Ads & Ad Blockers
As you might have noticed, there are advertisements running on the site. I run these ads to earn income to pay for things like rent, health insurance, food, heat, car insurance and all of the other necessities. The ads also pay for the site’s bandwidth and hosting costs. I wanted to clarify a few things about the ads and the possible use of ad blockers by some of my readers.
Please note that I do not endorse any products that come up in the advertisements. I don’t pay attention to what comes up and you should never assume that I endorse anything simply because you see an ad about it. The ads run automatically and I have no filters set up to control which ads run on the site.
The Ads
On this site you’ll find CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions) image ads and CPC (Cost Per Click) ads.
I get paid per 1000 impressions for the CPM image ads. Each time an image ad loads in your browser, it counts as one impression. So, as you can imagine, it’s necessary to generate a lot of impressions to make enough money from the CPM ads to pay for the site’s costs and to pay me so I can pay my own bills.
The CPC ads (Google Adsense and Vibrant Media) pay me per click. You may also see an occasional interstitial ad, from time to time.
Please note that if you do a search you will see Google text ads at the top and bottom of the search results page. Those text ads appear in Google’s default colors and they are also CPC (Cost Per Click) ads.
Ad Placement & Coloring
I hope you will notice that I have tried to be very careful about how ads are placed on this site. I have kept the image ads away from the actual article text. You will find image ads at the very top of the page, in the sidebar and at the bottom of the page after the article.
You will not see image ads loading in the article text itself. Instead I’ve placed Google and Vibrant Media ads in black text in the article page.
Why black? Because I don’t want to disturb you while you read. Keeping the text ads in black means that you can see them but they aren’t in an obnoxious color that detracts from your experience by constantly grating on your eyes. The Vibrant Media ads default color is green, but I had that changed to black immediately after the ads went live on the site.
I’ve taken great care to try to keep the articles easy on the eyes while also trying to reasonably monetize the site to cover my costs and pay my bills.
Ad Blockers
Ads Pay the Bills
I know that some people really hate advertising on sites so they use ad blockers to filter out all of the ads. If you are one of those people I hope you will please consider turning off your ad blocker or white listing this site in it. As I noted above, it takes a lot of ad impressions to generate enough money to cover the site’s hosting and bandwidth costs, and to pay me so I can pay my own bills. So each time an ad is blocked, it really hurts the site (and me) financially.
Cookie Blockers Instead of Ad Blockers
If privacy is a concern for you, please consider using a cookie blocker or cookie manager instead of an ad blocker. Blocking cookies while still letting ads load in your browser is perfectly fine and does not affect the money I earn with the ads. There are numerous cookie management tools available for most browsers. So do a bit of Googling and I’m sure you can find a cookie manager that will work well for you.
Make a Donation
If you decide that you really don’t want to turn off your ad blocker then I humbly request that you consider making a donation to the blog by buying me a cup of coffee once per month. You can do so by clicking the coffee cup in the sidebar. It doesn’t need to be an expensive Starbucks cup of coffee either. I’ve always preferred the cheaper coffee to that stuff anyway. Heh.
I think that asking for a donation from those who are running ad blockers is a pretty fair and reasonable request given that this site does have bandwidth and hosting costs. And it also takes a fair amount of time to write and produce the content that you are enjoying here.
Thanks!
I thank you in advance for understanding and I’m very glad to have you as a reader. Thanks so much.
