Adsense is here. For the first time ever (screams of horror), there are adverts on this website.
I know, look- I’m really very sorry. Last time this was mentioned, we’d been approached by Adorama and that other lot, B&H, both of whom were vying to offer between 3 and 5% of any sale they made from an advert here. One of them even sent me a ‘typical’ page we could copy – a huge page of expensive plastic camera pictures, all clickable-through to their shopping pages. Ugh.
I could never advocate anyone buying one of those big plastic DLRs, and would hate to inadvertently be the cause of any new camera purchase, let alone profit from the exploitative gadget-head trade. Definitely never, ever is there going to be any of that, no way. Promise.
But, for a while now, the referral logs here have been showing lots of page views from searches for images. Not surprising, really. It’s what makes the site work, after all. These visitors hang around only long enough to screencapture or download a picture. They’re not looking at the site, definitely not reading anything, there’s not time, and the vast majority of them, well probably all, never come back.
In this pie chart from Google Analytics (of the first couple of hours of its implementation today), direct traffic is from people who have bookmarked the site or typed it into their browser. The referring sites slice of pie is people who land here after seeing the url on another website (maybe my portfolio site), or in a link on my name when commenting somewhere, or on a blogroll. There’s also quite a bit of referral traffic coming in from people who’ve created a link to a post or article. The blue and the orange pieces of pie are great, the kind of incoming traffic everyone likes and really wants to encourage.
Trying to work out how to show adverts just to people who come Googling for free images, the green piece of pie, and not to anyone else, has been a tad tricky. There’s a plugin called Who Sees Ads and although more than 16,000 of them have been downloaded, my copy just doesn’t want to work, even after much frustrating wrangling.
So, I asked @peteashtonbecause I remembered some time back that he’d mentioned a way of filtering things so that regular visitors don’t see any adverts, which is what we want. What Would Seth Godin Do works on a cookie. It’s been set to show an advert panel containing a Google Adsense box above each post and each page. It’s there now. If you can see it, either you’re a first time visitor, or it’s your first visit since it was installed. Refresh the page, and it’ll be gone. For good and forever. The only time you’ll see the adverts again is if you log in from another computer, maybe at work, or perhaps from your phone, or if you have cause to clear your cookies. The second time, again it’ll be gone.
Of course if you read The Photography Pages via RSS there are no adverts, and there never will be any adverts on any of the feeds, ever.
It’s been a difficult few months: the studio and darkroom have cost a fortune, and travelling and whatnot, plus a couple of bills that aren’t being paid (more on that tomorrow). There probably won’t be much income, but it’s all going to help keep the darkroom going, pay the heating bills. The conscience is troubled, but not so much when the pennies will be only by dint of visitors who come looking for a free image bank.
So if you see an advert anywhere, just refresh the page. Whatever you do, don’t click on it. If it doesn’t disappear after a refresh, please do let me know. It’s an experiment, and hopefully only for a short time. Thank you.
(originally a blog post Sept 22 2009)
Advertising Policy
Adsense is here. For the first time ever (screams of horror), there are adverts on this website.
I know, look- I’m really very sorry. Last time this was mentioned, we’d been approached by Adorama and that other lot, B&H, both of whom were vying to offer between 3 and 5% of any sale they made from an advert here. One of them even sent me a ‘typical’ page we could copy – a huge page of expensive plastic camera pictures, all clickable-through to their shopping pages. Ugh.
I could never advocate anyone buying one of those big plastic DLRs, and would hate to inadvertently be the cause of any new camera purchase, let alone profit from the exploitative gadget-head trade. Definitely never, ever is there going to be any of that, no way. Promise.
But, for a while now, the referral logs here have been showing lots of page views from searches for images. Not surprising, really. It’s what makes the site work, after all. These visitors hang around only long enough to screencapture or download a picture. They’re not looking at the site, definitely not reading anything, there’s not time, and the vast majority of them, well probably all, never come back.
In this pie chart from Google Analytics (of the first couple of hours of its implementation today), direct traffic is from people who have bookmarked the site or typed it into their browser. The referring sites slice of pie is people who land here after seeing the url on another website (maybe my portfolio site), or in a link on my name when commenting somewhere, or on a blogroll. There’s also quite a bit of referral traffic coming in from people who’ve created a link to a post or article. The blue and the orange pieces of pie are great, the kind of incoming traffic everyone likes and really wants to encourage.
Trying to work out how to show adverts just to people who come Googling for free images, the green piece of pie, and not to anyone else, has been a tad tricky. There’s a plugin called Who Sees Ads and although more than 16,000 of them have been downloaded, my copy just doesn’t want to work, even after much frustrating wrangling.
So, I asked @peteashtonbecause I remembered some time back that he’d mentioned a way of filtering things so that regular visitors don’t see any adverts, which is what we want. What Would Seth Godin Do works on a cookie. It’s been set to show an advert panel containing a Google Adsense box above each post and each page. It’s there now. If you can see it, either you’re a first time visitor, or it’s your first visit since it was installed. Refresh the page, and it’ll be gone. For good and forever. The only time you’ll see the adverts again is if you log in from another computer, maybe at work, or perhaps from your phone, or if you have cause to clear your cookies. The second time, again it’ll be gone.
Of course if you read The Photography Pages via RSS there are no adverts, and there never will be any adverts on any of the feeds, ever.
It’s been a difficult few months: the studio and darkroom have cost a fortune, and travelling and whatnot, plus a couple of bills that aren’t being paid (more on that tomorrow). There probably won’t be much income, but it’s all going to help keep the darkroom going, pay the heating bills. The conscience is troubled, but not so much when the pennies will be only by dint of visitors who come looking for a free image bank.
So if you see an advert anywhere, just refresh the page. Whatever you do, don’t click on it. If it doesn’t disappear after a refresh, please do let me know. It’s an experiment, and hopefully only for a short time. Thank you.
(originally a blog post Sept 22 2009)
Popularity: 1% [?]