Interesting article for those who block ads

Your continuing to call me ignorant because I do not agree that I am forced to view advertisements to view a web page is not impressive.  I don't agree with it.  Period.  You can continue to insist I am ignorant because of that, but that's your problem, not mine.

And there are tons of ways to fund web pages without advertising.  It happens literally all over the place.

With that, I've said all I'm going to say on the topic and am untracking it.  Happy whatever it is that you are doing.

I did say "feigned" ignorance. ;)

Sorry you took it otherwise.

Just ignore him he has a vested interest that is why he is crying.

I think chess.com already has much value to offer for the paid subscriptions. Yes, the the most of us are still only free users, but very often we wish we could hava a game analysis, or view more archived games and so on. I saw many sites that use a similar model. They have some basic or partial functionalities offered for free, but they come also with a bunch of desirable paid functionalities. Anywhere, the secrete is to give first, in order to receive. The problem with ads is that it makes the site messy and less attractive. Look for example at Lumosity.com. I started using it's free version with only 3 games per day, and no brain profile. There is much more on the paid subscription, but it looks very clean and ads free on both. I also agree with Urza, ads can be justified, but they shouldn't be annoying. They should be static, as per session

To the OP, and the article he is posting about: Boo-hoo-hoo, cry me a river!!!  I hate ads, as they are often intrusive and very annoying. So programs like AdBlock are great - They get rid of the garbage and allows you focus on the content you WANT to see, not the random content that some company and/or product wants you to see. If I could get rid of television commercials in such an easy manner I'd do that as well... but for now I have to settle with pre-recording shows and fast forwarding through all the beer and soda ads, or the personal hygiene product commercials (which can be downright DISGUSTING)!

I use AdBlock and don't care about "eating free in a restaurant" comparison. If a restaurant offer ed me free food in exchange for listening whole evening to some crap, I would decline the offer. But if there was an option to wear headphones while eating free, I would be in.

This said, I am now a student with part time job. As soon as I have a full time job, I am signing in for a Premium Membership here - and also donating few € to AdBlock and Wikipedia.

Well said!

Exactly that.

What happens, of course, is that restaurants don't make such offers, because the cost of food (bandwidth) cannot be repaid for by ads even with the vast majority of users not using headphones.

The restaurant could of course ban users with headphones from entry, but if a law passes that imposes to treat headphoners and non-headphoners equally - which is basically the case with the internet, since you can add any plugin you like to your browser and the service provider will still deliver the content - then tough luck. All you can do is lobby for the reversal of the law, or spread misinformation that headphones cause malaria, but whining about the lack of morals of headphoners is just like whining that none is giving you money for free and blaming it on others.

Erik, I already pay to minimize my exposure to ads, and would gladly pay even more to completely avoid ads.  My diamond membership at $99/year is equivalent to 27 cents per day -- this is amazingly inexpensive from my point of view.  I simply can't understand why many people would never consider paying small amounts to more fully enjoy a website that they already spend countless hours on.

But it looks like chess.com favors advertisement revenue over subscription revenue (a long-term blunder IMHO).  

I wonder how aware advertisers are of the great masses of people who resolutely avoid buying from companies that advertise too aggressively.  Simple logic leads to the conclusion that the more intense the advertising, the more inferior the product (a truly good product sells itself through customer reviews).  When ads become so agressive that they become the "enemy", something is profoundly wrong with the ad revenue business model.  

I strongly suspect Chess.com is similar to mine, and many other sites of this type -- actual member traffic is a small percentage of total traffic.

Consider:

Chess is a rather decent global topic on which many people peform various Google searches every day. On top of that, these forums are open to non-member visitors, and also a MASSIVE Google cache (aspects of the Google algorythm favor user-generated content).

For a site such as this, the typical daily traffic from logged-in members is almost never over 25%... and is typically well below 5% when looking at an entire month. So if one month brings 5 million unique visitors, that's about 250,000 logged-in members per month -- which jives with the user data on the site home. That may seem like a lot, but data from Forrester and Flurry that I've seen suggest that, when a free option exists, less than 3% of website subscribers upgrade to a paid version -- if we assume higher for Chess.com, double, that's still means that only 15,000 (0.3%) monthly users are likely paid users.

