Pivoting from Google Adsense to Ko-fi

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A few days ago I removed Google Adsense from this blog because of two reasons. The first is that Google Adsense automatic ad placement is spam like, rather than reasonable. Ads are placed too frequently, and they obstruct us from reading content. The second reason is that on a low traffic site like mine it takes years between payouts. This means that I pester readers, without getting anything in return.

There was a time when payouts were more regular. I have had 4 or more payouts over the years so it hasn’t always been a waste of time to have ads. I suspect that people who read my blog, like me, use ad blockers. I use Pihole and in browser ad blockers.

I wouldn’t use ad blockers, if two things changed. I would turn off ad blockers if my Youtube channel was re-monetised. it was de-monetised because a YouTube Influencer poisoned a homeless person and those with no traffic were punished rather than influencers who behaved badly.

The second reason is that ads flash, and load in so many places on so many pages that it becomes hard to focus on what we’re trying to read. These ads are visually distracting and obnoxious, and they’re often irrelevant.

Passion Rather Than Revenue

I come from a different era of the World Wide Web. I come from the era when the web was a fun experiment by enthusiastic people. I come from an era when the web was "free", sites were "free" and we were passionate about the little communities we were part of, as well as the World Wide Web as a hole.

Over time the web, and especially apps have become about "pay me for this app" without the app doing anything that warrants paying, especially when we’re using our iCloud instance or Google Drive instance anyway.

Of course 180 CHF per year is a lot for an iCloud developer account, but we didn’t tell people to develop their apps, and 30 CHF per year is too much for most apps. It’s also too much when you have dozens, if not hundreds of apps.

Websites cost money, but it took years before many sites were monetised. Most news sites were free to access. Now, in Switzerland, they are almost all paywalled, so I barely visit news sites except for RTS info. I notice that even the Guardian is moving itself behind a paywall. "Accept our cookies, or pay".

I think the web community has lost something, by being about the gig economy, influencers, and profit, instead of passion and community. I think that we lost something when we pivoted from social networks to social media. I really want to pivot back to social networks.

Not As Bouncy

It’s curious. I was looking and I saw an increase in traffic since I removed the ads. I suspect that by having ads by Google, the site looked like a spam site, and now it doesn’t. It’s a shame that Google and the Google Adsense team did not consider the spamminess of ad placement when automatically populating wordpress sites.

In my eyes, a single banner, in the second paragraph of a post would be enough. It’s easy to see and ignore. It’s also less likely to encourage people without ad blockers to bounce. If I look at a page and I see too many ads I often think less positively about the site. By having reasonable ads, sites are stickier. People don’t want to bounce.

And Finally

For years I had Google Adsense, but because of how spammy ad placement is, and because revenue has dried up it makes no sense for a site to look spammy without benefiting from it. I prefer to have ko-fi. I might never get tips but when I do it will be paid out rapidly.