Worst pop-up ever!

Marimbaguy, I do understand that it is a Flash pop-up that follows you around. I've seen those before on other sites, even though I didn't see this particular one on Coasterbuzz.

Yes, it is definitely not your average pop-up... I'm sure that advertisers see this as "progress". Maybe it is. And if it makes Jeff a few extra bucks and keeps the buzz going, so be it.

The place I've seen these the most is on The Weather Channel site. With a domain like weather.com, I don't doubt they get slammed, and I wonder if their online product is even a profitable venture.

Being popular is nice, but I'd much rather break even than be popular. There was a time when I wanted CoasterBuzz to rule the world, but now that it does (in terms of traffic anyway), I've changed my tone. I want to put something out there that I enjoy and people like, but I don't want to float the bill.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com - Sillynonsense.com
"The world rotates to The Ultra-Heavy Beat!" - KMFDM

I must say, Jeff, you've done a heck of a job! :)

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"If you'd like a transcript of tonight's show, then type up everything we say." -Drew Carey, Who's Line is it Anyway?

My track record
The Point of Cedars

Hey Jeff do you Blacklist Earthlink users on this site due to their ISP having a built in Pop-Up blocker?

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Chris Knight
Who is hoping to make it to his first SRM.
Coming to WOF in 2003: A New Dippin' Dots stall :-)

Hey Jeff, if you are having trouble making ends meet you should jack the club membership up 5 or 10 bucks. Most people that are club members would pay it and most club members would understand the need to increase the price. I would pay the extra cash for a site that I use quite a few times a day.

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Bob Hansen

Operation Wicked Twister
Goal: Lose enough weight (50lbs) to ride Wicked Twister in 2K3
Progress: 21 pounds since 1-1-2003

Ther is no possible way I'm gonna pay $30 bucks to join the CoasterBuzz Club. That is pushing it too much. If and when I get the $20 the spare I will join the club but right now I don't. Some sites that do charge $30 makes it worth it. CB has things on it that make it worth $20 but not $30.

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Chris Knight
Who is hoping to make it to his first SRM.
Coming to WOF in 2003: A New Dippin' Dots stall :-)

Oh look, an economics lesson.

No one said the price was being raised, that was just a suggestion for Jeff. Even if he did, I would still gladly pay. I understand (note I am not saying I agree) the whole argument of not wanting to pay the $20 to join, but if you choose not to, please stop complaining about the ads. Anyone who runs a website knows that it is not free....especially when you receive as much traffic as CBuzz does.

The argument that Jeff (or any webmaster for that matter) provides this site and everyone is entitled to view it for free is just wrong. When you go to a movie, you have to pay to see it. You are paying for the cost of producing the movie and all other things that fall into that. The same holds true for websites. You are viewing a product, and that product costs money to make and maintain. When you watch tv, even if you are using the old rabbit ears, you are still paying for the access. Your payment is having to view the ads. Sure you can switch the channel, but almost every channel has advertising, whether it be for a product or themselves. Take HBO, in between programs you are served ads for HBO. Those adds are intended to bring you back to HBO.

In order for websites to survive, they must charge for access, present adds, or deal in ecommerce. CNN started charging for it's video last year and MSNBC will this year. Your days of free access to everything on the web are coming to an end. This is one of the biggest reasons for the dot.com bubble burst. Millions of dollars were invested in start ups that had flawed business models. They did not focus on the fact that you need recurring revenue to survive. There are too many usefull sites that have disappeared simply because they were designed to be used freely. You can't operate a business without cash flow.

Oh, and I don't know if I would call this the worst pop-up ever. Weather.com has had some nasty ones. The screaming Rhino was one. I'm sitting at my desk at work, checkin the weather, and the loudest Rhino sound I have ever heard came billowing out of my computer (and of course I have speakers to amplify the sound) Damn Rhino starts walking across the screen and did so for about 30 seconds.

Just an update... I got word from the ad rep that nobody should've seen that ad more than once per session, but somebody screwed up and for six hours it ran without limitation. When it runs again next week, you shouldn't see it more than once.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com - Sillynonsense.com
"The world rotates to The Ultra-Heavy Beat!" - KMFDM

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Sawblade5 said:
Hey Jeff do you Blacklist Earthlink users on this site due to their ISP having a built in Pop-Up blocker?

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Ditto with AOL. They're about to introduce an integrated pop-up blocker from what I understand.

How much longer before pop-ups just don't cut it because most people are blocking them?

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www.coasterimage.com

Well, either sites are going to need alternative revenue streams or they're going to go away. I saw it coming back before the bubble burst, before we even had pop-ups.

