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Have you thought about alternative monetization methods like Buy Me A Coffee? A good "this work is done for free pleading emoji" message can get you some decent

Have you thought about alternative monetization methods like Buy Me A Coffee? A good "this work is done for free pleading emoji" message can get you some decent cash. Maybe selling your site to someone that can monetize it is your best bet. Yeah your site isn't what Google Ads wants, that's a shame, but then that's on you to come up with an alternative.

Repulsion9513 2y ago
Why does it have to be on them to come up with an alternative instead of... like... acknowledging that monopolies and businesses approaching them are harmful to both consumers and businesses?
- j33zusjuice 2y ago
  Look no further than Google fucking around either third-party cookies every year to demonstrate how overpowered they are. Think whatever you want of the ad industry, but Google flipping on that every year changes the project roadmap for every competitor in the adtech world. And when they flip again mid-year, it can invalidate months of work that teams have done. In the end, all adtech companies are happy to see third-party cookies survive, so no one complains when Google backs out of killing them, but the point is that Google’s decisions change the project roadmaps for every competitor because no one is actually competing with Google. They have entirely too much control over the way the internet runs.
- zeroCalories 2y ago
  Because if there are alternatives, then it isn't a monopoly. Even if we're restricting ourselves to ads, there are other ad networks, and you can find your own sponsors. The OP is a self-admitted lazy commie and just wants to say "Google bad".
  - Dylan16807 2y ago
    > Because if there are alternatives, then it isn't a monopoly. The definition of monopoly is not 100% market share.
    - zeroCalories 2y ago
      Yeah, it's also not having a high market share.
      - Dylan16807 2y ago
        It seems to me that google has an overpowering presence in the ad market.
  - Repulsion9513 2y ago
    > and businesses approaching them > but it isn't a monopoly!!!11
- VelesDude 2y ago
  This was made more as an example of how much power Google has. While Google is not technically a monopoly, using any alternative is most likely going to hurt your potential reach. Essentially, damned if you do, damned if you don't with no middle ground.
AlienRobot 2y ago
>A good "this work is done for free pleading emoji" message can get you some decent cash Source? As far as I know you will need to put banners so users know you accept donations (as OP accepts donations in their support page and you literally missed that), and most people don't donate, so what tends to happen is you replace banners that everyone hates but that pays money with banners that everyone hates that don't pay money.
- zeroCalories 2y ago
  I know from work I've done with voluntary contributions that you can get near the amount that ad sense will give you, but that's on the high end, and will depend on the type of content and how you push it. But it would have at least been worth trying, given the public service nature of the content. Certainly enough to cover the costs of the domain name and hosting. Also, people are far more receptive to a message asking for a contribution than an ad. Also, the OP DOES NOT have a support page linked on the original, or meme page of apportionmentcalculator.com. Don't know why you're giving me snark when it seems you yourself didn't even look at their site.
  - AlienRobot 2y ago
    It's in the "support" nav button. https://theluddite.org/#!support https://theluddite.org/#!support I think I saw a banner when I scrolled to the bottom as well, but it isn't showing again for some reason. I assume that they already had this page before they chose to monetize with adsense, which kind of implies that asking for donations hasn't been very effective for OP. >people are far more receptive to a message asking for a contribution than an ad. I disagree. Do you want to know what my hot take is? Imagine, for one moment, that we didn't have ads on the internet. Instead, every page was full of banners begging for donations. Instead of ad-blockers, everyone would be using donation-blockers. All that "concern" I keep hearing about about privacy and tracking and long lists of partners in cookie banners would disappear in an instant, and everyone would show that what they really care about is just being mildly inconvenienced by distracting banners telling you to do things and nothing more. That's what I really think about it. The instant ads disappear, whatever replaces it, people are just going to hate it the same if not even more, specially when it comes to free stuff on the internet.
Dylan16807 2y ago
> that's on you to come up with an alternative Ads should be viable here. "The ad ecosystem is broken" is not something individuals should have to fix. And asking for an entire coffee for a quick tool is not really in line and unlikely to get many takers. And there's no good way to ask for microdonations.
- zeroCalories 2y ago
  Fair, ads should be viable, but OP really didn't try very hard on that front. There are plenty of ad networks that could be a substitute, but I understand that they're not as good as Google ads, and OP is lazy. Buy Me a Coffee is not literal, it's a service to collect contributions. I like the idea of microdonations, and I think it would be healthy for the ecosystem if sites could implement one-click 50 cent paywalls, but that's pretty far off.
  - Dylan16807 2y ago
    > Buy Me a Coffee is not literal, it's a service to collect contributions. I know it's not literal, but the size and donator effort required makes it a very bad fit for small interactions.
    - konstantinua00 2y ago
      it's a donation the whole point is to only get donations from people willing to do the effort - with no downsides to others
      - Dylan16807 2y ago
        The point is to get donations from people that are willing to donate. Not people that are willing to put in pointless extra effort. Extra effort is just a negative. So is needing relatively large donations to overcome transaction fees.
      - jazzyjackson 2y ago
        if there was an apple pay button i would have given him a dollar but instead there's "buy me a coffee" which i've never heard of, stripe which im not filling out, and liberapay which iirc is for crypto nerds i wonder if apple makes it easy to accept money with apple pay (they allow peer to peer payments via apple cash after all)
Tommix11 2y ago
Perhaps there's a way to do advertising the old school way. Contact a company directly and make the ad yourself. No need for a warped AI middleman.

