Internet Business Blog

Adblock Plus is currently the one of a number of Firefox add-on recommended by mozilla.org and it’s not difficult to see why. As well as being faced with potentially thousands of advertisements in their daily lives, website visitors also face an increasing amount of distraction from core content as more websites become monetised.

Using some form of ad blocking software can make for a more pleasant browsing experience, but there are those who take issue with having the ads on their websites being blocked whilst their content is freely consumed. Whilst I’ve participated in discussions about visitors viewing ads as recompense for the webmaster’s efforts, I hadn’t seen anyone actually take action to discourage it until now.

Danny Carlton has taken a very active stance against ads on his websites being blocked by users of the Adblock Plus plugin. In fact, Danny has taken it even further than just blocking these users and blocked all Firefox users completely from his websites.

If you’re an Adblock Plus user, how would you feel about being blocked from a website that opposed your blocking of their ads?

Try www.articlewagon.com in your Adblocking Firefox browser and you’ll be presented with the following instead of the regular website content.

This page cannot be displayed because ad blocking software has been detected.

I can appreciate the argument against ad blockers, but I also appreciate how much they can improve user experience. I’ll admit that I use the Adblock Plus Firefox add-on. Not only do I find it improves my general browsing experience by removing the more annoying ads, but it also prevents me from accidentally clicking on my own ads. There are even a few websites for which if it wasn’t for Adblock Plus I wouldn’t be able to bear them at all.

As an ad publisher, does it bother me that people might be evading ads shown on my websites? No, because I don’t rely on ads being seen in any way. I am a Google AdSense publisher, but I’m not dependent upon the income it brings in.

Let’s not forget that there are other forms of advertising that aren’t as intrusive, aren’t as easily blocked and aren’t rendered useless if they were to be blocked. Take Text Link Ads for example, the ‘ads’ are simply text-based links with no reference made to any central website (such as the TLA website itself) so they can’t be blocked by looking for a common denominator unless all links are blocked. Even if they were able to be blocked, they would still be visible to search engine spiders and still provide value to the advertisers in the form of link popularity.

Since the AdBlock detection process relies on JavaScript, simply disabling JavaScript using the Web Developer add-on for Firefox renders the blocking harmless and allows the visitor to view any pages that use such countermeasures.

So is ad blocking akin to stealing? Are people whose browsers are unable to render adverts (e.g. they use a screen reader because they’re disabled in some way) thieves because they consume content without ads?

I understand the concept of going into a shop and paying for goods, but if a website doesn’t make it clear that the non-blocking of ads is a requirement for usage then what’s a visitor to do? If visitors aren’t first made to agree to view ads as compensation for content consumption, are they really stealing when they don’t?

Personally, I think that preventing people who use adblocking software from visiting a website is short-sighted. Webmasters should be looking to diversify their website monetisation methods so that they withstand the shortcomings of each individual method and bolster each other.

Do you use an ad blocker? How do you feel about stealing from people? If you’re an advertiser or an ad publisher, how do you feel about people deliberately blocking your ads?

Technorati Tags: Danny Carlton, Adblock Plus, Google AdSense, personal crusade

My brief experiment into building a non-Internet marketing list for profit has come to a relatively clean point after running a 2-month Google AdWords campaign as the primary source of traffic.

The target market was a traditionally off-line, real world industry that consists of UK home business and shop owners alike. From the offset, I knew it was going to be a challenge to convince such an audience to spend their money on information-based products, but it was something I wanted to experience for myself.

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I say “launched”, but it’s really more of a case of it quietly being made publicly available. After the amount of hype surrounding the launches of some of the more well-known Internet marketing products, this is positively spider footsteps territory. That’s not to say I haven’t got a few ideas for promotion lined up, but more on that some other time.

So what is it? To sum it up, it’s a handy desktop keyword tool for creating permutations of input keywords. It’s especially useful for pay per click advertisers and those using website generation tools.

What makes it different from any other keyword permutation tool? Well, for a start it’s very easy to use and then there’s a little twist that I hinted at previously. No, I’m not ready to tell yet, but it’s a fantastic proposition for owners of mailing lists. Again, more on that when the time is right.

I’d actually developing the application a couple of months ago, but it’s really been the last 20% of the project that’s taken 80% of the time. To be honest, as a PHP developer, developing a desktop application on my own was always going to be a challenge and there were moments when my thoughts thrashed about trying to produce the killer application. It certainly wasn’t easy avoiding the overdevelopment that leads to a later and later launch.

I’d originally developed the website payment system to be PayPal based as I prefer instant payments (who doesn’t :)), but then the issue of affiliates cropped up and whilst I had thought about integrating my own affiliate system I knew that I was at risk of scope creep (continually adding additional functionality for a better product). So, at the last minute I replaced the PayPal payment route with ClickBank. Sure, there’s the disadvantages of delayed payments, currency exchange charges and the $49.99 initial charge, but with it comes the benefits of an established referral system with plenty of affiliates.

The project so far has been quite a learning experience. There were certainly a few steps along the way that could have been made easier with the proper guidance so maybe you’ll see in a future $7 guide!

Anyway, do check out Keyword Permutator, laugh at my video, buy a copy and promote it to your lists for a 40% share!
A special thanks to all of the beta testers for your valuable feedback.

Technorati Tags: Keyword Permutator, keyword tools, pay per click, website generators

I’m currently trying to build a list of newsletter subscribers in a non-Internet marketing niche, primarily through the use of a Google AdWords campaign offering a free info-product. If my ad-writing is on target, the free product should be just what qualified searchers are looking for and once on the list, each opt-in subscriber will receive a series of emails with useful advice and my promotions.

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Someone recently blogged about the poor quality of some of the email newsletter they receive from Internet marketers. In fact, I’m sure there have actually been many people who have blogged about such a thing in recent times. With the ever-increasing number of info-products proclaiming “The Money Is In The List“, it’s not surprising that there’s a corresponding growth in the number of poorly operated mailing lists.

However, let’s not stay in a negative mindset because I want to tell you about the most informative newsletter I’m subscribed to; it’s actually a list that I’ve subscribed to for over a year and a half. In that time, I’ve not been bombarded with promotions for other people’s products, I’ve not even been emailed on a regular basis, but when those emails do arrive I read them because they are genuinely very useful.

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