Blocking Ad Blocker, Test Over

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If you logged onto GoblinByte.com yesterday and viewed any content, and have adblock enabled, odds are you noticed a giant white page that blocked you from viewing anything.  It was a short lived test and we know it affected our viewing base, but we decided to take that down as, we'd much rather grow our fans, then deter them.  With that said we do greatly apologies to anyone who was deterred or turned off by this test.

Why were we testing it?

GoblinByte.com is funded with ads, we don't have any other means of income (at this time) to keep the site up and running.  Now I for one, don't like the "please donate" buttons on websites, and when I asked around I noticed a lot of other people agreed, it may seem like a good idea, but it's just as bad as seeing ads themselves.

Ad's can be annoying

With that said though, although adblock is a great tool, we would like to ask if you wouldn't mind disabling it just for this site, so we can afford study tools, business cards, and basic essentials to help grow each of us personally, and the brand as a whole.

What we learned from the test.

As a new website, we average between 500-1,500 views per day, which is an awesome number, especially for a new website.  We've noticed a trend that during the week the views rise during the week, and drop off during the weekend, but in this instance, the views dropped on a Wednesday as if it were a Sunday.  Not good, not good at all.

Scripts used

We tried a couple different scripts, we started out by using a script from CodingCrazy.com that would block adblock from functioning.  Obviously this one looked like a serious virus problem and... in no way shape or form do we want to terrify any new readers.

Then we found one from Tricksgac.blogspot.com that did a similar thing, but seemed less aggressive.  It still would block adblock, and still aggressively encourage individuals to not use adblock.

Continuation of what we learned

Our readers would much rather view our sites without ads, and would prefer NOT to be demanded into turning off adblock to enjoy our content.  Which is honestly, completely reasonable, I use adblock myself, I'm a huge adblock advocate, encountered way to many sites in the past that excessive ads destroy the experience of the site.

We may explore the option of displaying alternate content that encourages disabling adblock, but we aren't set on doing that just yet.

To my fellow bloggers

“Blogging is a conversation, not a code.”

Mike Butcher

Keep in mind who your following is, you can test using aggressive adblock disabling techniques, but you may lose more people, than revenue you gain to support your site.  Sure the allure of an increased revenue stream sounds awesome, but at what cost?  Slower growth potential?  Less fans?  Obviously I'd choose the route of fans over money any day of the week.  We plan on growing, and continuing to grow at a steady pace, and would rather do that, than cut off our noses to spite our faces.  We'd much rather grow the conversation around technology education, and teach more things to more people, in the goal of keeping people safer online, as well as learning fun new tricks.

Question for our readers and fellow bloggers

Would you mind if we added a function that replaced ads with the suggestion of disabling adblock to help fund our site?  Would you mind disabling adblock so we can continue doing this for free?  What route would you take to increase revenue on a free site?  We're open to all suggestions and look forward to hearing what you have to say.

Any questions, comments, or concerns, let us know in the comment section below.  And as always, be safe fellow goblins.

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