[ulisesrmzroche]

You got the value because you were able to read through the thing already. However, the other side of the argument is that people are getting turned off immediately and never read the content, so they don't get any value at all, and worse, get pissed because the footer was all up on their face.

Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that this sort of footer is a good case for a GUI anti-pattern. It literally hurts your sales.

[rexreed]

That's exactly what I'm saying -- I read through it all because with my scripts turned off, the footer didn't appear. I didn't even realize it was there! So, yes, case in point - maybe I wouldn't have read it at all with the footer, although it's hard to tell now. When others started commenting on the footer, I had to go back to the page, turn on the scripts and then I was like, "ok, that's big!".

The content of the article was good nonetheless, but I don't think the footer added to it, and probably took away from it a bit.