Comments on: Adfree: an adblocker compromise?

By: Errant

Errant — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:47:27 +0000

Wow, thanks for commenting with some thoughts (I love Adblock Plus).

I think there are answers to your points.

#1: you would use a subscription service (say $5 a month) which gives you credit to spread out as you like. Simplifies the payment scheme for the user and also stops them spending silly money by accident.

#2: I’d probably not even allow custom options by default; just one or 2 variants. You’d convert $5 into 500 credits to make your donation seem a lot more meaningful and then it would simply be a case of “Donate 5 of your credits to this article? or click here to donate custom amounts.”

I am not sure the proportional distribution model works as well (though your suggestion is better than others I’ve seen in that it tells you after the fact which sites your contributing too and, I guess, gives options to deselect some).

I think IF you could make the monthly payment small enough that people would fire and forget the subscription – and be happy with that – then it could work

By: Wladimir Palant

Wladimir Palant — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:57:46 +0000

I played around with that idea a while ago. The actual design was to have Adblock Plus count visits to websites that indicate their owner in some way (PayPal account or whatever) and display a dialog once a month: “here are the websites you visited, wouldn’t you want to donate something to support them?” The amount entered would be distributed to the websites proportionally to the number of visits. While this idea isn’t off the table, there most difficult problem here is the actual payment:

1. Transferring $.05 seems unrealistic with any of the existing payment services. But asking people to donate significantly more to single websites will have a negative impact on the acceptance of this feature.

2. Ideally, entering the amount and clicking “OK” would be enough. A feature like this should be dead simple to use. Unfortunately, initiating a transfer isn’t anything like that. Most payment services require entering credit card numbers or creating accounts or both.

If you have ideas, feel free to come to the Adblock Plus forum (https://adblockplus.org/forum/index.php) and discuss them.

By: Errant

Errant — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 10:40:29 +0000

Thanks, I guess

(the first sentence is as intended btw)

By: The Web and Advertising » Nevermind

The Web and Advertising » Nevermind — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 10:01:43 +0000

[...] sense of self-entitlement, those that feel that ad-blocking is stealing, and those that want to find a solution that will please both [...]

By: epochwolf

epochwolf — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 01:08:53 +0000

I like the idea.

You might want to proofread your article.

“if sites put up a paywall for ad blockers they lose custom.”

if sites put up a paywall for ad blockers they lose [customers].

“b) your not getting their custom anyway through ads”

b) [You're] not getting their [money?] through ads anyway

Taking 15 minutes to read through your post before hitting submit makes a world of difference to your readers.