A word from the publisher : )
p2pnet.net post:- When I posted the Loband item, I expected one or two comments on the ads and among them was: “After pointing out in a previous post that the Google ads on this site were usually for P2P scams, I noticed that 2 days later the Google ads all got removed. And I wondered, what was the reason?”
It was pure coincidence. But before I get to that —————-
As I’ve said before, without advertising, p2pnet wouldn’t be here.
It gives me, as an individual, satisfaction to stand up to the cartels and Powers That Be, hoping p2pnet posts will make a few more people aware of what’s really happening as opposed to what they ‘learn’ from BS PR campaigns and heavily biased reports of various kinds.
As I�ve said elsewhere, �We used to be the cash-cows contemptuously called ‘consumers’ and we’ve grown used to being told what to do and not to ask awkward questions. Not any more. Online, we’re back to being people. Customers. And the customer is always right.
�For the first time in history, staggeringly huge numbers of us can communicate with each other. Instantly.�
In other words, although p2pnet is a personal webpub and only a very small voice in the midst of endless mainstream media ‘reports’ and ‘press releases’ emenating from the many and various vested corporate interests, it�s still a voice.
Of P2P scams
p2pnet isn�t an entrepreneurial venture and I’m just one man with a family and a mortgage and a very low (believe me ; ) income derived wholly and solely from p2pnet. But my wife, Liz, and daughter Emma, who’s eight-and-a-half, are behind me. Which is extremely brave of them considering we don’t have anything in the bank, Frank.
As far as the Google Adsense ads go, they were additional income. Relative to the amount of space they used up, the $ amounts they brought in were never exciting. But since March, for some reason, even that�s been dropping off dramatically and, with help from a very nice lady at Adsense, I�ve been playing around, trying to improve the situation.
That’s why the ads have been coming and going.
However, I was never comfortable with them precisely because I knew a lot of the ads were dodgy. But I needed the $$ so I hoped p2pnet readers would turn a blind eye. And maybe they did ; )
Be that as it may, today I dropped Google Adsense, and this time it�s no coincidence. However, the main ads will stay where they are because without them, p2pnet wouldn’t be be able to survive. Literally. So thanks for your support, Greg, Louis, Mike, Matthew, Pablo and Peter.
Back to “usually for P2P scams,” I hadn’t noticed Adsense had a ‘Competitive Ad Filter’ (and maybe it wasn’t there when I started – I don’t know). Theoretically, you use it to cut ads you don’t want. In practice, it doesn’t seem to be very effective
Every day, since I learned of its existence from the Adsense staffer, I’ve been spending time trying to weed out by hand the likes of baytsp.com and audiblemagic.com and had tried to cut 109 Adsense advertisers.
Some vanished, some kept re-appearing no matter what I did.
In the meanwhile, from the heart, thanks to everyone who, by coming up with stories and ideas (or by allowing me to publish items which had already appeared : ) and by emailing encouragement, is helping to keep p2pnet online.
Stay tuned : )
Jon Newton
April 17th, 2005 at 8:32 pm
I love p2p.net. I don’t want to harm the service so I will remove my loband link that you gave me as my home on my Firefox browser and I will add it to my Internet Explorer browser. Before this, firefox was on p2p.net as a home then after loband came out (pointed out by you) I added it as home. I have now changed my old ie home (it was http:// ) then the rest nothing (nothing was allowed to track strait from clicking on ie since nothing would show)
I want to help out p2p.net as much as possible. I love this site. I would love to talk to the site owner to see what (if anything) I can do to help. I will register and post my id next.
April 17th, 2005 at 8:32 pm
No worries Jon, I appreciate all you’ve done as do most others, I kind of tuned out google adwords a long time ago on every site that uses them, they really should change the look of them periodically to overcome the desensitization that occurs (but I digress) – keep up the good fight, unspin the spin and good work!
TT
April 17th, 2005 at 8:34 pm
well I changed my mind. I will register later tonight but I will email Jon instead. Guys, lets keep this site well.
