Advertising Opinions
By Trip Ericson on Friday, June 18 2010, 16:52 - Site Updates - Permalink
I've never been a fan of advertising. Yes, it supports many items that we consider free and I appreciate that and do attempt to watch ads while watching programs on TV to support over-the-air broadcasters. Similarly, I dislike begging for donations. I still do donate to causes I like, but I don't like when people and organizations solicit donations.
As such, I'm in a bit of a box. I'm sure it's not just me, but I imagine many people have noticed that RabbitEars seems to get slower and slower as time goes on and I add more features. I have been tossing around the idea of relocating to another provider or upgrading hosting packages on my current provider. However, my current $11/month for which I'm not even responsible for paying is a very good deal to give up. Any change in hosting plan would require me to begin paying a much heftier hosting bill.
EDIT: To clarify, my problem is not a shortage of storage or bandwidth. My problem is that because of the huge numbers of on-the-fly calculations and database calls the website makes, it chews up RAM and processor time. I've not even used 10% of my allotted storage, and I'm using a tiny fraction of my allotted bandwidth (20GB out of 3TB so far this month).
I've considered adding advertising to RabbitEars off and on over the past several months. In fact, the current header design leaves room for advertising to the left and right of the logo. Any advertising I would put on RabbitEars would probably not be through a third party network like Google due to the recent rumors of malware being inserted into third party advertising. That doesn't mean I've ruled it out entirely, but it's highly unlikely that I would go that route.
Instead, I would do my own ad rotations and sell space directly to advertisers. No Flash advertising of any kind, simple text or image ads only. I know I don't want to see obnoxious ads when I visit a website, so I would certainly not put anything like that on RabbitEars.
I, of course, could not make RabbitEars work without the help of you, the public, who views the website and submits updates to me. So I pose the question to contributors, to potential advertisers, and to viewers and readers: What is your opinion? What would you like me to do? Are you willing to tolerate the lower speed of the site in exchange for a corner of the web without ads, or would you prefer a bit of advertising in exchange for a bit of speed? Feel free to leave a comment here or send me an e-mail.
(Please note that unlike other e-mails you send and comments you leave, I may not respond to these as I'm hoping to get a lot of opinions from a lot of people and with school being what it is, I may have to just listen and not respond.)
Comments
As I understand most hosting deals, you've got a certain amount of bandwidth you can use. If the site gets too popular, you'll have no choice but to upgrade. So, you might as well do it now while you're not forced to.
I would not mind some text or small banner ads at the top that were not google or flash.
Trip - I've used Hostmonster with unlimited bandwidth & storage space. $6 a month. It will handle about anything you throw at it.
It's not bandwidth that's the problem, it's processor and RAM. My site makes a LOT of calls to the database and it's killing my performance.
I am not even using a fraction of my bandwidth or storage. 3/5 of the way through the month, I've used 20GB out of 3TB. I've used 25GB out of 300GB available in storage.
Trip, a few ads seems trivial to the amount of information that you provide. Most of us probably come to you from the AVS forum pages, and there is advertising out the wazoo on those pages, yet it does not interfere in any way with the wealth of information that is provided there. Nor will it impose itself on the wealth added information that you provide. If it makes a better web site all around, then do it.
It all goes back to the "Dear Abby" question regarding relationships... Are you better off with it or without it? In the end, only you can decide that answer. Good luck, and please, just keep the info coming! :)
Ads are fine, better than degrading the site. But no flash please.
I have no problem with advertising (it is your site after all) but regarding performance, I would recommend first and foremost caching frequently accessed content instead of having expensive database calls (CPU and RAM, not money) to generate pages on the fly. We have real world experience at my job doing stuff like that. Without caching we'd not be able to serve anything. Even simple methods like generating static files instead of dynamically generating pages and serving those instead can help quite a lot. Obviously not everything can be static files, but recoding even some pages can help. It might not be a task you would have time for, however, but I am just throwing it out there.
Let me know if you need any more ideas.
I don't have a problem with the limited advertising that you propose, except for one thing: will it cause a problem with your/our use of TSReader Lite to acquire transport stream reads? I'm not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, but will RabbitEars be considered a commercial venture? If the world works the way it ought, the answer should be "no", since you are looking to cover your costs, not to profit, but when it comes to the law, one never knows. Proceed carefully.
Ryan: If I had any idea how to implement caching software, I'd already have done it. And I think the big drain is the market.php page, specifically the primary listings, and if you saw how much code there is, you'd understand why I am in no hurry to rewrite the thing. Honestly, if you know how caching software works and are willing to lend me a hand with it at some point in the future when you have some free time, please let me know as I'd be very appreciative of anything to make the site faster. I know I have code written to provide detailed statistics about each market but actually using it causes the Listings page to take well more than a minute to load.
dhett: This is definitely a concern and I was seeking opinions here before e-mailing Rod to get his opinion. One of the things I would want to do with any extra money this project brings in would be to see if Rod would be willing to build a custom version that removes a few things I don't use in favor of a few things from Standard that I do use, and then could distribute. Of course, that would require a significant amount of extra money, but it's something I've wanted to do for a while. My communications with Rod have always been positive, so I would be hopeful that he'd go for this as well, as I know at least a few people have gone on to buy TSReader Standard after using it to capture data for me.
Another thing I would want to do with any excess would be to buy tuners for all the people who have helped out with my "loaner tuner" program since last summer. Then I would have permanent contacts instead of now where I'm sitting here thinking to myself, "If only person x still had one of my tuners!"
I do not object to the small amount of advertising that you propose. Like you say, everyone else does it and I find it easy to ignore if it is of no interest to me. If you were to advertise antennas or such it would actually be a resource.
Trip,
I agree that a small amount of advertising is OK. The service you provide is invaluable. Keep up the great work.
N9YSW
There's nothing wrong with ads, especially if they provide you with the resources to continue developing this information-rich site.
You've got to be able to sustain what you do, so if advertising does that for you, I say do it.
Of course, Google's AdSense program hasn't exactly paid off in big dividends for me, but I'm contemplating selling my own ads.
It depends, maybe basic text ads will be okay, but if you want to keep the whole simple text low bandwidth/cpu feel of the site, you should stay away from flash ads.
Like others, I have no problem with advertising. Actually as an ex-radio guy, we used to tout advertising as a benefit since ads provided information about products and services available.
Echoing the general consensus thus far, no flash please.
RabbitEars is a very useful resource, packed with information in a clean, easy-to-navigate form. If advertising serves to assist performance enhancements, I'm all for it.
Trip, I don't mind a little advertising and the speed doesn't bother me, but it sounds like others have made better suggestions.
-ML
Trip, as you can host advertising without jeopardizing licenses to software you use, I say go for it. You deserve to at least have your costs defrayed for the service you provide.
I respect that advertisers pay so that we users don't have to pay. I despise moving or flashing ads, and (oops) run AdBlockPlus to avoid those. There is one site which asked politely if I would unblock ads on it ... I did, and they do not infringe. If obnoxious ads can be eliminated, I have NO issue. If obnoxious ads are not eliminated, I'll use my blocking add-in.