[ArnoVanLumig]

Slightly unrelated: Why don't more sites allow hiding of ads for a small fee? Over the last year I've probably donated a lot more money to sites than all advertising revenue I would have generated were I not using AdBlock.

What I would like to see is a kind of browser extension that automatically donates a (very) small amount to every site I visit per page view. In return, the site would not show me any ads. Safety would be a concern though.

Of course this would not be good for Google at all, so they might want to block such an extension too...

[Kesty]

Because in the ads world more users is equals to more money.

A small fee for hiding ads will not generate a small revenue stream but, at the same time, decrease the value of your adspace.

And selling a consistent and growing userbase is easier that keeping a consistent and growing revenue from ads-free subscriptions.

[ArnoVanLumig]

I don't quite understand.

If I visit a web page that has an ad then that might net the website owner $0.001 (or something along those lines, I have no real figures). I would personally have no problem paying $0.002 per page view to get an ad-free site. No subscription, just pay a very small amount per view or get ads.

From my point of view, which is probably naive, the website owner would rather have $0.002 instead of $0.001 per page view.

Actually transferring fractions of a cent is of course difficult, but there are ways to work around that.

[JacobJans]

Yes, your point of view is naive.

On many of my sites, I earn at least 12 cents per pageview, on average, and sometimes as much as 50 cents.

Because I don't charge our users, I don't have to deal with customer service, payment processing, and many other things related to collecting money.

While I haven't ruled out letting subscribers pay us in the future, it would add a huge layer of complexity to our business.

Additionally, if subscribers where to pay $.0002 per page view, guess who would get all of the money? The credit card company! And I definitely don't want to be in the business of figuring out how to do micropayments.

Advertising is simple, it works, and actually provides value to users when done right. Furthermore, as a publisher, I have the right to build a sustainable business.

People who remove ads are directly attacking the ability of any publishing business to exist. Not cool.

[Kesty]

If you are not talking about subscription I could see that happening but there is not a way to do that right now.

The best way to do this would be a webservice where you can put some money and affiliates website can check if you are logged to that service and charge you trough that while not showing you any ads.

There are alot of thing to check: - The user has to set an amount of money he is willing to pay per Day/Week/Month. - Decide what to do when the cap is reached. Showing the ads, alert the user that they have reached their cap or both. - Different websites can charge a very different sum per impression based on the scope, location,topic and number of ads in one page.

It's not an easy thing to do, with not an easy solution but It might be an interesting startup idea.

[lmm]

Taking money is a lot of effort compared to just setting up google ads. There have been attempts to do something like you suggest - one of these reader-type sites (readability?) used to collect money for content creators as compensation for hiding their ads.