Until online advertisers (or would-be advertisers) understand that many of the rules of marketing still apply online, it won't get any better.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com - Sillynonsense.com
"The world rotates to The Ultra-Heavy Beat!" - KMFDM

Well atleast I can turn it off in AOL, but I hardly ever use this site within the AOL Client but rather within IE where there is no Pop Blocker in hte first place. If your are using a Pop-UP blocker plase turn it off for coasterbuzz.com, guidetothepoint.com, or whatever site Jeff runs here. I currently do not use a pop-up blocker and I check my computer alot for SpyWare, so I do get the ads Jeff wants us to see. I don't know about Earthlink's pop-up blocker and how it works, so I shouldn't have said Jeff should blacklist them.

Anyway I got a couple of questions for Jeff.

Hey Jeff how do you buy ad space on CoasterBuzz.com and does buying ad space help support your web site even more?

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Chris Knight
Who is hoping to make it to his first SRM.
Coming to WOF in 2003: A New Dippin' Dots stall :-)
*** This post was edited by Sawblade5 3/13/2003 6:47:16 PM ***

You can buy direct from me.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com - Sillynonsense.com
"The world rotates to The Ultra-Heavy Beat!" - KMFDM

Earthlink pop-up blocker blocks all new windows, invoked or not. For example, if you click a link with target='_blank' the little fist shows up and a funny noise unless you click allow from this site or turn it off.

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SFNE Central v4- Online Six Flags New England Resource
CBuzzer since September 2001 with a few bumps along the way. :)

I would think Earthlinks procedure would get quite annoying. My firewall came with a blocker (and spam filter which is a whole other pain in the butt) and I had to shut it off because it blocked any new windows from popping regardless of whether they were adds or not. Plus the spam blocker blocked almost every email so I shut it off as well. Oh well...I guess technology will eventually work this out.

I forget where I was, but I read someplace that advertisers like pop-ups because they get more of a response from pop-ups than they do from banners. Yeah, right. They can't tell the difference between somebody clicking on the pop-up and somebody fat-fingering the close box. Or worse, there are those pop-ups that disguise their action area to look like a Windows close box (of course, the pop-up is too stupid to realize that it is running on a system that doesn't use that kind of close box...).

When Internet Explorer and AOL integrate pop-up rejection, pop-ups as a means of advertising will disappear, and probably be replaced with something even more annoying. Like those full-screen scribble things on Weather.com (which I have seen, but never get when I visit the site...probably because I don't use IE...).

The problem is that advertisers are measuring mouse clicks, when they really should be measuring eyeballs (and dividing by two). When an ad comes on TV suggesting that I should buy a product, I don't immediately shut off the TV and race out to buy the product, even if it's something I really want. But that's exactly what web advertisers are assuming: that while browsing content on the Web, we Web-readers will abandon the content we're looking at to go see whatever product they're selling. Just look at the banner ads that are running...most of them don't even identify the site or product they're promoting. And the ones that do are invariably for things I have no need or interest in. What use do I have for credit counseling when I have very little debt and A1 credit? If I don't even have a Windows computer, why do I want Windows software? If SBC is already on my $#!+ list for giving me lousy service with my POTS, why would I want their DSL service? Even the few that do interest me...yeah, I might want to stay at the Cedar Point resorts sometime, thanks for the reminder. But I'm too busy reading the discussion to click on that banner *now*.

X-10 has an interesting idea with their pop-under campaign, and I notice some coupon deal that keeps popping under at CoasterBuzz. That has a little bit of promise, except that occasionally those do something idiotic like get identified as a window that gets taken over later by a traditional pop-up...which then promptly crashes the browser, making me very angry.

Maybe the advertisers need to come up some kind of a 'click now...visit later' model. You see something that looks like it might be interesting (and I don't mean being told for the 23rd time that I am the 10,000th visitor to this website...) you click on it, it adds itself to a queue of places...then you get taken there when you leave the host site or when you close the main browser window or something like that. Then perhaps they could get their precious click-throughs without getting us totally lost from the websites we're visiting.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.
Who thinks that ultimately if ad-sponsored websites are to make any money, the webmasters are going to have to sell their own inventory instead of letting offsite services do it for them...

Before anyone reads too much into this reply, I did join the CoasterBuzz club as I read this site all time.

I don't mind static banners. Hell, I click on them occasionally.

I *do* mind animated flashing banners that distract my eyes from things I am trying to read.

I *do* mind JavaScript ads that float on top of what I'm trying to read.

I HATE popups and pop unders. Apart from anything else, until recently the web browser I was using froze for several seconds while the popup or popunder loaded. So the page i was reading, probably obscured by this popup window, was now unreadable while the ad loaded.

My ISP charges me by bandwidth used. So downloading these flash files et al does cost me money.

So my solution at the end of the day was to install an ad blocker. Yeah, sites need their money. But if the advertising gets to the stage where it pisses me off, then I *am* going to block it.

With respect to putting my money where my mouth is, incidentally, I am directly responsible for four sites, one of which (my own) averages more than 30,000 hits per day. And I don't run advertising on any of them. I've designed very efficient HTML and use minimal numbers of images in order to keep bandwidth usage down.

Regards,
Richard

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http://www.bannister.org/coasters/