
Turning the Ads Off - jasonlbaptiste
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/01/30/turning-the-ads-off/
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staunch
Wikihow is an SEO play. Only frequent vistors would notice/care to turn off
ads. That's why it doesn't affect their revenue much.

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bingaman_
Matt from Metafilter did this years ago.

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blasdel
Rather, he never turned the big ads on for signed-in users. There was
originally just a 60x60 in the sidebar on the front pages that's sold
specifically for Metafilter. All the ads he added after that were only for
visitors.

Almost all the site's revenue comes from ads on <http://ask.metafilter.com>
\-- with a shitload of traffic from google searches. It pays the salaries for
4.25 people!

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petercooper
This article is so vague. The money quote:

“It doesn’t actually hurt revenues that much anyway. And users love it. So why
not do it?”

Sure, if you're only making money from per-click advertising like the Adsense
used on Wikihow. If, however, you're selling CPM advertising, wave goodbye to
X% of your revenue as X% of users turn it off..!

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zepolen
No one sells CPM anymore.

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petercooper
Wrong. CPM is still popular with both high end blogs and strong niche blogs. I
sell only CPM. I also believe it's quite common with regular media web sites
(newspapers, etc) but I don't have experience with that.

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zepolen
You mean you sell them yourself?

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petercooper
I sell my own advertising, yes. I find I can get a better rate that way. Blogs
such as TechCrunch and ReadWriteWeb do similarly, I believe.

