Adverts are live on LES - Info

AnthonySmith

Howdy, if you have AdBlock or UBlock, etc., this is probably a ??!?? huh ??!!?? thread for anyone else, if you want to support LES then you can enable ads:

They are only forced for non-logged-in users.

If you enable it, you get a supporter tag as a thanks, but no pressure, no one likes adverts, I get it, the revenue will first pay for LES costs and then go towards community projects, promotions and advance buy downs to bring better deals to the community.

I won't go into it again, the reasons have been discussed. I hope this is is least intrusive model possible, if it turns out to be an issue I will change it, already not pumped about the google overlay shit for EU users.

Comments are welcome.

c1vhosting

thank you!

imok

Ads and ad blocker notice are both showing

AnthonySmith

Well, this is awkward

"Content not viewable in your region"

Neoon

@AnthonySmith said:
Well, this is awkward

"Content not viewable in your region"

Must be UK

AnthonySmith

@Neoon said:

@AnthonySmith said:
Well, this is awkward

"Content not viewable in your region"

Must be UK

United Kondom yep

Mumbly

@AnthonySmith said: Well, this is awkward

"Content not viewable in your region"

Imgur is censored in North Korea UK.

teamacc

Will there be reports at end of month to indicate income vs spending?

AnthonySmith

@teamacc said:
Will there be reports at end of month to indicate income vs spending?

Well, to be honest with the immediate reaction to this, making me feel like a criminal running a scam, I am more inclined to just turn them off and scrap a bunch of plans.

I will sleep on it.

teamacc

@AnthonySmith said:

@teamacc said:
Will there be reports at end of month to indicate income vs spending?

Well, to be honest with the immediate reaction to this, making me feel like a criminal running a scam, I am more inclined to just turn them off and scrap a bunch of plans.

I will sleep on it.

To be fair I have no idea what ballpark of income there will be. If <10/month then it might not even be worth the current backlash. If >100/month then transparancy is required imo. Especially when deciding what community project to fund with the surplus.

Jab

Half of my ads not working even with uBlock set to off.
The message at the bottom still shows my ad blocker is preventing ads even if they load sometimes.

I understand ads, I can live with them, but that Privacy and cookie settings popping up every time I scroll to the bottom of page on desktop is driving me mad. I don't really need to see it every damn time.

AnthonySmith

@teamacc said:

@AnthonySmith said:

@teamacc said:
Will there be reports at end of month to indicate income vs spending?

Well, to be honest with the immediate reaction to this, making me feel like a criminal running a scam, I am more inclined to just turn them off and scrap a bunch of plans.

I will sleep on it.

To be fair I have no idea what ballpark of income there will be. If <10/month then it might not even be worth the current backlash. If >100/month then transparancy is required imo. Especially when deciding what community project to fund with the surplus.

This is after 6 hours or so of fairly standard traffic:

AnthonySmith

@Jab said: I understand ads, I can live with them, but that Privacy and cookie settings popping up every time I scroll to the bottom of page on desktop is driving me mad. I don't really need to see it every damn time.

same, unexpected, google and EU nonsense, its probably not going to work out... but this is how we find these things out

teamacc

@AnthonySmith said:

@teamacc said:

@AnthonySmith said:

@teamacc said:
Will there be reports at end of month to indicate income vs spending?

Well, to be honest with the immediate reaction to this, making me feel like a criminal running a scam, I am more inclined to just turn them off and scrap a bunch of plans.

I will sleep on it.

To be fair I have no idea what ballpark of income there will be. If <10/month then it might not even be worth the current backlash. If >100/month then transparancy is required imo. Especially when deciding what community project to fund with the surplus.

This is after 6 hours or so of fairly standard traffic:

So, only enabling it for not-logged-in users + some users that actively choose to support + there's some adblockers in this mix too earns about 10-20/month.

IMO just run the ads test for a month, collect feedback afterwards (unless ads break something, then collect during month)

AnthonySmith

@teamacc said: 10-20/month.

it might, on a good month

@Jab said: The message at the bottom still shows my ad blocker is preventing ads even if they load sometimes.

found that bug, fixed.

