Testing ads on free sites

page 1 of 8123...78next »

Testing ads on free sites

michal frackowiak 23 Feb 2009 14:39

This week we will be running an experiment involving placing small number of contextual ads on a free wikis. To support our servers, a lot of development time and all the growing costs it takes to provide solid and fast wiki hosting, we are looking for optimal ways to keep Wikidot as free and open as possible, and to provide service to both our free and paying subscribers. And keep everyone enjoying using Wikidot.

We will begin placing ads shortly to see if it's worth investigating or not. Ads will be kept to the minimum (we will be only showing them to a subset of non-logged users), so probably you and your regular users will not even notice them. All Pro and Educational sites will obviously not be showing ads. Also sites that use AdSense on their own will not be affected.

We dare think there is a way to keep everyone happy, including you, Wikidot users, your visitors, ad publishers and us, developers and maintainers of Wikidot. We will try to make the ad system behave much smarter than simply inserting ads in a brute-force or random way, and we still want to follow our idea of not polluting sites by ads.

The tests will finish by the end of the week and then we will decide if we want to continue displaying ads. We are open to all comments and opinions — the last thing we want is to do things that are not acceptable by our users.

We will keep you informed about the progress!

UPDATE: I think we have found a good balance for our ad system. More details are available on the advertising page.

---

Michał Frąckowiak @ Wikidot Inc.
Visit my blog at michalf.me

Last edited on 12 Mar 2009 11:25 by michal frackowiak + Show more

Re: Testing ads on free sites

James Kanjo 23 Feb 2009 20:45

Noooooooooooo!
*takes breath*
Noooooooooooooooooooooooo!

I don't usually like to criticise the plans put forward by you guys, but I will make a special exception this time.

The absolutely critical and only reason I chose Wikidot when I started a wiki (that no longer exists) two years ago, was the fact that the FREE plan (which was the only plan at the time) was also Advertisement Free. Sure there's a growing cost to maintain Wikidot, but isn't that why you introduced Pro plans? Okay, here are my three points:

1. Competition — Wikidot is one of the extreme few (if not the ONLY) wiki provider without ads on the free option, making it very competitive;
2. Company Income — Can be made from the pro accounts to maintain Wikidot;
3. Consumer Professional Outlook — Free consumer's wikis will suddenly look unprofessional and will confuse the audience of the wiki.

---

λ James Kanjo
_{Blog | Wikidot Expert | λ and Proud
Web Developer | HTML | CSS | JavaScript}

Re: Testing ads on free sites

Flemming 23 Feb 2009 20:48

hi Michael

"This week we will be running an experiment involving placing small number of contextual ads on a free wikis." I have a few questions.

How do you define a "small number"?
Will this hit all free wikidot wikis?
How do you determine the context?
Will this hit wikidot lite users?

regards Flemming

Last edited on 23 Feb 2009 20:52 by Flemming + Show more

Re: Testing ads on free sites

BrodiesTraining 23 Feb 2009 21:03

I thought this had no ads

Re: Testing ads on free sites

WikiWealth 23 Feb 2009 21:56

I completely understand the need to increase revenue and profits. I also choose Wikidot because it was the only non-ad wiki service, which allowed pages to be far more professional. I'm a pro member, so this change doesn't affect me, so I'm just offering some ideas.

1. Maybe it is better to increase Wikidot's share of revenue from non-pro members from 20% to 50%. This would help a bit. The problem is, if you don't make money on ads, then you have no reason to put ads on your website.

2. If you must put ads, maybe share revenue with the website creator; again, a 50/50 split. If Wikidot and content creators are both making money, then maybe this helps with a transition. It's a classic agency theory…. us versus them. Content creators would have incentives to create content and sites with a focus on better ad placement. Simple ads placed in a given location may get overlooked (aka: ad blindness).

I hope you find a good compromise,

Dave

---

WikiWealth.com - Stock, Fund, Commodity & Currency Research | SWOT Analysis, WACC

Re: Testing ads on free sites

Gabrys 23 Feb 2009 22:04

@Wiki Wealth

2. If you must put ads, maybe share revenue with the website creator; again, a 50/50 split. If Wikidot and content creators are both making money, then maybe this helps with a transition.

