Am I the only one?

I am starting to think that I am the only person who doesn't mind one iota about the DramaFever adverts. Now, yes, the large ad in the main content is badly designed, with the large preview image in the advert. The one in the sidebar looks better.

But here's the thing: AsianFanfics is not charging you a penny to view the site. It still needs to recoup its costs. And with over a million users, that's a lot of costs to recoup. Maintaining a site like this is a full time job, and there are not that many developers on board, so they need to work around the clock to maintain the features or develop new ones. Moderators are not paid, so they can't really be relied on to maintain the site in a managerial capacity. To keep this site running perfectly, the team behind it needs money. And, to quote the company, when asked why they don't pay moderators - "we have no money. All proceeds go towards servers, networks, security, and development."

I'm guessing quite a few of you use AdBlock or something else. So do I, although AFF is one of the few sites that I have turned AdBlock off for. I don't like the Google AdSense adverts, which track what I do and where I go and advertise things that I don't want. I'm currently being advertised credit cards, iOS software and I'm being told about careful driving schemes. I don't want a credit card, I use Android and I don't drive. I'm also having adverts for online gaming, golf breaks, anti-virus, private healthcare ... NONE of these adverts are of interest to me. And if I chose to, I could block them. I don't because, on a pay-per-thousand-impressions basis, AFF will get maybe 0.05 cents per thousand ads. Five hundreths of a cent. If it isn't that exact figure, it's an equally pitiful amount. But on a pay-per-click basis, AFF will get maybe 0.5 cents per click. And not all of those ads are being blocked, because some adblocking software will work on an honour programme, in that some of the ads will be allowed through as long as they fit certain criterea. Or they can bypass adblocking software, which is possible. In fact, check out this site: http://adblock.sitexw.fr/ << It's a simple javascript that can tell if you have Adblock enabled.

You could also pay a subscription for new features. AFF offers that. You can get AFF Gold for $4 a month or $60 for two years. You can buy Karma Points too. 1250 for $5 or 12500 for $40. But I'm guessing not a lot of people are willing to pay for stuff that they can get for free.

The only other alternative to ensure that they can afford the servers, the security features, the development time, is to put AFF behind a pay-wall. That means, nobody will get to see anything on AFF unless they pay for it. That will negate the need for any adverts, which means bye-bye DramaFever ads, bye-bye Google AdSense ads, and probably even bye-bye trolls and bye-bye negativity. One of the things that trolls love is free things. They thrive because the thing is free.

Now, people are blocking ads from AdSense, which cuts the already minimal income they get from that, because they don't want ads popping up and causing god knows what crap to their computers. People aren't buying premium features, because they either don't have the money or just don't want to spend the money (by the way, if you buy AFF Gold, ads are turned off, which shows that $4 a month is probably more than they would make on ads from each user). The developers aren't looking at installing a pay-wall because they want to keep the site free. Which means that the only other way to generate income and keep the site free is to partner with other sites like DramaFever, which I think are hand picked by the AFF team, and have unblockable adverts like these.

These ads aren't perfect. I won't pretend they are. They could be designed much better. But anything that can make AFF money without us having to pay for it has GOT to be a good thing, right? I mean, unless some user here wants to pay the thousands of dollars in costs that the site requires each month.