Will adblockers bring the end of free websites?
They are add-ons / plug-ins people can download to their web browsers. They block anything written with javascript and flash. This means they automatically block ads and in many cases interactive activities. One of these add-ons is Firefox’s biggest download. Millions more people are using adblockers every week.
The bad news
Many English language teaching websites that make materials available for free rely on ads (from Google or elsewhere) to keep going. These include sites like mine (BreakingNewsEnglish.com, Listen A Minute.com, ESL Discussions.com, etc).
Adblocking software is effectively strangling the revenue streams from these sites.
Many webmasters and materials creators are deciding to call it a day.
The bottom line is that many more sites will go offline because of the damage adblockers are doing.
What can you do?
If you have adblocking software, please “whitelist” the sites you do not want to go out of business. There are filters within the menu of the add-on / plug-in for you to allow ads on those sites. You will be really helping their survival.
What can free websites do?
Be responsible and filter the ads on your site. Below is a site that perhaps needs to think a lot more about who will potentially see these ads, and less about maximizing ad revenue from absolutely minimal content.
This particular graphic shows why many people, justifiably, have got fed up with ads and are turning to adblockers. This website page shows the famous diet and IMVU ads encircling just EIGHT words of content.
I teach young Arab women in the Middle East. Any “fleshy” ads can cause offense to them, even in cartoon / avatar-like format. I block them from appearing on all of my sites.
The future of my sites
I really don’t know what to do. I wouldn’t really be exaggerating to say the bottom fell out of my world when I came across adblockers and what they are doing to my sites. I have worked pretty hard every day for six years on my sites. I’m now wondering whether it’s worthwhile continuing, given the fact that one day (probably very) soon, everyone will have adblocking software.
I will have to make one of three choices soon:
- call it a day on my sites altogether (really can’t entertain this thought)
- start charging subscriptions (don’t really want to do this)
- ask for donations (not sure if this would work)
I’m thinking if I can make more sites, I won’t have to resort to asking people to pay.
Your comments would be very welcome. I need all the advice I can get.
Tags: Adblockers, adblocking software, free materials, free websites
Hi Sean … Don’t give up please! We are still willing to subscribe to you sites even if you start charging for your content.
¬ koko ¬
Thanks Gavin for your excellent idea – definitely worth considering seriously.
Thank you Myo Ko Ko Oo – There’s no chance of my giving up on my sites and charging for them is way down my list of things to work on for the moment. Just replied to an excellent idea by Gavin about inviting my site’s visitors to contribute lessons. That’s towards the top of my “to-think-about” list. As is an excellent link sent to me this morning by Nik Peachey (Master Finder Of Amazingly Cool Links): http://www.embedarticle.com/. I also have lots of other things to ponder before I consider subscriptions.
Best wishes,
Sean
I use Adblocker, but just turned it off for your site. You might start by putting a request banner at the top that says, “If you have adblocker please consider turning it off”. I use Adblocker a lot, but I turn it off (disable it) for my favorite/most useful websites.
Hi TV
Thanks for white-listing my site – I keep meaning to add a banner to my pages, but there are about 6,000 of them – a huge project. Will wait and see what happens with adblockers.
Hi Sean
Out of all your options posted above, I think adding a “Donte” button is the best one to start off with. It is non-obtrusive and allows the regulars to contribute monetarily to the upkeep of the sites and your wellbeing
I am new to the world of efl/esl but websites like yours, (which I just stumbled upon), are an invaluable source of information and inspiration to us all.
Hope the stress levels are descending! Keep up the good work.
Blessings
Popups and flash are annoying, distracting, and sometimes outright offensive by nature. Stick to simple banner-ads to avoid ad-blocking. They should not be surprised if annoying overly-obtrusive advertising techniques are blocked.
I boycott any company that uses popup ads out of principle. It is the bad advertisers that force people to use adblockers.
Sean
Thanks for your website; I use it regularly. I have whitelisted BNE, as you suggested.
I am too busy to submit lessons, but I would be happy to pay a subscription.
Hey there, interesting blog post. I really like your breaking news site, its clean and efficient and you can see that you put a huge amount of effort into dissecting your articles for use in the classroom. I can learn a lot from you.
This is not a new problem for the web, I would prefer to donate to the upkeep of your site rather than a subscription. I would also switch off my ad blocker if the ad’s were not very intrusive.
I have trawled through many esl sites that require subscription to view any content and I have never gone back to those sites. The reason that I would consider donating is that you have given me some free content and now I feel that I do owe you.
Have a read of this link first comment ‘SpringProductions’ (http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/croqe/i_gladly_donated_to_reddit_but_i_wont_pay_for_it/) it explains what I am trying to say a lot better.
Anyway thanks for a great site!
One solution is to host the ads on your site – it would take bandwidth but because ad-blockers generally work via recognizing the url of the ad picture, they wouldn’t end up blocked – I think anyway.