AnthonySmith

@Jab said: Privacy and cookie settings popping up every time I scroll to the bottom of page on desktop is driving me mad. I don't really need to see it every damn time.

>

Also fixed, I will find an alternative method, will probably get dinged and revenue stopped, or I might be misunderstanding the 8000 options.

MikeA

I enabled them and disabled uBlock for lowendspirit but don't see any. I do see a bunch of errors in dev console but don't know if it's related.

Cross-Origin Request Blocked: The Same Origin Policy disallows reading the remote resource at https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-9654762685286550. (Reason: CORS request did not succeed). Status code: (null).

AnthonySmith

@MikeA said:
I enabled them and disabled uBlock for lowendspirit but don't see any. I do see a bunch of errors in dev console but don't know if it's related.

Cross-Origin Request Blocked: The Same Origin Policy disallows reading the remote resource at https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-9654762685286550. (Reason: CORS request did not succeed). Status code: (null).

That just means ublock or dns level filtering is applying.

Honestly now I have added google ads while also hating how google has wormed its way in to every facit of every day life under the lie "Do no evil" I am really starting to feel like this was a mistake.

But I also did not want to professionally offend anyone by daring to offer paid adverts.

I probably just need to do what I need to do and accept some people willl be unhappy regardless of the direction.

dgc1980

some time ago, I ran a site and offered ads to members and stuff at like $5 a month with a limit of 4 ads in the rotation, wrote my own little landing for them to upload ads to etc, the site was able to survive well with that, that way the ads we actually targeted and relevant to the community. maybe something like this would be better by seeing like "xyz vps for $7/yr" in a small rotation that than seeing an ad for "viagra for $1 a pill" etc

this is just an option, not a request, I do have ads disabled, but I did donate at one point of time

AnthonySmith

@dgc1980 said:
some time ago, I ran a site and offered ads to members and stuff at like $5 a month with a limit of 4 ads in the rotation, wrote my own little landing for them to upload ads to etc, the site was able to survive well with that, that way the ads we actually targeted and relevant to the community. maybe something like this would be better by seeing like "xyz vps for $7/yr" in a small rotation that than seeing an ad for "viagra for $1 a pill" etc

this is just an option, not a request, I do have ads disabled, but I did donate at one point of time

That's what LES used to have, then it went to donationbox, and all ads were removed, that box emptied out a while ago and people have been out of pocket since.

There was never any way that LES taking any payment for anything in any way was ever going to be 100% fine with 100% of the people here, it is what it is, I can only give options, the choice is ultimately everyone's own to make.

teamacc

@AnthonySmith said:

@dgc1980 said:
some time ago, I ran a site and offered ads to members and stuff at like $5 a month with a limit of 4 ads in the rotation, wrote my own little landing for them to upload ads to etc, the site was able to survive well with that, that way the ads we actually targeted and relevant to the community. maybe something like this would be better by seeing like "xyz vps for $7/yr" in a small rotation that than seeing an ad for "viagra for $1 a pill" etc

this is just an option, not a request, I do have ads disabled, but I did donate at one point of time

That's what LES used to have, then it went to donationbox, and all ads were removed, that box emptied out a while ago and people have been out of pocket since.

There was never any way that LES taking any payment for anything in any way was ever going to be 100% fine with 100% of the people here, it is what it is, I can only give options, the choice is ultimately everyone's own to make.

"Donate your TierHive tokens to LES by clicking here", add a bit of vendor lock-in :P

AnthonySmith

@teamacc said:
@AnthonySmith said:

@dgc1980 said:
some time ago, I ran a site and offered ads to members and stuff at like $5 a month with a limit of 4 ads in the rotation, wrote my own little landing for them to upload ads to etc, the site was able to survive well with that, that way the ads we actually targeted and relevant to the community. maybe something like this would be better by seeing like "xyz vps for $7/yr" in a small rotation that than seeing an ad for "viagra for $1 a pill" etc

this is just an option, not a request, I do have ads disabled, but I did donate at one point of time

That's what LES used to have, then it went to donationbox, and all ads were removed, that box emptied out a while ago and people have been out of pocket since.

