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I've removed all ad network code from my blog

troyhunt.com

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Re: I've removed all ad network code from my blog

#91

Post by citruspi »

r1ch wrote: post #12

You'll be surprised how much faster pages feel without ad scripts - I noticed significant improvements after implementing a no-ads premium option on our website. Even with an ad blocker, things just feel snappier if the scripts simply aren't there in the first place. I decided to go one step further with my personal site and eliminate all JS completely. I don't get enough traffic to make any kind of analytics or ad c…

> I decided to go one step further with my personal site and eliminate all JS completely.

I'm close to that point. I just use it for loading a font and rendering gallery pages.

From my site's colophon:

> The website uses the flexbox grid from Foundation, and Mark Simonson's Proxima Nova font from Adobe Typekit. The only JavaScript on the website is used

> 1. to load the font from Adobe Typekit and

> 2. to render the gallery pages in the photography section

> All other pages should be JavaScript-free. In addition there is no user tracking - aside from that performed by Adobe Typekit - and all assets (once again... aside from the font from Adobe Typekit) are served directly by my server(s), no CDN involved.

Once I find a suitable replacement for Proxima Nova, Adobe Typekit will go away as well. I'd like to remove it from the gallery pages as well, but I just couldn't get flexbox working properly for responsive galleries of images of different resolutions.

Re: I've removed all ad network code from my blog

#92

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

bazillion wrote: post #41
fiatjaf wrote: post #4

Ok, you have a sponsorship model that works because you're probably very famous. That doesn't solve anyone's problem, because almost no one is famous. How can we replace ad networks with something better and saner?

I built what I believe to be the most sane way to "advertise" something: Let people buy directly from an image. This solves the problem of people not interested in the content, because of its unobtrusive nature -- if they don't hover over an item within the image, it's as if the "advertisement" isn't there. Check out my demo (desktop only) at http://www.worldlifestyle.com/testpost My website which you can sign up for…

I clicked your link and wanted to hate what you did, but I have to say I really like it.

Re: I've removed all ad network code from my blog

#93

Post by ryandrake »

coldtea wrote: post #52
superkuh wrote: post #23

This is about equivalent to saying, "I've stopped beating my wife." only almost everyone beats their wife in the scenario. It's not that you've done good. You've just stopped being bad. Why does your personal website need sponsorship at all? Why should people pay you for it? This commercial mindset is very weird to me.

> Why does your personal website need sponsorship at all? Why should people pay you for it? This commercial mindset is very weird to me. Because personal blogging can also be a business for some? It's not like every personal blog does it -- the huge majority are their for free, with no ads or anything. But if you devote the time and effort, and have an audience, why not? It's like saying pro dancers shouldn't exist,…

I don't know--GP post has a valid point of view even if people disagree. I also feel it takes a bit of nerve to think that you should be financially compensated for writing your personal blog, no matter how big your audience is or how much time or effort you devote to it. Just because you CAN monetize something doesn't mean you should.

Re: I've removed all ad network code from my blog

#94

Post by StavrosK »

jessaustin wrote: post #53
StavrosK wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't get enough traffic to make any kind of analytics or ad code worthwhile. On a related note, does anyone else see GA being wildly inaccurate? My blog was on the HN front page a while ago, and CloudFront got ~600k hits, which should translate to about ~100k uniques (I cache), yet GA only showed 8k uniques. I'm guessing the HN crowd runs uBlock or some other blocker in its vast majority, so JS-based analytics a…

In your case, what does GA do, that something reading Cloudfront logs couldn't do?

Only two or three files are served from Cloudfront, and I'm not aware of any analytics software that reads those logs. If there is one, please let me know, I'm interested.

Re: I've removed all ad network code from my blog

#95

Post by mi100hael »

AndrewStephens wrote: post #84

I went a step further and designed my blog ( https://sheep.horse/ ) not to use any third-party resources at all. This was easy for me because I am never going to make money from my ramblings about Rogue One or the last book I read. I am actually not against advertising in principle, or even tracking if that is what you want, but the current trend to pull in lots of resources (ads, tracking scripts, web fonts, CDN jav…

> New version of that CDN'ed Javascript library does something you don't expect? Your fault.

That's what the "integrity" field is for. If the CDN tries to change the file surreptitiously, it'll have a different checksum and the browser won't run it.

