My not-necessarily humble opinions
on web page design
I think commercial advertising on personal web pages is a
waste of time, and usually results in ugly web pages. Does anyone actually make any
real money from those irritating, aesthetically disconnected banner ads or stupid pop-up
ads? Is the pittance that you derive from them worth making your web pages into annoying,
ugly places that no one would ever want to come back to? I don't know about everyone, but
I never "click through" to the sources of those ads. I especially hate pop-ups
that try to imitate a message from my local machine, so that I'll be tricked into clicking
the "ok" button.
If you're using one of the free web hosting services that
puts their own pop-up ads on your pages, I can appreciate that you might not be able to
afford a "real" isp, but you better have pretty damn good content for me to want
to put up with that bs enough to come back to your site, and you can be sure that I will
never respond to the pop-ups on your page. One of the worst -and I'm not even sure it's a
free isp- is the one whose name corresponds to an important piece of photographer's
equipment (I refuse to dignify them by using an actual domain name here) where every page
on their customer's web sites has a pop-up ad. If you actually pay for their hosting
service, you're getting ripped off, and even if you aren't paying, I hear there are free
web hosts that don't have pop-ups.
My only compromise to my personal rule of not putting
advertising or banners on my web pages is in the case of webrings. I think they are
worthwhile, and usually the graphics they provide fit in with the theme of the page they
are used on, and if not, you can always just use a text only version of their links, or
use your own graphics.
Last update was March 10, 2001
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