There was never any way that LES taking any payment for anything in any way was ever going to be 100% fine with 100% of the people here, it is what it is, I can only give options, the choice is ultimately everyone's own to make.

"Donate your TierHive tokens to LES by clicking here", add a bit of vendor lock-in :P

I am thinking of just turning supporter mode off , seems the most simple solution.

Edit: done

Not_Oles

@AnthonySmith said:

@dgc1980 said:
some time ago, I ran a site and offered ads to members and stuff at like $5 a month with a limit of 4 ads in the rotation, wrote my own little landing for them to upload ads to etc, the site was able to survive well with that, that way the ads we actually targeted and relevant to the community. maybe something like this would be better by seeing like "xyz vps for $7/yr" in a small rotation that than seeing an ad for "viagra for $1 a pill" etc

this is just an option, not a request, I do have ads disabled, but I did donate at one point of time

That's what LES used to have, then it went to donationbox, and all ads were removed, that box emptied out a while ago and people have been out of pocket since.

There was never any way that LES taking any payment for anything in any way was ever going to be 100% fine with 100% of the people here, it is what it is, I can only give options, the choice is ultimately everyone's own to make.

Is there presently an option to contribute financially to LES?
Could we have an expense projection?

I would be delighted to contribute!

Thanks for considering!

Ympker

I remember there was some platform where you could publicly display incoming/outgoing cashflows and project spending for public/community projects (probably it was integrated with bank account). Maybe that is what some people would like to see?

AnthonySmith

It's fine I will just eat it, I will keep adverts for none logged in visitors only.

I will push the updates and changes asap so it is at least secure, drop a bunch of ideas and refocus on content.

If it's not going to work it's not going to work, the numbers are really so low now it's on life support as it is.

david3

It's a little surprising that anyone who dislikes ads hasn't installed ublock origin.

bikegremlin

@AnthonySmith said:

@teamacc said:

@AnthonySmith said:

@teamacc said:
Will there be reports at end of month to indicate income vs spending?

Well, to be honest with the immediate reaction to this, making me feel like a criminal running a scam, I am more inclined to just turn them off and scrap a bunch of plans.

I will sleep on it.

To be fair I have no idea what ballpark of income there will be. If <10/month then it might not even be worth the current backlash. If >100/month then transparancy is required imo. Especially when deciding what community project to fund with the surplus.

This is after 6 hours or so of fairly standard traffic:

Based on my experience so far:

Give it at least a month. Algorithm needs time to figure out what ad(vertiser)s to connect the site with.

Even with my conservative Adsense setup (no over page and lowest advert frequency settings) revenue should (or at least could ) be better than that with decent traffic.

But it will need some time.

If the auto ads can't place siderail (on desktop) and one header advert, you could try adding an ad placeholder (adsense provides you with code for that - and you can set a minimum height so no content shifting while ads are loading or when they are blocked).

imok

@AnthonySmith said:
It's fine I will just eat it, I will keep adverts for none logged in visitors only.

I will push the updates and changes asap so it is at least secure, drop a bunch of ideas and refocus on content.

If it's not going to work it's not going to work, the numbers are really so low now it's on life support as it is.

How long it lasted? 24 hours? I don't think it's enough time for a test.

rpqu

@AnthonySmith said:

@teamacc said:

@AnthonySmith said:

@teamacc said:
Will there be reports at end of month to indicate income vs spending?

Well, to be honest with the immediate reaction to this, making me feel like a criminal running a scam, I am more inclined to just turn them off and scrap a bunch of plans.

I will sleep on it.

To be fair I have no idea what ballpark of income there will be. If <10/month then it might not even be worth the current backlash. If >100/month then transparancy is required imo. Especially when deciding what community project to fund with the surplus.

This is after 6 hours or so of fairly standard traffic:

£12/month

luis

I was coming here to complain I wasn't being able to support (no option anywhere), but I see it's been taken off now ahah.

Neoon

Given these numbers, its probably better to ask for donations.
If 3 people donate 5 bloody pounds, you are better off.

