Young Writers Society

I didn't realise what had changed until a few minutes ago.

The grey is standing out to me loads now though... xD

Don't care whether ads are there or not. But the grey is making me sad.

The grey makes everything look cleaner lol.

Matt Bellamy wrote:But the grey is making me sad.

Says the person with a skull for an avatar!

I have noticed nothing.

The header was pretty before, but I'm not too bothered about ads. Does it help you if we click them now and again?

Nate wrote:

Matt Bellamy wrote:But the grey is making me sad.

Says the person with a skull for an avatar!

Haha, touché!

Personally, I think a shade of ginger would suit it perfectly.

AquaMarine wrote:I have noticed nothing.

The header was pretty before, but I'm not too bothered about ads. Does it help you if we click them now and again?

It doesn't help me; it helps YWS (quite seriously). All the money YWS earns goes into its own bank account, and until relatively recently, I used to donate $50 myself each month to YWS. For the time being, the amount of money in the account is just enough to pay for hosting, contests, and other small costs. The problem is that YWS was $100 short in January, though the bank account had more than enough to cover the shortfall. More money will be drawn from the account in the months ahead as we finish up the Young Writers Literary Journal Vol. 3.

Regarding clicking, I'd only advise doing it if the ad interests you. Google has a very advanced algorithm that detects click fraud, and so not only may meaningless clicking not count anything but it could even get YWS blocked from Google's ad program.


Edit

After fooling around with colors for a bit, I've switched it back to the old background color. In cases where the users are split over whether they like a new change or not, it's generally better to stick to the status quo unless there's some sort of compelling reason to do otherwise. No compelling reason here, so back to blue!

I'll admit the ads on YWS are a bit of a pleasure for me. I love seeing what sort of things Google comes up with for me/the site. My major probably has something to do with this.

And I like seeing the blue back. The grey was distracting.

Hurrah for blue! I found the grey a little depressing, but the blue adds a nice splash of colour.

Admittedly it took my a while to notice that the ads were back, I guess I'm so used to seeing them they just felt like normal again.

I was so confused as to why I just had this blah blue background on the upper banner. That's when I remembered that I have an ad blocker add on.

Does that effect revenue for you at all or do you even know?

lilymoore wrote:I was so confused as to why I just had this blah blue background on the upper banner. That's when I remembered that I have an ad blocker add on.

Does that effect revenue for you at all or do you even know?

I love adblock and even have it myself, but I always disable it for sites I like (and aren't ad heavy). Thing is, it's not just clicks that matter but eyeballs as well. Fewer eyeballs equals less revenue even if the clicks remain the same.

Wow, Nate, I didn't even know that was possible until I did some tinkering. Haha.
I hope my eyeballing helps out, now, if only a little.

Views are actually a hugely important metric for marketers; clickthrough is one thing, but views allows the brand name to get out there more. Which is very valuable for advertisers.

If you click on the "i' off to the corner of the ad, by the way, you can customize it for you even more, making the merchandise, etc., more relevant to you.