Live data from Hacker News

Give Google Contributor a try: Pay to remove ads

mattcutts.com

431–440 of 472 posts

Re: Give Google Contributor a try: Pay to remove ads

#431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or much of the web I know and love will cease to exist I get what you are saying, but I don't buy it. Much of the web is noise and regurgitation. The reason that publications have started to churn out poorly thought out crap is that they have to get their pagerank up and stay relevant. The reason they have to do that is because if they don't do it, there are ad revenue dependent content generators out there that wi…

> I get what you are saying, but I don't buy it. I'm not sure how you "don't buy it". It's like not buying the fact that the moon orbits the earth. Granted, yes, there is poor content, spammy content, copyright theft, and everything in between, but that doesn't mean all the original and good content vanishes or gets nullified. It's not a zero sum game and it's not black and white. People create content and then many…

Many of us liked the Internet in 1996 ;) And some saw its commercialization as an affront, as a violation of fundamental principles. So anyway, I'm not at all attached to the Internet existing in it's current form.

Re: Give Google Contributor a try: Pay to remove ads

#433

I've been a contributor member for several months now, because I firmly believe in two things: 1. Content creators have to be paid, or much of the web I know and love will cease to exist. 2. Life without ads is much better. So here's what people need to know about Google contributor: 1. I pay for the highest level available. 2. I love not seeing ads. 3. This only works for Google-based ads, which are certainly common…

Yeah. This seems like a typical Google half-measure with little thought put into it. It's a shame because there is so much that could be done, but companies like google just don't care enough, yet, to actually put in the work.

Re: Give Google Contributor a try: Pay to remove ads

#434
post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or much of the web I know and love will cease to exist I get what you are saying, but I don't buy it. Much of the web is noise and regurgitation. The reason that publications have started to churn out poorly thought out crap is that they have to get their pagerank up and stay relevant. The reason they have to do that is because if they don't do it, there are ad revenue dependent content generators out there that wi…

"I shouldn't need to pay every network or affiliate to block ads." And you don't. You can do it for free. DNS is quite effective at blocking ads. It is amusing to see Google trying to push this "contribution" scheme. Clearly, ad blocking is sending a loud signal to the websites that "make you the product". Websites that are "free" through advertising sales but also attempt to make a record of everything you do at the…

The fact that it is free doesn't mean it costs nothing. I am pretty sure that google's datacentre bill is not a tiny amount, and it takes lots of developers to make a gmail. And you won't be indexing the whole of the internet on an old desktop running in a closet.

Re: Give Google Contributor a try: Pay to remove ads

#435
post #181
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to you, what should be the fees? Google's primary job is to make billions of dollars of profit. I believe an organization like that has all the more incentive to inflate the fees and pocket as much as possible.

I'm not sure I understand the question. It's up to each publisher to decide if they make enough on AdSense to justify putting its ads on their site. The success of Google's ad business suggests that even net of fees, many people still think it's worth it. Now, personally, I don't think Google pays me enough to run AdSense on any of my sites. It's frankly not even close, so the fee isn't the issue -- it's just a bad f…

Nothing destroyed the quality of web content as much as AdSense did. So many websites turned into "made for AdSense" and started doing stupid things that actually severely reduce their earning potential.

Re: Give Google Contributor a try: Pay to remove ads

#436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or much of the web I know and love will cease to exist I get what you are saying, but I don't buy it. Much of the web is noise and regurgitation. The reason that publications have started to churn out poorly thought out crap is that they have to get their pagerank up and stay relevant. The reason they have to do that is because if they don't do it, there are ad revenue dependent content generators out there that wi…

> I get what you are saying, but I don't buy it. I'm not sure how you "don't buy it". It's like not buying the fact that the moon orbits the earth. Granted, yes, there is poor content, spammy content, copyright theft, and everything in between, but that doesn't mean all the original and good content vanishes or gets nullified. It's not a zero sum game and it's not black and white. People create content and then many…

In general I agree with you. Technically though, youtube didn't have any revenue source initially, including ads. Basically they built a giant user base, then let someone else figure out how to make money with it (unsurprisingly, with ads).

Re: Give Google Contributor a try: Pay to remove ads

#437
post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason why people continue to visit all those sites and click all those links?---Because they like it. This is disingenuous; there are people who dedicate their working life to causing other people to do things they (other people) don't want to do (e.g., following a psychologically-designed bespoke(!) anchor that belongs to a class of things colloquially known as ``link bait". )

So half the planet is incapable of learning what clickbait is and only you can resist it? Let's say everyone falls for it once, twice or even a dozen times. Don't you think the traffic would just stop after a while. Are we all so psychologically weak that we cant figure it out? Why do celebrities have the most followers and gossip sites have some of the highest traffic? It's easy to argue that it's not "valuable" or…

Why do serial primetime comedies use laugh tracks? The writing is base and the jokes often not funny, but when we hear other people laugh we're psychologically driven to feel more joy/humor/whatever and join in.

Why do people keep clicking obvious linkbait articles? Because there's certain social-inclusion triggers we're wired to respond to, logic and conditioning be damned. The content isn't popular. The forcing function used to drive that traffic is playing on social addictions.

At some point you have to put aside the "data" and think about where the cause and effect really lies.

Re: Give Google Contributor a try: Pay to remove ads

#439
Does $10 really cover the amount sites would be getting if you were looking at ads? I pay more just for NYT (and there's still ads! though not too many)

I wonder how willing people would be to pay (for example) $100 a month for this. Chances are that's more representative of the ad revenue you're generating if you're a heavy reader.

Re: Give Google Contributor a try: Pay to remove ads

#440
post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> No, but I think your view on advertising and the content it supports is hypocritical (because you still accept the desired content) I have said I will be happy to include a header in my http requests that says I will not render ads, and I already am happy to pay for content in other media. I will now explore that on the web. At the moment, however, I request content from web servers and they send it to me. I make…

I do not accept that advertising is manipulative. I accept that many forms of communication, it can be. > Advertising is manipulative and it's not immoral to block these attempts at manipulation. My argument has never been that you shouldn't be able to control what's presented to you, just that if it's part of an exchange, if you reject one part, you shouldn't get the other. and I think casting yourself as actually h…

Well I disagree, because I take against advertising so much that by making me see it they would be doing themselves a disservice, and costing themselves money in the process.

And I'm sorry but I do think advertising is manipulative through and through. That's pretty much the whole point.

Post reply on HN