Enough to pay for a Baguette to run LES on.

someTom

same here, i just wondered why i dont have the switch in my profile.

somik

I still see at least 2 ad/tracking domains on LES though.

<!-- Cloudflare Web Analytics -->
<script defer src='https://static.cloudflareinsights.com/beacon.min.js' data-cf-beacon='{"token": "b02062364f364aea8c5a04143631073d"}'></script>
<!-- End Cloudflare Web Analytics -->
<script async src="https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-9654762685286550"
     crossorigin="anonymous"></script>

AnthonySmith

@someTom said:
same here, i just wondered why i dont have the switch in my profile.

Yeah it's a bit disappointing but maybe Google AdSense was a bad choice to start with.

I am not going to be taking donations, I have tried to say it in many polite ways, this community is circling the gutter, I am trying to offer a solution I opened up the discussion for a month, I explained the reasons and the plan.

The first visible and entirely optional change and I am made to feel like I am running a scam. It's pretty disappointing.

I put a stupid amount of time into this and am paying out of pocket for help, that was probably a mistake.

I will leave adverts on for none logged in users only, I will refocus my efforts onto quality content, if the numbers don't support or justify or modify the demographic of the community, then it is what it is, another failed fork.

SwordfishBE

Personally, I’ve never found it bothersome to see sponsored ads on the right side of the index page or sponsored spots at the top of the offers page. You can make a selection and filter out companies that raise serious doubts. Then at least you get relevant advertising.

hellbound

@AnthonySmith said: I am not going to be taking donations

But donations seem like a good option to support the forum. Most people dislike ads and block them in one way or another. Perhaps you could open donations with one-time, monthly, quarterly, and yearly options. People who donate X amount on a recurring basis (monthly/quarterly/yearly) can earn a special tag or icon for their forum account. Sorry if this has already been suggested and discussed, but I just wanted to share an idea I think would be helpful to have.

AnthonySmith

@hellbound said:

@AnthonySmith said: I am not going to be taking donations

But donations seem like a good option to support the forum. Most people dislike ads and block them in one way or another. Perhaps you could open donations with one-time, monthly, quarterly, and yearly options. People who donate X amount on a recurring basis (monthly/quarterly/yearly) can earn a special tag or icon for their forum account. Sorry if this has already been suggested and discussed, but I just wanted to share an idea I think would be helpful to have.

I am going to close the other thread because its causing confusion and splitting the conversation:

here is what I said in the other thread:

Even advertisements that they voluntarily show to themselves?

I can't/won't take donations; the reality is I am a director of a VAT-registered company that is involved in the hosting industry. Mason had different but just as potentially impactful reasons that he needed to stop taking donations; it is not as simple as it once was.

I am a tough place, I felt like I did enough to explain what my plans were in advance, I listened to feedback, I thought it was pretty clear that it was an impossible task to please everyone, so my goal was a happy middle ground, within hours/minutes of having the optional adverts live to cover the costs people are asking for recipts and annoyed that i did exactly what i said I was going to do.

On the other hand, I feel like I have to wind my neck in as its the same people that were here for 3 years or when I barley was and there is no question that LES is a different place now, when I left it, it had an advertising revenue stream to cover the costs and then do what ever was needed, Mason for good reason felt it was more appropriate to pay the lions share of costs himself.

So I feel like we have a real direction split here, so I am following good advice I once got: "If in doubt, do nowt" (Nowt for none native English speakers is a dialect word for nothing)

I am finishing up what I was working on yesterday. putting all the other work planned for LES on hold, I will make the changes so far I have had done in dev pushed to live, so at least we have an up-to-date platform not running on a wing and a prayer and the good grace of CloudFlare's WAF.

I will do nothing but content focus for a month or so, If the non-logged-in user visits don't pay for LES, I will enable paid ads, and people will just have to suck that up if they dont like it, or fork, but given the all-time low post count and host engagement numbers, that also may not work out, this may be to little to late.

If we reach that stage and it's still not working, at least the platform will be stable and cheaper to run, if I am not right for the job, I will move on, I only have good intentions, but things don't run well long term on good grace and pixie dust, my goal is change and growth, not everyone wants that.

