I know it is a touchy subject. Banner Ads — some people hate them, some don’t mind, and very often they are the sole income for many web developers/publishers. I made some cash from placing banner ads on OzBargain (one on the sidebar, and one just below the main post), so

• I can pay for hosting on an Australian server.
• I can pay for the prizes of our weekly competitions.
• I can pay for other miscellaneous cost to run this site.
• Hmm. Okay. I also want to pocket some for myself :)

However, I also understand that some of you really can’t stand banner ads as though they are the root of all evils on the Internet (I used to think that way many years ago). You have either blocked the ads with some browser extension, or were blind to them and would not click on them anyway. I figured why should I waste your bandwidth (and mine too) when you have no interest in what so ever is in the ads?

There’s also statistics gathered last month (November):

• Visitors are 5 times more likely to click on a banner ads than a registered user.
• Visitors are generating 20 times more income than a registered user on OzBargain.

What does that imply? I might as well turn off serving banner ads to those registered users because the ads don’t serve them nor serve me! So here is one new feature that got rolled out this morning but I did not mention in my previous forum post — Show Me No Ads!!!

1. Click on “my account”
2. Click on “edit” tab
3. Click on “preference” tab
4. Uncheck “Show Advertisement” under “Options”, and “Save”!

Look mum, no ads!

Obviously it will only work if you are a registered user on OzBargain (not if you are a lurker/visitor).

So, if you don’t want to see Google AdSense or other ugly image banners — login and change your preference! I’ll experiment with it for a month or two and see how it impacts me financially :)