Ads on the Buzz.

Regarding the poll question:

Why are the pop up ads, banners, etc a problem?  It is a simple matter of ignoring or closing them but it provides revenue that would otherwise be paid out of our pockets.

Quit complaining about them and be glad that they keep the Buzz free to us.

Very much agreed. We have people here complaining of the pop-up ads but at the same time almost half of the votes in the poll said they wouldnt pay a penny to help this site. You cant have both ways guys.
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Chitowns 6 year old daughter says "Daddy, Dippin Dots are nasty!!" I must say that I agree!!

If you have a problem with pop-ups, there are personal steps you can take for yourself.  No sense complaining about them.

I'm personally opposed to pop-ups. I don't like them, they're annoying, and generally speaking they're for crap no one wants anyway.

However, this is turning out to be a bad month. Including POP Forums sales, I'm still on target to be $400-$800 short for the month, and last month only corrects for about half of that. Not good.

That's why I posted the current poll question. If a thousand people plopped down a little money for the year (out of the nearly 2 million visits every year), I'd be covered no problem and without question. Frankly, if I implement something like that, I don't lose anything at all. Everything will still be free for those not interested, but you might have to put up with ads.

Here's hoping Sprint drops their prices next year...

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com
"As far as I can tell it doesn't matter who you are. If you can believe, there's something worth fighting for..." - Garbage, "Parade"

I would personally be less annoyed by pop up ads if they actually were geared to my interests.  I have NO need for a new credit card, thank you very much FirstCard.  (Since that is the main culprit I have seen lately.)  If Cedar Point or other amusement related sites had pop ups I surely would be interested by it a lot more than what is in the pop ups now.  To bad we could not fill out some sort of pop up ad survey telling the ad company what kind of things we are interested in seeing on pop ups and which ones are simply a nuisance.
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Yes, I want my Deja Vu and eat it too!

Actually, unless you opt-out of it or have your privacy settings set to reject their cookie, DoubleClick follows you around and targets ads to you based on the sites you visit that carry their ads. So for example, if you go to sports sites that use DoubleClick, they know you like sports. As a result, you might get ads for Dick's Sporting Goods or something when you go to CoasterBuzz.

The problem now is that spending just dropped into nowhere in the last month, especially in the travel category (where CoasterBuzz resides). Remember how many ads for Orbitz you used to see? Those months I made double what I needed to pay for bandwidth (not counting all the money I've invested in hardware and software). Since the travel industry is sucking like Monica in a humidor, the ads just aren't there.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com
"As far as I can tell it doesn't matter who you are. If you can believe, there's something worth fighting for..." - Garbage, "Parade"

Do you get any money if we click on the banner ads?

Monica in a humidor.  That is the line of the year!

Ordinary pop-ups are annoying, but could be a whole lot worse. I mean, the X-10 pop-unders really aren't all that bad except that they tend to hog network resources.

But then there are those nasty, nasty, nasty pop-up ads that you get when you go to a site where the domain name isn't valid...you know, they tell you that the site name is reserved but not yet active, and maybe show what looks like a search engine box. Meanwhile they spawn these nasty little Java applets and invisible pop-up windows that periodically open more pop-up windows, and when you close each one it opens three or four more until it finally spawns so many processes that your computer crashes. THOSE are the pop-ups I really, really, really hate.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

People can always complain about things going on in a bussiness or Web site. But remember everyone, Coasterbuzz is still FREE to use..., thank you Jeff that Coasterbuzz is still online...:)

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SFWoA Online
Your #1 Source for SFWoA content since 2001!
http://www.sfwoa.com

Yeah... but if they get irritated with pop-ups, I'm not stupid or naive enough to think that people won't go somewhere else (though the pop-up situation is much worse at certain competing sites, one of which has a pop-up by choice).

I might give it a go and see what happens. If people find that the site is worth it, and would like to remove the ads for a yearly fee, so be it. Otherwise, it's just business as usual for everyone else.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com
"As far as I can tell it doesn't matter who you are. If you can believe, there's something worth fighting for..." - Garbage, "Parade"

I'm usually a lurker around here but I'd pay a fee to view the site popup-free.  It's the most informative coaster site out there that I've seen, I couldn't have planned my first-ever CP trip two weeks ago without it.  I'm so against popups, some put them on their sites on purpose and I boycott those sites.  But I didn't know that popups could follow you around the web--that's stalking! 
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If you're skating on thin ice, you may as well tap dance.

I'd pay if Jeff and the guys allowed a little more speculation... heh. 

I'd pay to view the site even with pop-ups. Coaterbuzz is by far the best source of useful information and intelligent coaster forums on the net. If an annual or monthly fee is necessary to keep the site fnancially viable, count me in.

Thanks Jeff (and all the moderators) for all you do!!!

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Hypersonic..... indeed.

I'd have no problem paying to view CoasterBuzz without ads. I figure even at $30 a year, that comes out to about 8 cents per day. That's a small price to pay for an ad-free CoasterBuzz. This is by far the best coaster site on the web and keeping it ad free would make it even better.
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Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein

If all of you are b.i.t.c.h.ing so much about pop-up ads, try this site:
www.panicware.com Download Pop-Up Stopper.
This will prevent any pop-up ads from coming up on your screen no matter what. It'll also give a little "buzz" or sound (customizable) when a potential pop-up ad comes. Otherwise, you'll never know it was there.

This is only good for Internet Explorer. It doesn't work for Netscape. Either way, it is still great, and comes in handy a lot. The only down side is that if you click on any news items in Coasterbuzz, or links from Coasterbuzz, they will also not come up because the program thinks it is a pop-up ad (since it brings up a seperate window). For that, you just temporarily stop it.

Simple simple simple, people!
You can have the best of both worlds!

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Proud to be an American!!

*** This post was edited by DawgByte II on 10/17/2001. ***

Pop-up killers also cripple adding to your track record, mailing topics to friends, rating coasters in the database, etc. Just keep that in mind.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com
"As far as I can tell it doesn't matter who you are. If you can believe, there's something worth fighting for..." - Garbage, "Parade"

Pop-up killers tend to be rather stupid because they can't distinguish between a pop-up ad and a legitimate pop-up application. Which CoasterBuzz uses a lot of....photo gallery, links to outside sites, all kinds of stuff shows up in "legitimate" pop-ups.

Of course, if you use Opera, then the browser dialog boxes get killed by the pop-up killer, too, since Opera uses the browser for its internal operations......!

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

With the Panicware Popup Killer there is a two key series you can press at the same time to allow another window to popup that allows you to add to your track record and so on.
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DEJA VUE KICKS ALL FORMS OF BUTT!!!!