April 17th, 2005 at 9:25 pm
It’s sort of a deal with the devil isn’t it? With the ads come those things none of us want. Such as those you have regularly tried to remove from the choices. These ad companies are well aware of the feelings that web hosts have about some of them and with good reason. When they get sneaky and underhanded and reinstall themselves, you know they are up to no good. Many have spyware that remains, even when the ad itself is removed from a webhost and have known a few that had to threaten legal action in order to get it removed, even though the ads were terminated.
Personally, I hate ads. I hate spyware. I do everything in my power to remove their presence from my sight. Nor will I encourage such behavior by purchasing their products if a choice remains. We, the public are bombarded with these intrusive items into our realm by tv, radio, newspaper, billboards, and the net at all times. To the point that it extremely distracting, to say the least.
You run on a shoestring budget as do many others. Something the ad companies are also well aware of and take advantage of. I commend you for your diligence and presentation and understand that without such support you could not remain a presence on the net. I would also at the time say that you are making a difference as many places link back to you when presenting articles of the nature that you run. Indeed it is how I found you. Keep up the good work.
April 17th, 2005 at 9:57 pm
Hey folks: I didn’t mean to imply p2pnet is going down the tubes.
It isn’t. As one door closes, another opens and as we speak, I’m trying to think of other ways to bring a few dollars in. (And please don’t suggest donations or t-shirts. heh) This post was as much to explain what’s happening (or, rather, what isn’t happening) with Adsense.
I dislike advertising as much as anyone. But having said that, I’ll repeat – this site wouldn’t be around without the support of the p2p app companies who I think rent space more to help us stay online than because they get tons of customer referrals.
And on Loband – go for it, if it suits you better. You’ll still be reading p2pnet content which is, after all, what it’s all about. And you’ll still see the text part of the ads. On that, be sure advertisers will quickly adapt to text presentations if and when Loband-type sites catch on.
As for Adsense and other similar companies, “they really should change the look of them periodically to overcome the desensitization that occurs,” as TT points out.
Anyhow – onwards and upwards, as well as sideways and backwards : )
Cheers! And all the best to everyone …
April 18th, 2005 at 4:27 am
Jon, put all the ads you want on this site, every format, every kind. As long as your site will still load if one or more of the adservers doesn’t answer, i wouldn’t care if there were 30 billion ads on this site.
Why not? Well i’m sorry to the net ad industry, but i just don’t see ads. I realised about 6 years ago that in over 7 years of being “on the net” i’d clicked on a grand total of 3 ads. Out of those 3, i didn’t take up any of the offers. They were a long time ago now, but i think the offers were nothing to do with what the ads implied they were, or were only open to americans anyway, or both.
So after deciding that net based ads were just wasting my time and download allowance, i decided to see what i could do to stop them. Eventually i stumbled across a browser, and some settings in it that i could change that would eliminate practically ALL ads. Oh there’s 1% or so that slip past the net, but i’ve taught myself to ignore them anyway.
If anyones interested in what browser i use (no it’s not firefox!) and what i’ve done to it, reply to this or drop me a msg (if you can, I only registered to write this post still not sure how it all works) and i’ll write an article on it if there’s enough interest.
It’s not as if the advertisers would lose any money if i spill the beans. The kind of ppl who don’t want to see any ads at all aren’t likely to ever buy anything because of ads anyway…
On another topic what’s wrong with the idea of tshirts? I’d love to hang around the RIAA offices wearing a t-shirt with “p2p” written on it! I’d buy their staff one each for xmas every year and have them delivered to their offices. I’d send them all cards on a particular date each year celebrating “p2p day”. But then, i’m just evil that way ;o)
April 18th, 2005 at 2:04 pm
Jon, Shmoo here (Boycott-Riaa Admin)
Gonna “snag” some of this from ya and yak about it over at the Boycott-Riaa.com site. Hope you don’t mind. (I have had somewhat similar thoughts/concerns on the “advertisement” issues since I took the helm over there a couple months ago.)
We are both generally the same side of the fence in the war vs the content cartels, but until I read this “word from the publisher,” I didn’t grok how closely our situations as “blog-meisters/site admins” (or whatever the heck we call ourselves) really were.
