To help pay for the site, I've added google adsense to the opening page. Fairly soon, I'll add it to the forum index page and all topics pages as well. In some cases, though, you may not be able to view these ads. For instance, I can't see them at all, and I have no idea why (I have no pop-up blocking or anti-spyware programs on my computer). However, if you can view them, let me know if you think they are obtrusive. If they are, I'll figure out another way to add them in.
Well it is kind of weird when it's in the middle of the page like in the "I'm board. If you're board, come here now!" thread in Randomness. Is it like that everywhere?
Also, I think it's very funny how they change depending on what you type. Like in the blood donating forum there's stuff about blood banks, and on the Randomness thread in EBM's site, I typed something about Coke and Coca-Cola ads came up.
It'll be interesting to see what comes up on top of this lol.
"You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand." Leonardo Da Vinci
Yeah it's not too bad, although...couldn't it just be on top of the page?
As long as this doesn't turn into Writing.com, where you have to pay actual money (as opposed to just having monetarily worthless points like we do now) to get cool features, it's okay.
"You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand." Leonardo Da Vinci
Yeah, I definitely will never make someone pay for advanced features... I think that completely ruined writing.com.
The google ads were at the top of the page, but no one was clicking on them unfortunately. So I decided to make them such that one ad comes up after the first post in a topic, and then after every 15 posts. The way I have it configured right now, there should be no more than one ad per page.
Since I did that (moved the google ads from the top to after every 15 posts), the clickthrough rate jumped, even though it's only been like that for an hour now.
I'm still testing out the google ads and seeing which works best, so many of you are noticing that the ad placement keeps on changing.
Based on the data I'm getting back, I found that almost no one was clicking on the ads on the front page (2 clicks per every 3000 impressions), so I got rid of the one that goes across the top. The forum index page, though, gets a lot of clicks, so I added one more in an area that I think will not cause much, if any, annoyance. The chat page gets a lot of clicks as well, but that one I'm gonna leave alone since one is enough on the chat page.
Remember that by clicking on these ads, you are helping to support YWS, so if you see something interesting, click on it
Heh, I've now blocked the google bot from indexing this forum, so I can talk freely about the adsense program now.
I've added ads to YWS for two reasons:
1. To cover hosting costs
2. To cover the amount of money I've poured into this site
Currently, google adsense is providing just enough money to cover hosting costs, but only just enough and in recent weeks, the click-through rate has plummeted (I guess because the ads don't change very often and because people are now used to ignoring them).
So anyways, start clicking on the ads! Just one click per day (per user) though as anything more will not count.
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