SkepticGuy, thanks for replying.  If I read you correctly, your main point is that the vast majority of traffic on this site is probably due to non-paying visitors?  If so, this makes perfect sense based on visitors' natural attraction to free content.  I can understand how having very large numbers of visitors leads to more profit than a purely subscriber-based approach with no ads (assuming advertisers pay the site in proportion to the number of visitors).

I don't know much about the advertising business, but I get the impression that the ad-driven revenue is by far the most common business model for internet websites.  Maybe this model will remain dominant for the forseable future, but I still wish chess.com would consider relying more on subscriptions.  Besides minimizing ads, I think this would eliminate the great majority of the spammers and trolls.  I don't expect to get my wish, but I hope that the site owner would at least seriously consider the long-term benefits of improving the user experience here. 

@Skepticguy : do you mean most visitors are people who are not registered with the website (ie. not among their 8M members), or non-paying members ?

Yes. And in all probability, the majority of that visitor traffic consists of people that never create a free account.

Even major sites with valuable (to some) original content like the NY Times are having difficulty getting meaninful revenue from their subscription models. At last report, subscription revenue on nytimes.com isn't even yet at 10% of ad revenue, despite having been in effect for almost two years with lots of premium perks for subscribers.

Yes. See above.

The chess.com home page shows 9+ million members, with 30k+ online right now. For sites like this, with member accounts (which mine is), typically 20% of all members are active in any meaningful way... with even less being so on a weekly basis.

People have good reason to block ads from the New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/technology/internet/15adco.html?_r=0

A lot of people (on this site probably the majority) earn their money in US$ and have very cheap  or even free unrestricted internet access.

They struggle to get their heads around situations in other parts of the world.

I'm not wealthy, I struggle to make ends meet in South Africa, come month end, there's verylittle left. even so, my situation is better than some.

Consider:

27 us cents per day, that's how much my breakfast costs. For some, it realy is a choice between 3 meals per day and premium. what would you choose?

I buy, and struggle to pay for, 2GB per month, @ around R400, (+-USD40)

If I dont block adds, my data does  not last 2 weeks. I pay to see ads.

I block links to twitter, and facebook and google analytics and whatever I dont need to retain funcionality. I cant afford anymore to watch any video, or click music links on here.

My membership here is a birthday gift, so on this site I'm ok. But If I\m going to be forced to watch adds, I just wont be able to afford any internet at all.

I agree. Blocking ads is nothing new. However Chess.com benifits from it financially (however little they do). I wouldn't mind putting the Chess.com domain on my whitelist if they show ads related to their sites and products.

I don't want those flash ads or some big banner telling me to buy something I recently browsed for.

P.S: A lot of people like me cannot afford to get a premium membership because I simply don't have a job. I'd very much like to support your cause and get a full membership, but I do not have the resources. Maybe there are other members too, who will get a premium membership once they land an income source. $99 is a quite a sum if you have no income.

i'm against loud disruptive ads that start in the middle of a blitz game, BUT i'm on the side of chess.com to find solutions that would benefit everyone.  so how about something like this:  if you play for free (non subscription) how about every so often before you can start a new game you have to click and watch let's say one to three ads all the way through before you can continue.  (those would be introduced by some kind of message that explains the procedure and the benefits to all involved...)  that would then "buy" you an allowance to play some more free games until it comes up again, and so on.  this is not my original idea as i've seen versions of this on some games my kid plays on my phone, etc.  again, i have not read the stacks of forum entries to see if this has already been suggested.  what do others think of this type of solution?  

Why not a subscription equivalent to the revenue generated by ads for a given member ?

@Skepticman : could you assess how much that would be for someone who visits the site every day ?

That story from five years ago doesn't apply now. There was a time when many poorly configured ad buying services would allow new advertiser accounts to upload ads and run them immediately. The result; hackers used stolen credit cards to start ad campaigns with assets that contained malicious code.

Today, such activity is simply not happening. There's a long series of checks and confirmation before new advertisers can create campaigns on ad networks, and creative assets are scanned for problems before allowed to run.