15 Jan, 2009, Tyche wrote in the 2nd comment:
I found a fix for the problem with Adblock Plus 1.0.1. It even removes the google analytics code that causes the page to load slow.
15 Jan, 2009, Chris Bailey wrote in the 3rd comment:
What ads? I haven't seen any ads. If I saw some, I'd click them for you! :P
15 Jan, 2009, Fizban wrote in the 4th comment:
Chris Bailey said:
What ads? I haven't seen any ads. If I saw some, I'd click them for you! :P
Their between every 3-4 posts in every thread, if you haven't seen them it's due to adblocking software on your end.
15 Jan, 2009, Chris Bailey wrote in the 5th comment:
Ah I see it now. I guess I just somehow managed to over look them. So I just have to click on the links and MUDbytes gets money? Count me in! Do I need to wait awhile after clicking one? (Should I not even be saying this?)
15 Jan, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 6th comment:
The inline ads don't bother me. The banner ads did because they did funky things with formatting. AdSense words I find to be absolutely terribly obnoxious but I don't see them because of AdblockPlus… :wink:
15 Jan, 2009, Davion wrote in the 7th comment:
Tyche said:
I found a fix for the problem with Adblock Plus 1.0.1. It even removes the google analytics code that causes the page to load slow.
Oh? Care to share? If you don't want it public *points to the PMs*.
DavidHaley said:
The inline ads don't bother me. The banner ads did because they did funky things with formatting. AdSense words I find to be absolutely terribly obnoxious but I don't see them because of AdblockPlus… :wink:
Ya, that's why I removed them. Once I noticed it happening more and more, it just annoyed the hell out of me, so now they're nice and tidy within the forums themselves.
Chris Bailey said:
Ah I see it now. I guess I just somehow managed to over look them. So I just have to click on the links and MUDbytes gets money? Count me in! Do I need to wait awhile after clicking one? (Should I not even be saying this?)
Ya, if people click them we get cash. You can say whatever you want. I however am bound by the adsense TOS. I cannot tell you to click them, put arrows up, or anything to point unnecessary attention to them. I'm also, obviously not allowed to click them. I also can't reveal what the cost per click is either. It's a strange TOS. I'm unsure about what the terms are for users clicking ads… they have nothing up there about patronage, or fanatical clicking ;).
15 Jan, 2009, tphegley wrote in the 8th comment:
Davion said:
Oh? Care to share? If you don't want it public *points to the PMs*.
Ya, that's why I removed them. Once I noticed it happening more and more, it just annoyed the hell out of me, so now they're nice and tidy within the forums themselves.
Ya, if people click them we get cash. You can say whatever you want. I however am bound by the adsense TOS. I cannot tell you to click them, put arrows up, or anything to point unnecessary attention to them. I'm also, obviously not allowed to click them. I also can't reveal what the cost per click is either. It's a strange TOS. I'm unsure about what the terms are for users clicking ads… they have nothing up there about patronage, or fanatical clicking ;).
Tyche said:
I found a fix for the problem with Adblock Plus 1.0.1. It even removes the google analytics code that causes the page to load slow.
Oh? Care to share? If you don't want it public *points to the PMs*.
DavidHaley said:
The inline ads don't bother me. The banner ads did because they did funky things with formatting. AdSense words I find to be absolutely terribly obnoxious but I don't see them because of AdblockPlus… :wink:
Ya, that's why I removed them. Once I noticed it happening more and more, it just annoyed the hell out of me, so now they're nice and tidy within the forums themselves.
Chris Bailey said:
Ah I see it now. I guess I just somehow managed to over look them. So I just have to click on the links and MUDbytes gets money? Count me in! Do I need to wait awhile after clicking one? (Should I not even be saying this?)
Ya, if people click them we get cash. You can say whatever you want. I however am bound by the adsense TOS. I cannot tell you to click them, put arrows up, or anything to point unnecessary attention to them. I'm also, obviously not allowed to click them. I also can't reveal what the cost per click is either. It's a strange TOS. I'm unsure about what the terms are for users clicking ads… they have nothing up there about patronage, or fanatical clicking ;).
If they see a bunch of clicks from the same IP in a short amount of time they delete the clicks. If this continues to happen, once you reach $100 they will look at your site and probably ban your adsense account. (if there are a bunch of clicks from the same IP)
15 Jan, 2009, quixadhal wrote in the 9th comment:
Heh, I didn't even notice, as I have used Adblock plus for years. Now that I know they're there, I may add this site as an exception every so often. :)
15 Jan, 2009, Tyche wrote in the 10th comment:
Davion said:
Oh? Care to share? If you don't want it public *points to the PMs*.
Tyche said:
I found a fix for the problem with Adblock Plus 1.0.1. It even removes the google analytics code that causes the page to load slow.
Oh? Care to share? If you don't want it public *points to the PMs*.
Err… I think I did "share". I could share more I guess.
Another nice thing about the Adblock is you can also specifically block all the mud banners too, and the emoticons in the edit window as well. Or particularly annoying graphics coming from different users sites, including mine, if you're so inclined. What it does is filter the page just before the browser goes spinning off threads to load the additional URLs. That makes for much better response time obviously. You can also get rid of the css, which is interesting in itself as I've been toying with creating a extension that instead of merely blocking content would allow one to inject their own content in its place, or in this case create one's own skin.
