And my opinion of ads hasn't changed in decades…

All that said, there is one easy way to avoid the ads on my website. It is actually a very good security measure I suggest everybody utilize.

Download Firefox: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
Install NoScript: http://noscript.net/

Go forth and do good things,
Cutaway

And my opinion of ads hasn’t changed in decades…

of course no one has to prove anything to anyone about what their true motives are, you don’t have to answer to your readers, only to yourself – but i hate leaving those sorts of questions open…

then again, maybe i am a purist, and maybe i am ‘holier than thou’ as i’ve recently characterized mainstream ad-driven news media as opportunistic parasites who’ll try to turn any thought trend (even the misguided ones) that makes it onto their radar in to a positive feedback loop in hopes of drawing more eyeballs to their ads…

To be fair, however, have you ever tried to read your site on a mobile device that isn’t IE powered? On a blackberry, I have to page down no less than 60 times given the frame setup to get past your Amazon “ads” in order to read the content…then there’s the giant animated Symantec deal that clogs bandwidth, etc…

Also, these external ad and feed sources often cause the page to sometimes hang on load (esp. from slow speed connections) due to the normal Internet glut…

It’s your site and it doesn’t make you a bad person, but I (just me, personally) find it really, really distracting…swimming against the tide or not, I think it’s a point worth listening to even if you choose not to do anything about it.

I’d love to recover some $$ for the costs of hosting, etc., but I can’t bring myself to display ads for the reasons above.

My $0.02.

I don’t see it as being a purist or having a ‘holier than thou’ attitude. As I said a an ad or two on the sides or tops of pages isn’t even noticeable.. Let’s take Fred Wilson’s page (since you brought him up.. I’m assuming you were actualy referring to avg.blogs.com)… There are plenty of ads on that page… They don’t bother me in the least. Why? They are down the sides of the page. They don’t break up the content as I’m trying to read. Even Martin’s blog was a fairly bad example of what I meant… However it was ads surrounding the initial post which is what I find irritating but in Martin’s case they are fairly non-intrusive. The giant Symantec flash ad on your page is hideous, but I could even live with that compared to the Symantec ads that are tagged onto every single post on your RSS feed.

I don’t think ads relate to the quality of content, but I do think they speak to the quality of the page. My opinion, when visiting a site, has always been that the more ads on the page, the less reputable the site is. Previously sites that were plastered in ads were there just to make money, and now people are popping ads everywhere… which makes me think of those “less reputable” sites from days gone by.

As for people suggesting NoScript/AdBlock… I used to do that.. but these days I’m fairly anti-NoScript… It was great was javascript was a “once in a blue moon” type thing… but not that it’s everywhere it makes using the internet a pain… NoScript makes surfing the net feel like the Internet would feel without DNS

I do dislike blog summaries, because i hate having to click out of my RSS reader, but that is another story. I vote on that by not clicking and reading the content.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with making money off of your passion, otherwise I wouldn’t have done many of the things I’ve done in the last 18 months, such as writing for Computerworld and taking on a podcast sponsor. It’s helped me procure the equipment I need to do a better job at my podcasting and video blogging. It’s also given me the money I need to be less stressed about finding a job immediately after leaving my job in February and leaving StillSecure.

I understand your point of view, I just don’t subscribe to it. I don’t want to be a starving artist, paying for my craft. I want to share what I find and what I know, but I also want to make a living at it. I don’t see making a profit off of my blog as any different from working a regular job doing something I love. I don’t think it ruins the “purity” of my work in any way.

I do have to say, earning money off of something I’d be doing anyways is a little different from many sites out there that are aimed at making money first and providing content second. Some of the forums I’ve seen out there definitely fall into that category, with so many ads that you can’t even read a thread without flash overload.

Last thought: my ads don’t even come close to paying for my internet connection, which costs about $80/month. It may pay for the electricity the server consumes running here at my house, but it’s doubtful. So overall I guess I’m still not breaking even. I could switch to typepad or another hosted service that’s cheap, but I have a deep seated need to control my server myself. Go figure, a security professional with control issues.
Martin

All that said, there is one easy way to avoid the ads on my website. It is actually a very good security measure I suggest everybody utilize.

Download Firefox: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
Install NoScript: http://noscript.net/

Go forth and do good things,
Cutaway