We're all hands for this, and this is exactly why we had introduced the AdSense API — to let users earn money (and we take 1/5 from it). But we can't introduce this model without user activity, we can't pay them money if they haven't decided to join the program. In fact, we wouldn't consider attaching ads to free wiki if users used the AdSense API and attach the ads themselves (choosing place and size of ads). So actually we gave the choice to our users.

---

Piotr Gabryjeluk
visit my blog

Re: Testing ads on free sites

ErichSteinboeck 23 Feb 2009 22:10

michal frackowiak, 8 May 2007, 11:16 +0200, We will not pollute your Wikis with advertisements:
“The title says it all … So… your wikis will remain free and clean (from ads) as they are now.”

www.wikidot.com, Explore features, heading “NO ADS:”
“We will never ever pollute your wiki with unwanted ads, banners, pop-ups. Unlike most online wiki providers we do not want to earn money this way.”

Michal, I sincerly hope that you will be able to keep what you promised.

Re: Testing ads on free sites

Gabrys 23 Feb 2009 22:36

@ErichSteinboeck

We may debate on the actual term "pollute". Is adding ten ads to your wiki polluting it with ads? Possibly yes. Is adding bar at the bottom of page (like on http://snippets.wikidot.com/) for SOME FRACTION of your non-logged-in visitors polluting the wiki (with ads)? We will do our best NOT to pollute any wiki with ads, even if we will place some ads to wikis. And as I stated before, we will encourage users to use the AdSense, to allow THEM to place (possibly also remove) and filter the ads.

Hope this helps.

PS: The week stated in Michal's post is a test period. There is quite big possibility, that the ads won't be introduced for longer time. Also I think it would be nice to actually let admins of wikis disable the ads on their wish. It would be then their choice (ad-free wiki VS support my wiki provider).

---

Piotr Gabryjeluk
visit my blog

Last edited on 23 Feb 2009 22:40 by Gabrys + Show more

Re: Testing ads on free sites

Craig Macomber 23 Feb 2009 22:36

If you have issues with this, simply sign up for google ad-sense for your site, and don't put up any ads (or put 1 on a hidden page somewhere). Then you will not get the ads. Simple. Or, you could put the ads where you want them and get almost all of the money from them. You can make money with a free account!

I'm surprised they got this far developing free open-source software for all of us and free hosting without some income from free users. If you are really put off by the ads, and are unwilling to pay the minimum (2$ a month!), and the trick I mentioned above is not good enough, you can find someone else willing to host the wikidot software for you (and I bet you could not get better prices)

I do however agree with ErichSteinboeck; Thanks for letting us know whats up, and I understand why it is happening, but we were told it would not happen several times in very clear language, and I find violating such a promise is a bad sign.

Re: Testing ads on free sites

cold_blood3d 23 Feb 2009 23:10

After a year of being here, I've learned that Wikidot truly cares for its users. Though ads might anger some, I think this is in our best interest. Wikidot's offerings, both free and pro, are far more generous than could be found anywhere else and must have many expenses. If such as service is going to be sustainable over the long-term, ads are reasonable if Pro sales aren't enough, or if you want a secondary income to rely on. Wikidot isn't a Google with unlimited resources, so we should realistic. The proposed plan sounds ok, but is somewhat vague. Hopefully it will just be simple text ads, and you will let the user style them if they like. How will placement work?—can we see a test page? Will be interested in seeing how this turns out.

i would much rather pay for my site or have to host some (wikidot locally managed not too intrusive) ads than invest myself heavily in wikidot only to see you fold because you're unwilling to have a viable business because people think everything should be free.

(from http://www.wikidot.com/forum/t-9107)

that's basically how if feel too. often times i've thought to myself "this is too good to be true". But i think Timothy's suggestion (below) of encouraging users to enable the ads would be a worthwhile experiment, and you wouldn't be breaking past promises.

Last edited on 24 Feb 2009 00:17 by cold_blood3d + Show more

page 1 of 8123...78next »