[Guest98123]

Does anyone else here make their living from advertising? Well over 50% of my users run ad block. I get 1.5 million page views a day on my primary site (4,000 Alexa), and the advertisements cover my AWS bill, and pay me an average salary. That's it, and the profits are dropping every year as more people use ad block.

It's scary. I have a million users, run the business extremely lean with just myself, and I'm barely scrapping by at the moment. If I can't survive, how is everyone else going to survive? Don't get me wrong, I use ad block too for obvious reasons, but we're going to see more and more businesses closing up shop unless there is a better way to monetize content online in the near future.

[belorn]

Let me ask you a single question: How would you react if the advertisement your site distribute contains malware.

Will users be compensated and get repairs paid? Since its very costly and likely company threatening, would you pay a insurance which would cut into profits even more. What kind of risk mitigation do you employ to lower users risk and your own liability when deciding which ads runs on your site?

[alkonaut]

There are only 3 options (plus shutting it down) 1) Native advertising/sponsored articles/affiliate revenue or whatever applies. 2) subscription/paywall. 3) Proper advertising (that isn't blocked). You contact the advertiser, you put a sponsor message/banner/whatever on the site and you agree on a price. No targeting, no tracking.

I think a majority of the sites that are ad-funded today will have to find a new working business model or go under.

I hope there will be a renaissance in online advertising where decent advertising lets content be "free" in the sense that I'm not paying with my integrity and information.

[hackuser]

> There are only 3 options (plus shutting it down) 1) Native advertising/sponsored articles/affiliate revenue or whatever applies. 2) subscription/paywall. 3) Proper advertising (that isn't blocked).

Micropayments are another option; Brave has implemented them.

[JohnTHaller]

Lots of people have tried micropayments lots of times and they've consistently failed. A single yet-another-Chromium-based-browser that doesn't even support extensions probably isn't going to fix it.

[alkonaut]

If people aren't willing to pay money for a service then they probably aren't willing to pay with integrity/information either - if they can avoid it. So failed paywall and micropayment experiments are probably a sign that the web site has an unsustainable business model.

A better system for micropayments would certainly help here though - most people who won't pay likely don't want to register an account at a third party service just to pay a dime to a web site.

I think this problem will be solved simply by the fact that traditional ad (network) revenue will dry up.

[alkonaut]

Good point - cat 2) should be any form of direct payment (sell products or services, sell access as subscription or micropayments, accept donations, whatever)

[bazillion]

If your site has a lot of image content, I'd love for you to try out PLEENQ (http://pleenq.com). It doesn't inconvenience your users, and in fact helps them buy things directly from your images. You can also use it on top of any of the advertising you're currently using (or even donations if you move to that).

Here's a site using it for their lifestyle blog -- hover over the first image (desktop only): https://www.theskinnyconfidential.com/2016/11/04/bridal-show...

Email me at [e-mail] if you have any questions!

[yellow_viper]

wow that is some next gen advertising right there, my has a image sharing startup (https://itsosticky.com). I'll let him know.

Does it need to be mapped to each product or can it do that itself?

[bazillion]

They need to mapped individually, but it's a really simple interface to do it. I've also just added a templating system that allows you to customize all aspects of the popup, and am about to go live with a split test system that lets you split test multiple items to the same region.

[devopsproject]

AdBlock is trying with their "acceptable ads" option being the default.

Brave browser is also a good idea but I doubt it will gain traction. It should have been a plugin.

After being frustrated with the lack of "decent" blockers for my other devices (android, iphone, tablets, etc) I started blocking network wide now. It will be difficult to go back.

[tomjen3]

Almost certainly that is the case. Look into things like Patreon, etc and see if they can make you more money a million users at say 1/100 paying 5$ a month is a nice income.

You might also want to look into cutting out the middle man and doing sponsored posts, or display ads directly from the providers - or if not make sure that any books mentioned has Amazon referal links.

[TekMol]

I can relate to that. I run websites myself and it's surprising how many users you need to make a living.

Your $5 per 70k views would be $0.07 per 1000 views. Are those 70k views the number that adsense shows you or the number that Analytics shows you? Because that is a huge difference. Adsense views do not include users with ad blockers. On my sites, 66% of the users use ad blockers.

From what I read, you run something like a forum? Is the traffic is mostly returning visitors?

[fwn]

The difference between the adsense data and the analytics data shows not the amount of users with content blockers but only those who block ads without also blocking trackers. (At least as long as it's one of those standard analytics services.)

[pryelluw]

Id like to try and solve this puzzle. Shoot me an email. No bs or strings.

[driverdan]

If you have that much traffic you should be able to sell and serve ads yourself, bypassing blocking software.

[hx87]

Paywall?

[Guest98123]

It's a strong community of users, so I'm going to try the donation route soon, with bonuses for donators.

I tried having someone well connected in my industry directly sell advertising campaigns. They were able to increase ad revenue by about 30k per year. However, I needed to pay them, so at the end of the day it didn't have any benefit, and I went back to using ad networks.

Edit:

I run another site as well that has 5,000 daily unique users and 70,000 daily page views. It has two advertisements, one above the fold on the homepage, and one closer to the footer. It earns about $5 per day. That's it. I don't think many people understand how low earnings are for most sites.

Lots of publishers have been adding more advertisements, and trying to block users with ad block enabled, and it's not because they're greedy, money grabbers, trying to steal all of your information. Most of them are just trying to stay afloat as the ship sinks.

There is not enough money going to content online. How much do you donate to HN, Reddit, StackOverflow, and hundreds of other sites and services you use on a regular basis? I donate $0, and the majority of other people do the same. That's a problem, and we need a solution.

[belorn]

I personally really like when creators goes the patreon model where you as a creator pick a hard line at what salary is needed and then leave it up to the community to fulfill the requirement.

My best example of this is a very nice painted webcomic that updated once a month, and viewers reached his 4.5k goal so he could hire an additional person to help make it two comics a month. It makes the implicit contract between viewer and creator explicit, and readers would instantly know why and who to blame if the comic went back to only update once a month again.

[HalfwayToDice]

"5,000 daily unique users, 70,000 daily page views, earns about $5 per day."

If your traffic is mostly US/UK/EU, then you are doing something very very wrong to be only earning $5 per day.

[Guest98123]

All of my sites are fairly diverse. US is the largest region, but it only comes in around 15% of total users.

[logfromblammo]

That will increase the ratio of revenue-generating users to gratis users by reducing the overall number of users.

I recommend implementing a friction-free way for people to support your site, at whatever level they may feel comfortable with. Then you can occasionally remind readers that the continued quality of the site depends on you being able to pay for both it and your rent/mortgage.

Make a page that allows people to give you money via Patreon, Amazon Payments, PayPal, Bitcoin, Rixty, Venmo, and whatever else may be convenient for you. As the revenue from those sources allow, gradually remove the ads, and try to make it obvious that some ads went away because of increased direct patronage.

If you still want some ad revenue, you will probably need some way to do direct ad sales, and embed your paid endorsement into your content somehow, in a manner that is not off-putting to your audience, while also publicly disclosing that you were paid to promote something.