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[Necro] Pop-unders on Wowhead
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Post by
Wildhorn
Btw... while we are about talking money... how much per year it cost you to run wowhead? (i mean beside your salary, like bandwidth, hosting, etc)
Post by
Malgayne
I'm actually not sure I'm at liberty to say. Technically that's proprietary information that I believe ZAM would prefer to keep internal. This whole dialogue I'm having with you right now is something of a breach of protocol as well, but I think the Internet is changing, and we're at a point right now where transparency in business and communication with your customers is the only way to succeed.
You guys are my friends, and I don't want stuff to happen without giving you a peek into what's going on.
Post by
Tanae
I understand having to pay the bills, but this is a bad circle you are entering in to. The pop ups/unders whatever are annoying enough that people get fed up with all that popping that they go elsewhere, meaning you will lose a lot of people and make it even less of an interest for those wanting to advertise.
Post by
diska
I'm using 2 monitors connected to my computer. The primary (left) screen runs WoW in a maximized window, the secondary (right) screen runs stuff like my browser. When I'm getting the "pop-under" ad it opens fullscreen on my left monitor, blocking the view on WoW completely, so it's being quite intrusive.
At the same time, the favicon for my wowhead shortcut in my bookmark bar will be replaced by the favicon of the advertiser (think it's the poker one, looks a bit like a biljart ball with a dollar sign on it). Fortunately Firefox will restore that the next time I click the shortcut.
Personally I would welcome a donation / subscriber system. I use wowhead all the time, I don't mind paying a few bucks for it.
Post by
Aristodamos
Personally I would welcome a donation / subscriber system. I use wowhead all the time, I don't mind paying a few bucks for it.
+1
I'm paying more than 50e/month for my accounts. 10 bucks more wouldn't be a problem. At least give subscribers an add-free option. Please... :)
Post by
pelf
Personally I would welcome a donation / subscriber system. I use wowhead all the time, I don't mind paying a few bucks for it.
+2, as I've said before.
Post by
Blackboy0
Man... I honestly
hate
pop-ups, but if it's keeping Wowhead from falling into the Economical Hurricane of Total Destruction, I'm all for them. I also look forward to the Donation/Subscription system... I wouldn't mind donating to my favorite Database site
of all time
!
Post by
pmpage
I too, would like to register my disapproval of these pop-under ads. For starters, they're intrusive and annoying, secondly the content they're delivering is completely inappropriate to both WoW and MMORPG gaming in general. Many of the advertisments have been for online gambling, and given the number of under 18's who play WoW and use wowhead as a resource, I'm surprised you've risked it.
Finally, the biggest reason I distrust these type of adds is because of their behavour, they're often used as a malware delivery system, both knowingly and unknowingly and as such, pose a huge risk for people using the site. Is your intention to simply prevent international users from visiting Wowhead?
At the end of the day, I can appreciate your site needs to generate revenue to cover costs but there has to be a better method than online advertising.
Post by
Wildhorn
I'm actually not sure I'm at liberty to say. Technically that's proprietary information that I believe ZAM would prefer to keep internal. This whole dialogue I'm having with you right now is something of a breach of protocol as well, but I think the Internet is changing, and we're at a point right now where transparency in business and communication with your customers is the only way to succeed.
You guys are my friends, and I don't want stuff to happen without giving you a peek into what's going on.
I understand... just wanted to know how much money it was taking to run a website like wowhead, thats all.
Post by
blademeld
This is very true, and the subject of much debate and discussion here at Wowhead. I will craft a full response to this when I'm not posting from my phone, but I want you to know I am with you 100%.
You're posting from your phone and you have perfect grammar.
You. Are. My. New. God.
Clearing your cache.
Switching computers.
Switching browsers.
Re-setting your IP.
As far as I know there's no OTHER way of limiting the number of ads we send you, so if you wind up switching IPs a lot during the day (as
blademeld
does) you'll see the ad more than usual. I'm sorry for that.
