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Personaly, The ads don't bother me, I am happy to see Brett monetizing the site.
This is why I will no longer sell out our entire inventory to another ad network for a month or two, as we are sometimes requested to do. I keep at least a quarter of the slots for AdSense. Otherwise, our income falls precipitously the first month we're back to AdSense.
So a one-day test on April 1 is not going to give accurate data about the income potential of Webmaster World.
Yahoo Publisher Network also claims to be iteratively optimizing ads, so I think we'll follow the same policy with them if we keep them, although we're not seeing eCPMs anywhere near what we're getting for AdSense.
Re adverts here:
If companies bought direct advertising space on WebmasterWorld, or even access to announce their goods or services in a dedicated "commercial" forum, there could be the *danger* of some of them thinking that it somehow gave them the privilege of self-promoting all over the place because they were "paid advertisers" - aka customers. But no such thing exists with Adsense. The advertisers are Google's customers and couldn't for one minute think any site running their adverts through Adsense is "their" customer, or owes them a blessed thing.
All that aside, it's still amazing to me that some folks think that resources to help them make money should be free. I simply can't comprehend the mentality and wish someone would explain it to me.
I'd only add that it's not just the direct advertisers who might feel 'ownership', but the perception among members, especially the conspiracy theorists - we'd have 'advertiser bashing', as well as 'google bashing'.
Adsense - advertisers kept at arm's length - is safer and fairer to all; and I'll bet that nine out of ten 'objectors' have advertisng on their sites ... go figure!
We really should have no problems with Brett, monetising WW..it is his right and privilige..
But, uh, that was the point ... it was a joke!
Hidden somewhere in this joke, maybe, there is some 'intent' also.
Maybe for the future..
But, uh, that was the point ... it was a joke!
Was it? Tell me really, did you wake up on April Fools' Day and actually, physically laugh at this? Did anyone? Jokes are funny. At best this was a "prank".
I choose my pranks carefully. I choose ones that won't physically hurt anyone, won't cause anyone to lose a lot of money, won't have disastrous consequences like someone getting sacked. Pranks have to be accompanied by a certain amount of responsibility - they have to be thought through.
The larger the venue, and the more people likely to see the prank, the better it's got to be or it'll just look silly or juvenile. The more sophisticated the audience the more they are likely to question any hidden motive dressed up as a prank. The more sophisticated the audience the more likely they are to suspect a hidden motive behind the prank, even if one wasn't there.
How much of thought really went into this prank?
Don't get me wrong. I'm completely supportive of Brett's attempts to monetise the site, he's obviously looking at different options. I fully support him if he wanted to try Adsense first. But he, of all people, could have predicted that the suspicious ones here wouldn't believe his story about it being a prank rather than a test. So why did he do it?
Sorry, the idea of running Adsense as a "prank" was a complete turkey.
And they all got tweaked, didn't they?
There will always be people who see black helicopters behind every tall building ... to NOT play an April Fool just because some people will be suspicious of motive would be silly, indeed. In that case, Brett would never be able to take any action of any kind - someone will always read something into it.
geez, Brett and I must have chuckled about it for at least 20 minutes last week
I thought it was entertaining, to each their own
If you scroll through this thread you may not find that many other people rolling on the floor.
The best part of the joke is that those that found it less than amusing are still carping about it days later.
Now THAT's FUNNY!