Shmoo, aka independentmusician (Mike Steely) of [url=http://shmoo.dmusic.com]Electric Gypsy[/url]
and [url=http://boycott-riaa.com]Boycott-Riaa[/url]
April 18th, 2005 at 3:32 pm
When I’m in Linux, I aways click an ad banner or two that are on your page.
1. It makes you money.
2. It takes money away from the advertiser.
I do not mind some advertisements, but it seams that all I see nowdays on the web are ads for product that are dodgy. I always try to click on ads that feature credit cards or low cost mortgages. I like to drain some of their money every now and then.
April 18th, 2005 at 4:32 pm
Tony. Yes please let us know,I think everyone is sick and tired of the intusive ads,likely even the people who make them. Thanks
April 18th, 2005 at 7:41 pm
I agree with Tony on this point.
“On another topic what’s wrong with the idea of tshirts?”
Check out the second shirt down on this page. Hilarious and true.
http://negativland.com/nmol/negmisc.html
I sent them cash-money for that one.
I’d buy a P2PNET.net shirt and wear it proudly.
April 19th, 2005 at 12:24 am
Ok, well since you appear to be the only interested party here’s what i’ve done. Note that you could possibly do this with other browsers, it’s just that when i first started looking into this, firefox and mozilla hadn’t been released yet.
Get Opera, and buy it. If you just download the free version you’ll get it’s own banner ads as well as everything else, which kind of defeats the purpose a little ;o). It does cost somewhere around US$40 or so, so maybe checking out whether your current browser has similar settings to what i’ll mention below might save you some money.
In Opera, go to the Tools menu, select Preferences and Windows. Under Window Handling choose “prefer pages inside window” I’m pretty sure this stops pop-ups appearing in their own little window, ensuring they show up in the tabbed browsing bar in Opera. You can then right-click “close” any extra windows that start to appear if they get past everything else i mention here.
Also under Windows, Pop-ups select Block unwanted pop-ups. This option lets you click on things that will produce a pop-up like a thumbnail that then loads a larger image, but still blocks pop-ups you didn’t actually click on. It also seems to work for pop-unders as well. I’ve never actually seen one of them so i’m not 100% certain ;o)
Still in Preferences go to Multimedia, change the Images option to “show cached images only”. This will make websites a bit more boring without all the graphics, but banner ads are graphics too. It will also speed up browsing a fair bit when you don’t have to wait for all the ads to load. Has much more impact if you’re on dial up than cable tho.
Also be aware that if you’ve been seeing the ads on websites and change this setting, you’ll either need to wait for the cache to clear itself, or empty it manually yourself to get rid of them immediately. Some banner ads still do show up, but it’s like 1% of normal which is still an improvement ;o)
Still in Multimedia, untick the “enable sounds in web pages” and “enable plugins” otions. Ok there are some websites out there that use these, but i’ve found a total of about 5 in over 13 yrs on the net, so i’m not really worried.
If a website you really want to visit (or keep visiting) uses a plugin such as flash, you can “enable plugins” while you visit the site, then disable them again before going anywhere else. Just hope that the flash enabled website doesn’t have any flash enabled ads as well ;o)
I’m pretty sure that’s all there is to it. As i said see if you can do the same things with your current browser so you don’t have to try exporting and importing all your bookmarks and email etc. Though i’m sure the options won’t be called exactly the same things. Opera’s actually changed the names of them all in the last few versions or so as well.
Hope this helps make the net less annoying for you.
Oh yeah, i haven’t solved the spam problem yet, so don’t ask me about that one ;o) All i can suggest is never click on the unsubscribe links, unless you’re in australia and you feel like trying to get the aussie govt to apply it’s laws relating to opt-out options for spam to spammers in foreign countries ;o) Of course most spam doesn’t come from Oz so it’s kinda pointless having these laws but i guess it lets them claim to “have done something about spam”.
If this doesn’t seem to work, let me know, there’s other options i’ve set for my own preferences, especially regards cookies and stuff, one of them might also impact on the more intrusive ads too.
April 19th, 2005 at 4:28 am
Hmm, I do mine entirely different. I won’t go into what I do but let us just say it works well. I use a combination of tools and it is effective.