16 Jan, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 11th comment:
Gagging would be a useful addition for html adds. I tried FoxReplace, but couldn't get it to gag the Retro add on the tmc forums. Would AdBlock+ take care of that?
16 Jan, 2009, ghasatta wrote in the 12th comment:
Mind if I ask what your target dollar amounts are?
Are you doing other forms of 'organic' marketing (link exchange, 3way linking, directory listings, etc)?
You might want to consider something like "Support Mudbytes when you shop at Amazon" type thing. You can get an Amazon associates account and then put a custom product browser somewhere on this site. So, all people have to do is hit your site and find their products using the little widget and you get some small percentage of the sale amount.
Also have you considered accepting donations? A lot of mud community members are cheapskates but I'm sure a certain portion of people would be willing to contribute a few dollars here and there.
Are you doing other forms of 'organic' marketing (link exchange, 3way linking, directory listings, etc)?
You might want to consider something like "Support Mudbytes when you shop at Amazon" type thing. You can get an Amazon associates account and then put a custom product browser somewhere on this site. So, all people have to do is hit your site and find their products using the little widget and you get some small percentage of the sale amount.
Also have you considered accepting donations? A lot of mud community members are cheapskates but I'm sure a certain portion of people would be willing to contribute a few dollars here and there.
16 Jan, 2009, The_Fury wrote in the 13th comment:
I have been supporting the adverts since being added, i think that a little advertising here, to support some advertising elsewhere is a great idea, and one that can only help to grow our community and bring attention to muds in general. I know MB's administrators cannot encourage anything in respect to the ads, but i can, a couple of clicks a week is not going to hurt anyones time or bandwidth and in the long run it is those of us who run games who will benefit from this. So get clicking, because we have nothing to lose from doing this.
16 Jan, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 14th comment:
Tyche said:
You can also get rid of the css, which is interesting in itself as I've been toying with creating a extension that instead of merely blocking content would allow one to inject their own content in its place, or in this case create one's own skin.
I have an extension that does just that – it's on my home computer and I don't remember what it's called. I installed it when I had, err, "artistic" differences regarding the formatting of one or two sites. :wink:
Scandum said:
I tried FoxReplace, but couldn't get it to gag the Retro add on the tmc forums. Would AdBlock+ take care of that?
AdBlock Plus lets you block with wildcards, so if you can specify a wildcard for it, it would work for you.
16 Jan, 2009, Igabod wrote in the 15th comment:
I made the decision to just click the adverts a couple days after I noticed them the first time, I kinda forgot to keep it up though cause I had a few days off after that and just forgot about it. I'll resume my fanatical clicking seeing as how I have nothing but time while I'm at work. Hooray for Mudbytes!!
16 Jan, 2009, Guest wrote in the 16th comment:
If you guys are going to do that, be careful about it. Too many clicks from the same IP and Google will ban the account in a heartbeat. They're not shy about it either.
16 Jan, 2009, The_Fury wrote in the 17th comment:
Samson said:
If you guys are going to do that, be careful about it. Too many clicks from the same IP and Google will ban the account in a heartbeat. They're not shy about it either.
I click one advert once a week or there abouts, i do not go over board with it.
16 Jan, 2009, Zeno wrote in the 18th comment:
17 Jan, 2009, Tyche wrote in the 19th comment:
Scandum said:
Gagging would be a useful addition for html adds. I tried FoxReplace, but couldn't get it to gag the Retro add on the tmc forums. Would AdBlock+ take care of that?
That text retro ad on TMC is regular html that's part of the page. Adblock only handles URLs.
You'd need an extension that allowed one to specify regular expressions to filter out that sort of content.
20 Jan, 2009, Davion wrote in the 20th comment:
Samson said:
If you guys are going to do that, be careful about it. Too many clicks from the same IP and Google will ban the account in a heartbeat. They're not shy about it either.
Nope! And the hammer just came down :S. No need to worry about the ads cluttering the page any more.
Random Picks
First off, what we're trying to do. We want to drive a lot more traffic to MudBytes in the coming year. To do that, we need the money for advertising. It's an expensive endeavour! Over the last 2 years or so, you guys have provided us with an impressive amount of content and continue to do so at an astounding rate. Charging for any of MudBytes services is something I don't ever want to see. That said, I don't want to offer paid advertising spots for MUDs (MUDs are expensive enough to run :P.) To that effect, we have offered a lot of free advertising for you guys (just rounded 9 000 000 rotations of the banners.) So I figured, why not have google flip the bill. So far AdSense has generated a whopping $15. Our click-through ratio is fairly low.
I'm happy with the ads as they are now. I don't really want to bombard you guys with ads, especially ones for mud facials. I'm going to leave them as-is for another month, and if the response to them is still relativity low I'll just remove them. No sense having something there taking up space if it does next to nothing. When/if that happens, I'll have to come up with something else for getting our name out there. If you guys have any questions, concerns, criticism or just want to shoot us some props, feel free to post them here! I'd love to know what you guys think, after all, you're the reason we're here.