I need a coffee.

link: https://lowendspirit.com/discussion/comment/236273/#Comment_236273

davide

@AnthonySmith if you are aligned with me in thinking that a breath of fresh tech and services is needed in LES I still have my proposition open for integrating a searchable product inventory in Vanilla. I understand this competes with your earlier proposal to display service ads on the sidebar whose visibility is modulated programmatically by your algorithms. But given the integration would be sufficiently simple to implement maybe you could consider it for the time being,

msatt

@AnthonySmith It is too hot in the UK and I feel your frustration - damned if you do and damned if you don't (re ads).
My advice just chill - no one (I believe) is pressurising you. You have put an enormous UNPAID amount of effort into this community, creating what you hope will be beneficial and yet push backs happen.
As you have said you can't please everyone SO DON'T. Please yourself, you are not stupid / naive / dick and the community needs to understand that anything you do is NOT for your benefit it is (you hope) for theirs.
The community needs to understand that not everything is driven by commercialism, some people do things to benefit others.

jaden

Are you not legally able to accept donations or are you choosing not to? If the former, what about changing legal ownership to an entity that can. If the latter, why?

AnthonySmith

@jaden said:
Are you not legally able to accept donations or are you choosing not to? If the former, what about changing legal ownership to an entity that can. If the latter, why?

I am a director of a VAT-registered limited company related to hosting. I took advice that donations are risky/grey area to begind with and then double for a hosting-related forum that I also advertise on, and own, the advice was to not take donations because they cant be seen as donations they are a service payment especially if any perks are attached no matter how small, which tax must be paid on, so I should actually take membership payments (I just dont want to do that) and then there is VAT collection end to end.

Imagine walking into a big store, and finding the owner and asking if you can make a donation to him personally, to help out customers of his store, probably a shit example, but it's too hot to think of a good one, hopefully that bridges the mental gymnastics of it for you.

Simply, taking donations in 2026 is not even close to being as simple as it used to be, especially if you live in the UK.

Regarding the legal entity, the costs of doing that would double or triple the financial requirement, its not a quick admin task, that's probably just tax avoidance in the eyes of HMRC.

The idea was to gain advertising revenue, keep track of that, and spend it on LES as 1:1 as possible, on paper it becomes a marketing cost; from an accounting perspective, that is simple, no extra loopholes, no asking people for their own money they have already been taxed on.

davide

@msatt said:
@AnthonySmith It is too hot in the UK and I feel your frustration

I have a cold basement year round, the trick to having a chill house in summer is to open the hatch on the roof in the attic and the windows in the basement; the whole house become a whirlpool of a chimney effect, with cold air flowing upward and hot air flowing out thru the roof. Works best if you live in a 200-storey skyscraper.

@AnthonySmith: hooking into your mood, I must add that the money to buy and run a comfortably cool AC unit has been taxed away by HMRC for your fair share and 90% of the people you might randomly sample are okay with it.

mikho

@AnthonySmith said:

@dgc1980 said:
some time ago, I ran a site and offered ads to members and stuff at like $5 a month with a limit of 4 ads in the rotation, wrote my own little landing for them to upload ads to etc, the site was able to survive well with that, that way the ads we actually targeted and relevant to the community. maybe something like this would be better by seeing like "xyz vps for $7/yr" in a small rotation that than seeing an ad for "viagra for $1 a pill" etc

this is just an option, not a request, I do have ads disabled, but I did donate at one point of time

That's what LES used to have, then it went to donationbox, and all ads were removed, that box emptied out a while ago and people have been out of pocket since.

There was never any way that LES taking any payment for anything in any way was ever going to be 100% fine with 100% of the people here, it is what it is, I can only give options, the choice is ultimately everyone's own to make.

Not really true.... the donorbox brought in enough money to pay for all services for a bit over a year or maybe 2 years, can't remember.

Then the donation box was hidden to stop donations from building up.
Guess @Mason never enabled it again when the funds ran out.