Repulsion9513 2y ago

Why does it have to be on them to come up with an alternative instead of... like... acknowledging that monopolies and businesses approaching them are harmful to both consumers and businesses?

j33zusjuice 2y ago
Look no further than Google fucking around either third-party cookies every year to demonstrate how overpowered they are. Think whatever you want of the ad industry, but Google flipping on that every year changes the project roadmap for every competitor in the adtech world. And when they flip again mid-year, it can invalidate months of work that teams have done. In the end, all adtech companies are happy to see third-party cookies survive, so no one complains when Google backs out of killing them, but the point is that Google’s decisions change the project roadmaps for every competitor because no one is actually competing with Google. They have entirely too much control over the way the internet runs.
zeroCalories 2y ago
Because if there are alternatives, then it isn't a monopoly. Even if we're restricting ourselves to ads, there are other ad networks, and you can find your own sponsors. The OP is a self-admitted lazy commie and just wants to say "Google bad".
- Dylan16807 2y ago
  > Because if there are alternatives, then it isn't a monopoly. The definition of monopoly is not 100% market share.
  - zeroCalories 2y ago
    Yeah, it's also not having a high market share.
    - Dylan16807 2y ago
      It seems to me that google has an overpowering presence in the ad market.
- Repulsion9513 2y ago
  > and businesses approaching them > but it isn't a monopoly!!!11
VelesDude 2y ago
This was made more as an example of how much power Google has. While Google is not technically a monopoly, using any alternative is most likely going to hurt your potential reach. Essentially, damned if you do, damned if you don't with no middle ground.

AlienRobot 2y ago

>A good "this work is done for free pleading emoji" message can get you some decent cash Source? As far as I know you will need to put banners so users know you accept donations (as OP accepts donations in their support page and you literally missed that), and most people don't donate, so what tends to happen is you replace banners that everyone hates but that pays money with banners that everyone hates that don't pay money.

zeroCalories 2y ago
I know from work I've done with voluntary contributions that you can get near the amount that ad sense will give you, but that's on the high end, and will depend on the type of content and how you push it. But it would have at least been worth trying, given the public service nature of the content. Certainly enough to cover the costs of the domain name and hosting. Also, people are far more receptive to a message asking for a contribution than an ad. Also, the OP DOES NOT have a support page linked on the original, or meme page of apportionmentcalculator.com. Don't know why you're giving me snark when it seems you yourself didn't even look at their site.
- AlienRobot 2y ago
  It's in the "support" nav button. https://theluddite.org/#!support https://theluddite.org/#!support I think I saw a banner when I scrolled to the bottom as well, but it isn't showing again for some reason. I assume that they already had this page before they chose to monetize with adsense, which kind of implies that asking for donations hasn't been very effective for OP. >people are far more receptive to a message asking for a contribution than an ad. I disagree. Do you want to know what my hot take is? Imagine, for one moment, that we didn't have ads on the internet. Instead, every page was full of banners begging for donations. Instead of ad-blockers, everyone would be using donation-blockers. All that "concern" I keep hearing about about privacy and tracking and long lists of partners in cookie banners would disappear in an instant, and everyone would show that what they really care about is just being mildly inconvenienced by distracting banners telling you to do things and nothing more. That's what I really think about it. The instant ads disappear, whatever replaces it, people are just going to hate it the same if not even more, specially when it comes to free stuff on the internet.

Dylan16807 2y ago

> that's on you to come up with an alternative Ads should be viable here. "The ad ecosystem is broken" is not something individuals should have to fix. And asking for an entire coffee for a quick tool is not really in line and unlikely to get many takers. And there's no good way to ask for microdonations.

zeroCalories 2y ago
Fair, ads should be viable, but OP really didn't try very hard on that front. There are plenty of ad networks that could be a substitute, but I understand that they're not as good as Google ads, and OP is lazy. Buy Me a Coffee is not literal, it's a service to collect contributions. I like the idea of microdonations, and I think it would be healthy for the ecosystem if sites could implement one-click 50 cent paywalls, but that's pretty far off.
- Dylan16807 2y ago
  > Buy Me a Coffee is not literal, it's a service to collect contributions. I know it's not literal, but the size and donator effort required makes it a very bad fit for small interactions.
  - konstantinua00 2y ago
    it's a donation the whole point is to only get donations from people willing to do the effort - with no downsides to others
    - Dylan16807 2y ago
      The point is to get donations from people that are willing to donate. Not people that are willing to put in pointless extra effort. Extra effort is just a negative. So is needing relatively large donations to overcome transaction fees.
    - jazzyjackson 2y ago
      if there was an apple pay button i would have given him a dollar but instead there's "buy me a coffee" which i've never heard of, stripe which im not filling out, and liberapay which iirc is for crypto nerds i wonder if apple makes it easy to accept money with apple pay (they allow peer to peer payments via apple cash after all)

Tommix11 2y ago

Perhaps there's a way to do advertising the old school way. Contact a company directly and make the ad yourself. No need for a warped AI middleman.