We don’t think we’ll need to do ads, and don’t particularly want to and may not anyway, but what do our communities think of some minimal ads on the blog (only: never in e-books or audiobooks) to help make sure we can break even and keep going as long as we can? We would treat any ad revenue for the site as if it were a direct donation to the site as described in the “UPDATE” portion of “The BULL SPEC dollar.”
First and foremost, if posting ads helps support the magazine and ensures its continuation, then do so. Keeping magazine afloat is a difficult goal, and I want you do to do what you need to do to keep it going. A few ads aren't a big deal to me. I'd rather see banners than video ads. Fantasy Magazine added video ads with some recent website renovations and they are terribly distracting having something constantly move in my peripherals.
Thanks again for the feedback, David. We're going to give some time for anybody else to respond, and maybe (maybe) try enabling some unintrusive text ads if it's near unanimous. We hate pretty much all advertising unless it's incredibly relevant. We'd rather in time do our own "ads" of rotating sponsor thanks and charity links if we ever do ads, but we're just not there yet tech-wise.
I agree with David. Text ads don't bother me at all, graphics are not that big of a deal, but video ads are horrific. I actively AVOID clicking on them in the same way that I avoid sites that use the blink tag.
Graphics ads I don't have a problem with, just video ads. I think I might even prefer graphics to just plain text, because a graphic ad I can glance at, decide whether to click on, and then ignore, but a text ad merges in my peripherals with the rest of the text and is harder to filter.Plus graphics are sometimes pretty–text never is. 🙂
I also support ads, with the exception of video ads, which are horrific.
While I have your eyes: what about using "affiliate" links for reprint and donation works which are available in print from Amazon, Audible, etc.? I've heard that to be distasteful to some folks, and I doubt we'd ever get much money coming in from it, but it might be something.
Sorry, never mind on that last one: due to current laws, as we're based in North Carolina we can neither be Amazon nor Audible affiliates. So that's out from the get-go.
And thanks for all the feedback. For now we turned on 'default' Google Adwords and we'll see how it goes for a couple of days. Please let us know the INSTANT it gets annoying.
Well, it already annoyed one person: ME. They're gone already. We might try again some time, but seeing ads for vanity publishers and completely non-relevant things is not interesting.
Perhaps Project Wonderful? A lot of small mags use them, both on their sites and to advertise themselves on other sites. It's not a lot of money, either spent or made, but they're not boring ads, that's sure.
Thanks for the heads up re: Project Wonderful. We'll check it out.