Pop Up Ads

[ChrisX]

I do find sometimes when I visit this website I get annoying pop up ads.

The last pop up small window suggesting I am the 1 millionth visitor to this website with the balloons. Any prizes? Any money for me?

As I closed the homepage of CDRLabs, the pop up disappears with it. It is gone for now.

The pop ups are so annoying. Looks as though I will have to visit this website on another PC having Pop up blockers installed.

Does a member have to put up with them?

[Ian]

Does a member have to put up with them?

Do you want this website to remain free? Then you have to deal with them. The ads pay the bills and we try to not have them be overly annoying. As long as you have cookies enabled, the pop behinds and inline ads (which are only in the forum) show up once per session and/or once per day.

[socheat]

Does a member have to put up with them?

On the other hand, if by "member" you mean "paying member", then I would say "Yes... for now". We've been toying around with the idea of adding an ad-free/pop-up free version of our site to those who are willing to pay a small fee. If we have enough interest in it, and it sounds like at least a handful of people are, we will begin work on adding this feature.

[ChrisX]

Do you want this website to remain free? Then you have to deal with them.

I just tried accessing this website on another PC and there were 3 popups, one as blocked and another two more can be seen. One at the back and a little one at the front suggesting a winner. There are no prizes for me.

Three pop ups is too many for a member not signed in.

The ads pay the bills and we try to not have them be overly annoying. As long as you have cookies disabled, the pop behinds and inline ads (which are only in the forum) show up once per session and/or once per day.

I can see that a member would only get one pop up and this is still as overly annoying.

I don't feel the pop ups ads are as an effective message selling their product or service as it immediately closed by the user.

I don't think pop ups are of any use.

Ian, if you want advertising to pay for this website then put the ads on the webpage like the one at the top as not to intrude someone's PC on having unwanted pop up ads. This is as more effective.

What will happen when the next version of Internet Explorer as released having pop ups blockers with it? This is expected by September 2004.

All of my PCs will have pop up blockers by then. Will your website lose money? How many visitors does this website get per week?

[ChrisX]

Does a member have to put up with them?

On the other hand, if by "member" you mean "paying member", then I would say "Yes... for now". We've been toying around with the idea of adding an ad-free/pop-up free version of our site to those who are willing to pay a small fee. If we have enough interest in it, and it sounds like at least a handful of people are, we will begin work on adding this feature.

Some websites do have this feature after members complained on the advertising and banners on their PCs.

I think this is a great idea having an ad free website.

The first question as pop up blockers will be more freely available in the near future?

This is at a cost to this website as a lost of revenue.

The second question is how many is prepared to pay for it? Is there enough members willingly want to do this?

[cfitz]

I just tried accessing this website on another PC and there were 3 popups, one as blocked and another two more can be seen. One at the back and a little one at the front suggesting a winner. There are no prizes for me.

Three pop ups is too many for a member not signed in.

I've never seen more than one pop up/under per day from CDRLabs. If you think you are seeing more, then you are probably actually seeing them from leaving the site you were at before entering CDRLabs.

I don't think one pop up per day is at all unreasonable in exchange for all the free content here.

cfitz

[socheat]

Three pop ups is too many for a member not signed in.
...
All of my PCs will have pop up blockers by then. Will your website lose money? How many visitors does this website get per week?

To answer your question, we average about 400,000 hits a day, our worst day being 300,000 over a year ago. These numbers are small compared to sites like Anandtech, TomsHardware, SharkyExtreme, and Slashdot, but significant enough that we generate a small amount of revenue from these ads. How much revenue? Not enough to keep us in the black. Unlike those aforementioned sites, most of our hardware isn't sent to us for free. We don't get to keep most of the drives we review. We have to pay, out of our own pocket, the shipping fees. When I say "we", I typically mean Ian because he's the one primarily writing reviews, so he's the one taking the hit.

On top of that, we have to pay, out of our own pocket, the cost to keep the server up. We, apart from our full time jobs, spend time maintaining the server, maintaining the site, writing code for the site, writing reviews and articles, and answering questions in the forums. Why? Because we enjoy it. If we could do it for absolutely 100% free, we would.

We are aware that people use pop-up blockers. We ask that you don't, but we don't ban you if you do. We hate pop-ups as much as the next people, but we have to offset our rising costs somehow, and at the moment, advertising is our only means to do it. Note I said offset because we aren't in this to make money, but we don't want to lose our pants running a free service that people still complain about. Using our free search feature, you can search our free forums and find many other posts offering free advice on how you can successfully block all our pop-up ads and rid yourself of these annoyances. We put in the work, out of our own free time, to keep this site up on a daily basis. You can at least put in the work to block all the ads.

The second question is how many is prepared to pay for it? Is there enough members willingly want to do this?

Quite honestly, it doesn't matter to me how many people are willing to do this. I will write the code anyway, because I enjoy working on this site. If 2 people end up subscribing, great. If 100 people end up subscribing, even better. If no one ends up subscribing, oh well. It was a nice break from work. (Yes, I enjoy coding for fun. I'm a geek ) Obviously, there will be more benefits to subscribers than just ad-free access. Details are still being worked out.

Allow me to rephrase what has already been said, probably much more ineloquently. If you don't like it... tough. You seem to have this notion that, as a member, you are among a special crowd with special privileges to this site. But anyone can be a member. For free. Ok, maybe you are special. Just like everyone else.

[Ian]

Well said Socheat.

If you're seeing popups all the time, make sure that cookies are enabled. The ad companies use them to see when you last viewed one of their ads. If you're still seeing them.. you might have spyware on your system.

[ChrisX]

We are aware that people use pop-up blockers. We ask that you don't, but we don't ban you if you do.

You can at least put in the work to block all the ads.

The pop-up blocker I am using isn't very effective on all as it only blocks the first one only. I got two just now.

I am using the Yahoo Companion blocker and I have thought about using like Netscape and MSN blockers and I'd rather wait until the new IE6.

I normally don't visit websites having pop ups ads and I normally keep right away from them. So, cdrlabs.com is the only website this week having troublesome ads.

I am very wary of pop up ads too as I have noted stories of something.

I won't be able to visit you much anyway. I may have a peep once in a while. A nice forum though.

Doesn't worry me if you want to ban me. Anytime.

[ChrisX]

You might have spyware on your system.

Yes, I am aware of this possibility and I've been getting a pop-up on Hotmail even though no other PC have it.

A pop-up can come up from outside as a hijack when I visit a website too. This can happen too.

I'll have a look at that too. This is an old IBM PC at end of its life, 5 years old and may get rid of it soon. Its memory is very low anyway.

Thanks Ian.

[pranav81]

I just tried accessing this website on another PC and there were 3 popups, one as blocked and another two more can be seen. One at the back and a little one at the front suggesting a winner. There are no prizes for me.

Three pop ups is too many for a member not signed in.

I've never seen more than one pop up/under per day from CDRLabs. If you think you are seeing more, then you are probably actually seeing them from leaving the site you were at before entering CDRLabs.

I don't think one pop up per day is at all unreasonable in exchange for all the free content here.

cfitz

I agree with you cfitz.I too only get one ad per session.I,surprisingly,dont find it annoying. I like this site and will not complain even if I get 2 to 3 more ads per session.


::Pranav::