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.

I understand the reason for it. I have ads on my sites, too. But there comes a point when there’s just too much. You have to try to look at your site through the eyes of a new visitor. When a visitor sees the ads before he sees the content, there’s just too much. Many, many sites these days are like that.

I’m far more likely to click on an ad at a site that has few ads but lots of good, non-commercial content. In fact, when I find a site that’s just chock-full of ads, I’m not likely to click on a single one of them. I’m also not likely to come back. If I think a “blogger” is running a site primarily to make money (beyond costs, that is), the site loses value. But that’s just me. Other people might have different thoughts about it.

I’m also far less likely to visit a site that has ads of questionable taste. I stopped visiting Slate.com, for example, when every page included an extremely sexist ad for a dating site. I’m not a prude, but I don’t need to get content from a site that’s selling sex — which is basically what these sites were selling.

Ditto for a site that includes pop-up ads that can somehow get around my pop-up blocker.

There’s a great article I read recently that attempts to education site visitors on how they can support their favorite bloggers. If everyone who reads blogs read this article and tried to follow some of its suggestions, we wouldn’t have to slather our sites with advertisements. The link is: http://www.memwg.com/how-to-support-your-favorite-bloggers/

And no, that’s not on my site.

Hope the survey results help you, Phil!

And to those complaining about the full pager’s, I’ve never ONCE gotten a full page ad while coming to this site, and I come here daily. *shrug* maybe I’m just lucky

Oh, and to Tod, if you take a look at what you’re paying for, it’s not just the page, but a certain bandwidth allotment. If your page gets very popular, then you have to pay more money to cover the bandwidth being used, so comparing the BA site with your vanity page doesn’t really work

I absolutely understand why there is advertising here. But understanding and desiring are two different things.

If you’re not in it for the money, you could tell us what it costs to run this site and ask for donations too (where is that paypal link when i need it!!!).

Unfortunately I got one of those full-screen ads. I hate those. Can you get rid of those?

Frankly, I’m so inured to the ever-present web-ads that I barely noticed them. As long as they don’t float in front of the text, obscuring my view—man, I hate those.

I say it’s a small price to pay for daily nuggets of wisd….well, something, anyway!

Survey completed, SIR!

Frankly, I’m so inured to the ever-present web-ads that I barely noticed them. As long as they don’t float in front of the text, obscuring my view—man, I hate those.

I say it’s a small price to pay for daily nuggets of wisd….well, something, anyway!

Survey completed, SIR!

With the current number, type and style of ads, I can’t recommend BA to anyone anymore without looking strange myself (sorry, perhaps that’s a non-fitting description, but English is not my native language).

Additionally, I don’t get the often-heard argument “but I have so much traffic, I need the income from ads”. Why don’t you try to safe some bandwidth in the first place? You only just redesigned your site and reduced the number of articles per page. That’s a good idea, but by making the layout more minimalist and re-checking the HTML put out by WordPress and your stylesheets, you might safe even more. Put less images in the margins etc., remove all those shiny Web2.0 gadgets and redirect people from Digg to just the article, without comments or anything.

And if, after all that, you /still/ need ads, make sure you get good, high-quality ones. With this flashing stuff, as a new visitor, I could not take BA seriously.

Oh, and on a completely unrelated note: The recent Jodcast – nice appearance