I know I'm a rarity, but I actually do not use ad-blocking software and never have. Working in the field almost two decades, I think it's a fair trade off to see ads in exchange for free content.
I do think that on many sites ads have become more pervasive and annoying, especially auto-play video ads with sound. This probably is happening out of desperation because they aren't meeting their revenue needs. If the companies have enough money, they'll also create apps and separate multi-platform channels to publish their stuff. Very small companies often can't do that.
I pay for the Houston Chronicle site because it has local and world news and the people who make it deserve compensation, but I won't pay for NYT because I don't have time to read it. Links to NYT oddly come up free from Facebook and certain some other sites but restricted from other sites and from emails. Certainly there are ways to bypass that, and NYT knows it.
I've also tried as much as possible to delete the old Flash-based ads that Keith had used. It's an obsolete technology and is not supported on mobile devices. As a programmer, it seems like a waste of time to set up alternative Flash and mp4 versions of whatever you need to show, whether it's content or ads. I also tend to be impatient with videos since I'm a speed reader. Again, that's a quirk for me, not the general public who seem to prefer video content and image memes.
Looking at Spartacus it seems to have evolved into essentially a travel guide and not the type of thing it was years ago. It still has useful information about resorts, saunas, and bathhouses, and it's nice to see that all in one place, but it doesn't have the depth of user-generated content compared to, say, Yelp or even CFS in our niche.
If I can implement that pay option, it would rely on the fact that we do have a lot of unique user-generated content in the Sex Listings. Besides the presence or absence of ads, there are other technical ways to make a possible paid version faster, more accessible, and more user-friendly.
Juggling time and responsibilities is a major challenge for me that delays many projects. Here I am writing this when I should be doing other work, after having stayed up until 2 am last night so I could have quiet time to work uninterrupted. This sort of thing, especially the household and personal concerns as well as the way I get caught up in writing - a basic need to connect and express myself - and also editing and correcting bad data tends to consume too much time.
About Google, with a true mobile-friendly version of the site, Google would improve CFS search rankings considerably. Although Google also has reviews, they do not seem to be sexually explicit and certainly do not include the ones from people who write at length about their sexual experiences at any particular place. Many of these are worthy of the "Dirty Stories" section of this Message Board, and I typically include a few of these in the CFS Weekly Newsletter.
I also agree that paid porn is not panning out as a significant revenue source. Our pay-per-view provider restructured their payment schedule this year, which caused a large drop in revenue from them. Since it allows people to see HD or other very good quality movies on a pay-per-minute basis, it's still a cheap and very appealing option for guys who don't want to get sucked into costly monthly recurring fees at the regular porn sites while still supporting people - models and those behind the cameras - who need to and deserve to earn a living. So, I've been promoting it on the CFS Home Page illustrating this difference, and the pay-per-view revenue is slowly improving.
One last thing, and it's just another personal opinion. I think the increasing presence of mainstream advertising as well as big pharma advertising starting in gay publications in the 80s (Absolut, Miller, Budweiser, RJ Reynolds, Phillip Morris) and 90s (the drug cocktails, exotic vacations and cruises) contributed to a image of gay men - lesbians, too, in their publications - which does not match the real lives of most LGBT people. You may have taken Viracept, but that doesn't mean you were able to run a marathon and in fact, you may have had a lot of diarrhea.
After 2000 and on to today, this "mainstreaming" through media and advertising has exploded more and more, with large retailers and companies who make everything from breakfast cereal to soup to who knows what, all integrating us into a sort of "conformity of diversity."
A lot of the gay men I know are retired on fixed income, facing illnesses and housing challenges. Many LGBT youth who are homeless or struggling to make their way forward. A huge number of people have complex multifaceted identities that defy labels, or maybe they prefer not to be labeled: opposite-sex married? on the DL? polyamorous? swinging? On CFS, what matters is what you do more than how you're labeled.
Maybe we're all buying the soup or the cereal, and I know we bought the beer and the cigarettes even if we couldn't afford the premium vodka. That doesn't mean that a rainbow coffee cup or two dads with a toddler is relevant, although it's nice. Often media and the advertising doesn't "look like us" and in many ways isn't meant for us, except possibly in an aspirational sense.
~ Bob
|