’ browsers and the code is pretty compact. I have found (sorry, I don’t have sources, so this is anecdotal at best) that of necessity Wordpress (as with many other generic blogging applications) tends to contain a lot of code that is repetitive rather than “code once – display many” (for lack of a good description), which slows down the loading process and thus affects the mighty bandwidth ogre.

3. I cater to a self-selecting group and I don’t need to rely on “diggs” or other such schemes. I don’t worry about the number of visitors or whether any of my pages are “dugg” or any number of other things that may generate still more visitors.

4. *Lurchgs: I can’t believe you wrote “There are other reasons most businesses (and professionals) don’t use those cheap webfarms, too.” Either you don’t have any reason to visit professional or business sites of all stripes or you simply have a bad case of hyperbole. I do a lot of research on the web that brings me in daily contact with many many professional and business sites. Less that 10% of these sites have advertising on them, including a good many sites that are academically-oriented and are thus strapped for cash.

In short, I simply don’t buy the arguments propagated that blogs such as BA need advertising to survive: Bandwidth, new servers, more hard drive space, etc. The ads themselves add to the overhead and increase the amount of bandwidth needed, faster servers, and so on.

I’m much more likely to visit (and re-visit) a site (as opposed to subscribing to an RSS feed) if the main pages are free of ads and all those endless Web 2.0 badges and links. They should be part of a secondary page where all sorts of stuff can be part of that page’s content.

One final comment: Someone above mentioned the Paypal donation setup. That is an excellent idea, one which I’ve seen elsewhere, one that works for others. I’m happy to go to Paypal once every six months or so and donate $50-60. The listmom of one forum mentioned once that she needed a backup server and so had set up a Paypal account. Five hours later she had to ask that no more donations be put in the bucket at the moment as one kind soul actually donated an Apple Xserve, while the kitty topped $5,000. I’d gladly do the same here.

-Tod

Tod (and there may be others).. There is almost certainly a VAST difference between your website/blog and The BA’s. For one thing, the bandwidth used is not free. If you are paying $9 for your site, replete with blog, you either don’t generate nearly the traffic BA’s site does, or you are using a subsidized server. (Or, the bandwidth on your server is limited – either via contract or simple physical limitations)

There are other reasons most businesses (and professionals) don’t use those cheap webfarms, too.

As for the ads, I’ve surfed the Web enough in the past N years that I don’t even see them any more, unless they obscure text or do something spastic (whereupon I take careful note of the vendor and put them on my ‘Go To Heck” list – the “thou shalt not purchase from these idiots” list)

Evolving Squid – oh, do I agree with you on those particular items. Unfortunately, in business, sometimes I HAVE to use sites like that (though I do complain to the company periodically – no sane person uses MSIE, for instance).
There are other gotchas I’ve run into – you have to have a particular version of Java. You HAVE to be on a PC (I find that one particularly egregious – I use Mac/PC/Linux at the office, it’s a HUGE PITA to switch machines just to perform a job function)

I also dislike those places that use tags. I use high resolution (1280 X 1024) setting on my monitor, and small text settings (typically 9pt). Popping into one of those web sites all I get is a bumpy line instead of legible text. on to the next site (fortunately, none of the sites I am required to work through do this – it’s usually the press)

as usual, I digress.

BA – I’ll be moving in next week. Don’t sweat the “polite” ads. Shop carefully for a good local company to host your server [I know a good one, but mentioning it would be an ad...]

Just to clarify: it is just the flashing ads I hate. You need to run this site, which costs real money.

For me, there are three absolute non-starters… the capital crimes of web sites.

1. If I have to see some flash movie that I cannot immediately skip, I never come back.

2. If the site tells me I can’t visit because I have ads or cookies blocked (unless there’s an obvious reason WHY I might need to use cookies there), I never come back.

3. If the site requires that I use a specific browser (even if the browser is firefox, which is the one i use), I almost never come back.

Strangely enough, only one of those is ad-related.

A web site that had a big flash intro, required cookies and IE to view would have me wanting its designers shot into the sun

The ads don’t generally bother me, with the exception of the types already mentioned.