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This Motorcycle News Site To Disappear? |
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File under Opinion System
Author: Mike Werner
Location: Normandy, France
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Is this site being threatened to disappear? One of the oldest motorcycle news blogs will go off the "net"! Why?
Because many of you have switched to FireFox  (which is a good thing), but an increasingly large portion of you have gotten the Adblock extension for Firefox, and that's a very bad thing for sites like this one.
Adblock does what the name suggests; it blocks ads from appearing on any site. So basically what you're doing, is stealing from this site. Bikes in the Fast Lane depends on advertising to keep it alive. We've not opted for subscriptions, nor donations. Users clicking on ads pay the rent! Hosting costs, software, and even travel to venues to get photos of the latest motorcycles or races cost money. Without the money generated from ads, this would not be possible.
Our choices are limited;
1. Make this site a paid-for-subscription site, ie, you pay per month. It's something that should not happen, since I firmly believe the internet should be free.
2. Allow for donations. Donations are troublesome, and totally unreliable to cover costs.
3. Ads and sponsors. It's the cleanest solution. Maybe sometime ads are a bit "overpowering", but we try to minimize them, but often it's difficult since the ads are regional, and we can't see what's being shown in all parts of the world.
It's not like this site generates money to allow me to live in luxury; it doesn't even cover the cost of the hosting, let alone the rest. Luckily I have another income, so that's not the problem. But having to pay lots of money out of my own pocket to keep this site up is too much. Although it's fun to do, it should not become a financial drain for me.
Over the last 3 months, ad revenue has decreased 700%!!!! I know we're not the only site suffering from this, others are in the same boat. Some sites are now blocking Firefox users altogether (you can't see Adblock, only Firefox). Adblock is killing the internet!
It's really strange the philosophy; most of you buy motorcycle magazines, costing you a lot of money, but don't mind having tons of ads all over the magazine. This site is free, but has some ads, and then you block the ads!
In part, we (the webmasters) are to blame. We're the ones who promoted FireFox over Internet Explorer. Now, it's biting us in the butt.
So, if you've got Adblock installed, do us all a huge favor, and de-install it. If you don't like ads, just bear with it. It's for the best for the internet, unless of course you say that you don't mind if sites like this one disappear. Eventually you'll be left with only government sites....
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