Things I do on the list:
Change locations (which resets my IP)
Change computers
Change browsers
Reset cache
Also, I'm 4 Korean teenagers who play at 6 hour intervals :P
I'm actually not sure I'm at liberty to say. Technically that's proprietary information that I believe ZAM would prefer to keep internal. This whole dialogue I'm having with you right now is something of a breach of protocol as well, but I think the Internet is changing, and we're at a point right now where transparency in business and communication with your customers is the only way to succeed.
You guys are my friends, and I don't want stuff to happen without giving you a peek into what's going on.
This is often true now that everything can be found on the web including such schemes. I just wish that everyone understood that.
Also, I should visit the Site Feedback more often, Malgayne called everyone friends. (this is going into my sig btw)
Personally I would welcome a donation / subscriber system. I use wowhead all the time, I don't mind paying a few bucks for it.
+1
I'm paying more than 50e/month for my accounts. 10 bucks more wouldn't be a problem. At least give subscribers an add-free option. Please... :)
The first thing they have to calculate is "How much do we charge them, and at what intervals?"
and "Would that be enough to compensate for the loss of revenue via ads?"
Another thing would be account security, it's easy enough to pay for one account and set the account name and password to your friends and family, which would lead to revenue loss.
Post by
pelf
You. Are. My. New. God.
Get a phone that's easier to type on? :)
The first thing they have to calculate is "How much do we charge them, and at what intervals?"
and "Would that be enough to compensate for the loss of revenue via ads?"
I would think that the
individual
user's contribution to their overall ad revenue would be significantly lower than any reasonable amount they might charge for premium access. Unless I'm mistaken, ad revenue is dependent upon volume, more than individuals.
Post by
18117
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
echoback
+2, as I've said before.
+3. Of *course* I'd rather have it for free, but if it has come to the point where you at Wowhead are unable to continue without the extra revenue then I am more than happy to pay a subscription fee. I'd rather have the site remain in business than not have access at all, and pop-unders are absolutely not a permanent option, due to the aforementioned security issues and irrelevance to my interests.
I think you are going about this in the best way possible, and by talking with your users about the issue and giving us the option of feedback speaks volumes about your commitment to your customer, paying or not.
Post by
252296
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
blademeld
As a Canadian user of your site, I get the PartyPoker and Survey popup every single time I visit your site, not just once every 24 hours. It actually stops me from being able to browse your site at work because PartyPoker is banned by our company filter and it throws up a red flag on my ip everytime i visit.
it could be that your company resets IP frequently
I'm also Canadian fyi ;)
Post by
252296
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
31022
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Malgayne
Why not try to go for some sort of sponsorship from, for example JiNX or another clearly gaming-related page? They could be offered ad-space on the front page and discreet mentions on the blog or some newsposts in return for paying for (part of) the bandwidth.
We've come to a number of advertisers about proposals like this before. Unfortunately most companies only seem to be interested in our US traffic, and we don't have this problem with our US traffic in the first place. =/
I agree with you about creating ill will. I hate pop-up ads and I don't want to encourage them, nor do I want them on my site. But it's hard to convince the financial people of this, because the difference between how much we manage to make on international traffic WITH the ad and how much we make without it is so big. We basically make nothing on international traffic as it is, so why would they care if international users (ie, the only ones who are getting popunder ads) block the ads in the first place?
This is not my philosophy, and it's not one I approve of. But it's the obstacle I need to get around to get you guys clear of pop-unders. :)
We're looking at the possibility of changing the layout/orientation of the ads on existing pages to try and make them more attractive to advertisers, thereby lessening the need for ads like this. Hopefully that will help.
Post by
bwirum
I have, for a long time, been a strong advocate of implementing some sort of donor/subscriber system to the site. Mainly it's because I block out ads for
everything
at work, and feel like I'm cheating you guys a bit. I don't like that.
At home I'm much more compelled to allow ads from sites I trust and want to support, thus I have opened up for Wowhead. Thing is though, that I use the forum (and then the site in general) much more while having spare moments at work than sitting at home on my computer, as I use that time to actually play the game.
Like FaaR, I'm rooting for not giving anything
important
only to subscribers, unlike him though, I never thought you'd do that either.
As far as I'm concerned, ad free browsing would be enough for me to subscribe. Anything else is just a bonus.
Kudos for the great work you're doing, and bring on the donorships.
Post by
298997
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
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