<story><title>I&apos;ve removed all ad network code from my blog</title><url>https://www.troyhunt.com/i-just-permanently-removed-all-ad-network-code-from-my-blog</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cr0sh</author><text>I kinda agree with you; I run a personal website, it isn&amp;#x27;t very popular (and I don&amp;#x27;t update it often - hmm, maybe there&amp;#x27;s a link there!) - but it is my website, and I&amp;#x27;ve kept the domain active since 1998 or thereabouts.&lt;p&gt;ie - a &amp;quot;labor of love&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;How do I pay for it? Well, I reach around to my back pocket for my wallet, and...&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t have ads, I don&amp;#x27;t have a sponsorship, and I don&amp;#x27;t care - what I have and what I put on my website is strictly for myself and others to use or read as they see fit; I consider it a &amp;quot;giving back&amp;quot; to others out there for what the internet has given me over the years.&lt;p&gt;...and I am fine with that.&lt;p&gt;Other sites need to realize this too; not everything is worth money, and if you really love what you&amp;#x27;re doing, you&amp;#x27;d give it away free. Like the internet used to be - everybody doing it for the love of networking and computing and knowledge and information transfer.&lt;p&gt;Not AOL spam making money crap.</text></item><item><author>vintageseltzer</author><text>May I ask: if one is not &amp;quot;famous&amp;quot; (i.e. popular), why should one expect their site to be profitable from ads alone?&lt;p&gt;If my limited edition, 250-prints-per-month &amp;#x27;zine isn&amp;#x27;t making money, is that the advertising industry&amp;#x27;s fault, or is there an issue with my expectations?&lt;p&gt;People ask the &amp;quot;how do we fix dwindling ad-based revenue&amp;quot; question all the time. The answer is clear, it&amp;#x27;s just not what people want to hear: metered paywalls or a subscription model (or, you know, selling an actual product &amp;#x2F; service).&lt;p&gt;The inevitable response to that is, &amp;#x27;but I don&amp;#x27;t make enough money off of that.&amp;#x27;&lt;p&gt;Well, there you go! To me, that&amp;#x27;s where it should end. You don&amp;#x27;t have enough of a readership to support your website as-is. That means you can continue doing it as a labor of love, scale it down to something you can manage and that is profitable, or just, well, accept that your site isn&amp;#x27;t as great as you thought it was, and that you won&amp;#x27;t be making as much money off of it as you thought.&lt;p&gt;Isn&amp;#x27;t this basic market forces at work? I have a suspicion that even if 50% of these sites bloated with ads and deceptive, click-bait content were to die, society as a whole would actually be much better off, and the efforts of people building these kinds of sites and expecting a return would be better directed elsewhere.</text></item><item><author>fiatjaf</author><text>Ok, you have a sponsorship model that works because you&amp;#x27;re probably very famous. That doesn&amp;#x27;t solve anyone&amp;#x27;s problem, because almost no one is famous.&lt;p&gt;How can we replace ad networks with something better and saner?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>djsumdog</author><text>I do too. I run PenguinDreams. I&amp;#x27;m trying to post more, and am working on graphics so I can setup a Patreon. I&amp;#x27;d like to be able to live off it, and I&amp;#x27;ll see how it goes.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not famous, but I do love working on my own open source projects and I like writing tech posts. Last time I quit my job I lived for 11 months off my savings while travelling in over 10 countries. I got some OSS done, redid all my websites and wrote a lab manual for a friend of mine who was teaching a class based on the stuff I wrote.&lt;p&gt;My goal was to get into University and work on a PhD. I had attempted this a few years ago, but my grades for undergrand and grad school weren&amp;#x27;t all that great (2.5&amp;#x2F;3.2), and it pretty much killed my chances. I had some publications under my belt this time, but still very few professors would even talk to me about my work in sensor network research (BigSense).&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve spend over a decade in software. I do not enjoy being in industry. Even though I work remotely more now and less in the office, I still find my career choice mind numbing.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m going to try again soon, with more savings, so hopefully I can make it further before having to give up and having to find another software job.</text></comment>
<story><title>I&apos;ve removed all ad network code from my blog</title><url>https://www.troyhunt.com/i-just-permanently-removed-all-ad-network-code-from-my-blog</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cr0sh</author><text>I kinda agree with you; I run a personal website, it isn&amp;#x27;t very popular (and I don&amp;#x27;t update it often - hmm, maybe there&amp;#x27;s a link there!) - but it is my website, and I&amp;#x27;ve kept the domain active since 1998 or thereabouts.&lt;p&gt;ie - a &amp;quot;labor of love&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;How do I pay for it? Well, I reach around to my back pocket for my wallet, and...&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t have ads, I don&amp;#x27;t have a sponsorship, and I don&amp;#x27;t care - what I have and what I put on my website is strictly for myself and others to use or read as they see fit; I consider it a &amp;quot;giving back&amp;quot; to others out there for what the internet has given me over the years.&lt;p&gt;...and I am fine with that.&lt;p&gt;Other sites need to realize this too; not everything is worth money, and if you really love what you&amp;#x27;re doing, you&amp;#x27;d give it away free. Like the internet used to be - everybody doing it for the love of networking and computing and knowledge and information transfer.&lt;p&gt;Not AOL spam making money crap.</text></item><item><author>vintageseltzer</author><text>May I ask: if one is not &amp;quot;famous&amp;quot; (i.e. popular), why should one expect their site to be profitable from ads alone?&lt;p&gt;If my limited edition, 250-prints-per-month &amp;#x27;zine isn&amp;#x27;t making money, is that the advertising industry&amp;#x27;s fault, or is there an issue with my expectations?&lt;p&gt;People ask the &amp;quot;how do we fix dwindling ad-based revenue&amp;quot; question all the time. The answer is clear, it&amp;#x27;s just not what people want to hear: metered paywalls or a subscription model (or, you know, selling an actual product &amp;#x2F; service).&lt;p&gt;The inevitable response to that is, &amp;#x27;but I don&amp;#x27;t make enough money off of that.&amp;#x27;&lt;p&gt;Well, there you go! To me, that&amp;#x27;s where it should end. You don&amp;#x27;t have enough of a readership to support your website as-is. That means you can continue doing it as a labor of love, scale it down to something you can manage and that is profitable, or just, well, accept that your site isn&amp;#x27;t as great as you thought it was, and that you won&amp;#x27;t be making as much money off of it as you thought.&lt;p&gt;Isn&amp;#x27;t this basic market forces at work? I have a suspicion that even if 50% of these sites bloated with ads and deceptive, click-bait content were to die, society as a whole would actually be much better off, and the efforts of people building these kinds of sites and expecting a return would be better directed elsewhere.</text></item><item><author>fiatjaf</author><text>Ok, you have a sponsorship model that works because you&amp;#x27;re probably very famous. That doesn&amp;#x27;t solve anyone&amp;#x27;s problem, because almost no one is famous.&lt;p&gt;How can we replace ad networks with something better and saner?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Laforet</author><text>Seconded. I run two small websites with hundreds and sometimes thousands of PV per day on a server I am already using for other things. The only thing I really pay for is the domain which is a drop in the bucket anyway. I might give a random shoutout to Cloudflare here as well: Not everybody agree with their way of doing.things but from my point of view they&amp;#x27;ve really helped to cut out a lot of work for personal websites.&lt;p&gt;To my knowledge, most people who make money on their websites are either big enough to monetise with sponsorship&amp;#x2F;subscription, or they&amp;#x27;d run a number of smaller sites of no consequence nor unique content anyway. The latter has no real reason to exist.</text></comment>