Re: I've removed all ad network code from my blog

#96

Post by wastedhours »

fiatjaf wrote: post #51
yoz-y wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had an idea at some point, but I do not know it if would be feasible. For me it seems that sponsorships/native ads are better than the usual banner style intrusive ads. Would it be possible to still have a syndicated ad network, but that it would feed you articles in some structured format, that you would get on your backend, and then insert as articles into your blog/website? This way you could format them any way…

I had an idea some time ago that would work somewhat like this: whenever you mention some kind of service or product in your articles, you would link those words to something like " "" rel="nofollow">https://myadnetwork.com/ " , then the ad network would redirect the user to some paying advertiser. Fallback URLs, location (for local businesses) and other customization options could be used to make it work better. Som…

Isn't that partly what Skimlinks [0] does? Not only automatically converts product links to affiliate ones, but I think they also link specific product mentions.

[0] https://skimlinks.com/publishers

Re: I've removed all ad network code from my blog

#97

Post by chriswarbo »

kiba wrote: post #35
lazyjones wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How can we replace ad networks with something better and saner? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flattr Not enough traction? Someone has to start using it, people will adapt...

Patreon seems to be a better model, to be honest. It's about nine million dollars a month in total pledge, which meant over one hundred million in revenue per year if it never grows beyond that.

I prefer Flattr's model to Patreon, as it lets me spread donations around without much commitment, e.g. when googling for error messages and finding helpful blog posts. A FlattrPatreon bridge might be a nice idea, so creators using one can receive donations from the other.

Unfortunately Flattr's mechanisms for transfering money were overly complicated when I used to use it: to keep down third-party transfer fees, each Flattr account maintained its own balance, and could be manually topped up or withdrawn from in bulk using a relatively obscure payment gateway.

This obscurity and manual intervention discouraged topping up, and made it very easy to forget. I also seem to remember those receiving Flattrs being unable to withdraw anything until they reached a certain minimum balance, which was difficult to achieve for a relatively unknown network of micropayments.

I'd probably start using it again, if I could forget about my "Flattr balance" and just have it automatically top-up by $X from my bank account via some common gateway, whenever there's not enough to cover the end-of-month payment; I could then manage it in the same way as my existing charity donations.

EDIT: The above was based on my experience in Flattr's first few years of existence. I've just logged in and there now seem to be many more payment methods, and an auto-topup option :)

Re: I've removed all ad network code from my blog

#98

Post by AJ007 »

skykooler wrote: post #59
bazillion wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I built what I believe to be the most sane way to "advertise" something: Let people buy directly from an image. This solves the problem of people not interested in the content, because of its unobtrusive nature -- if they don't hover over an item within the image, it's as if the "advertisement" isn't there. Check out my demo (desktop only) at http://www.worldlifestyle.com/testpost My website which you can sign up for…

It also looks like a lot of extra work per image to set up all the regions.

This should be something that will improve over time with machine learning and can already be done right now.

Re: I've removed all ad network code from my blog

#99

Post by dbg31415 »

dustinmoris wrote: post #86
dbg31415 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An alternative to Disqus. * Discourse || https://www.discourse.org/ * Embedding Discourse Comments via Javascript - howto - Discourse Meta || https://meta.discourse.org/t/embedding-discourse-comments-vi... EDIT: Love the instant downvotes without any comments on why. Downvotes are totally helpful and not the least bit petty and stupid. I have 2 client using Discourse on their production sites and it works great.

Didn't down vote you, but I very much dislike Discourse. It is sold to be a better forum/discussion system, but it feels very unpleasant to use. They tried to break things just for the sake of breaking. Like having an endless scroll instead of paging is driving me nuts. I hate endless scroll, this is the most anti pattern that exists on the web probably.

Hmm, so that's a good point.

They should have the option to turn it off, but they don't.

Endless scroll isn't good UX or SEO.

Re: I've removed all ad network code from my blog

#100

Post by bazillion »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #92
bazillion wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I built what I believe to be the most sane way to "advertise" something: Let people buy directly from an image. This solves the problem of people not interested in the content, because of its unobtrusive nature -- if they don't hover over an item within the image, it's as if the "advertisement" isn't there. Check out my demo (desktop only) at http://www.worldlifestyle.com/testpost My website which you can sign up for…

I clicked your link and wanted to hate what you did, but I have to say I really like it.

Best comment I think I've ever gotten on it, thanks!
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