Advertising

I always assumed people hated online advertising because of the tracking and the sleazy way companies target you after you’ve seen an ad. That’s also why I generally dislike it and like to rely on more direct sales with my stuff.

As an example, for the past four or five years now I’ve been running a weekly Laravel Newsletter and each week I allow one or two ads. There is no tracking, it’s just an image, some copy, and a link to find out more if it interests you. Ethically I feel like this is a good balance. It pays for my time, for the software required to send the email, and the subscriber gets it for free, so we all win.

I think the majority of people are fine with this setup but you know how that one naysayer can get under your skin, well that happened to me last week. I had someone complaining that having ads in this was unacceptable. Of course, I responded back asking if they’d be willing to pay a monthly fee for it with no ads and I’ve heard nothing back.

Like it or not advertising is important to the web. Without it, so much of the stuff we enjoy reading wouldn’t be possible. Especially from the small publishers who do not have the backing of big money.