AnthonySmith

@mikho said:

@AnthonySmith said:

@dgc1980 said:
some time ago, I ran a site and offered ads to members and stuff at like $5 a month with a limit of 4 ads in the rotation, wrote my own little landing for them to upload ads to etc, the site was able to survive well with that, that way the ads we actually targeted and relevant to the community. maybe something like this would be better by seeing like "xyz vps for $7/yr" in a small rotation that than seeing an ad for "viagra for $1 a pill" etc

this is just an option, not a request, I do have ads disabled, but I did donate at one point of time

That's what LES used to have, then it went to donationbox, and all ads were removed, that box emptied out a while ago and people have been out of pocket since.

There was never any way that LES taking any payment for anything in any way was ever going to be 100% fine with 100% of the people here, it is what it is, I can only give options, the choice is ultimately everyone's own to make.

Not really true.... the donorbox brought in enough money to pay for all services for a bit over a year or maybe 2 years, can't remember.

Then the donation box was hidden to stop donations from building up.
Guess @Mason never enabled it again when the funds ran out.

Ok, well that's a different reason from what he said on Discord, which I don't want to say because I don't know if he said it here, and it's personal, but I guess both can be true. Either way, the donation box is empty, I assume he or you have been paying out of pocket since the point it emptied.

Edit: Ignore me I read the wrong point, you mean you think there is a way for 100% of the people to be happy and remain ad-free by taking donations only, I understand, sorry.

WSS

Tom still needs to suck a dick.

havoc

Anybody know of a way to allow ads on specific site with DNS level filtering? Wouldn't pass on the client ID...so seems like an all or nothing affair

"https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-9654762685286550"

jaden

@AnthonySmith said:

@mikho said:

@AnthonySmith said:

@dgc1980 said:
some time ago, I ran a site and offered ads to members and stuff at like $5 a month with a limit of 4 ads in the rotation, wrote my own little landing for them to upload ads to etc, the site was able to survive well with that, that way the ads we actually targeted and relevant to the community. maybe something like this would be better by seeing like "xyz vps for $7/yr" in a small rotation that than seeing an ad for "viagra for $1 a pill" etc

this is just an option, not a request, I do have ads disabled, but I did donate at one point of time

That's what LES used to have, then it went to donationbox, and all ads were removed, that box emptied out a while ago and people have been out of pocket since.

There was never any way that LES taking any payment for anything in any way was ever going to be 100% fine with 100% of the people here, it is what it is, I can only give options, the choice is ultimately everyone's own to make.

Not really true.... the donorbox brought in enough money to pay for all services for a bit over a year or maybe 2 years, can't remember.

Then the donation box was hidden to stop donations from building up.
Guess @Mason never enabled it again when the funds ran out.

Ok, well that's a different reason from what he said on Discord, which I don't want to say because I don't know if he said it here, and it's personal, but I guess both can be true. Either way, the donation box is empty, I assume he or you have been paying out of pocket since the point it emptied.

Edit: Ignore me I read the wrong point, you mean you think there is a way for 100% of the people to be happy and remain ad-free by taking donations only, I understand, sorry.

I don't pretend to understand the complications of accepting donations, but if there were a way to accept optional membership or service fees with something like Donorbox, I think many of us would be more than happy to contribute.

somik

Summarized, @AnthonySmith says cant accept donations since he is the owner of LES as well as Tierhive and promotes Tierhive on LES. So donations by hosts can be seen as them buying special privileges.

I say, if the orange monkey from the united pedo freedom can do it, so can @AnthonySmith. I mean MAGA was (allegedly) sponsored by the big corpos and they (allegedly) received special benefits from it. One of them even became a Trillioaire for a while before (allegedly) transferring the money offshore.

AnthonySmith

@somik said:
Summarized, @AnthonySmith says cant accept donations since he is the owner of LES as well as Tierhive and promotes Tierhive on LES. So donations by hosts can be seen as them buying special privileges.

I say, if the orange monkey from the united pedo freedom can do it, so can @AnthonySmith. I mean MAGA was (allegedly) sponsored by the big corpos and they (allegedly) received special benefits from it. One of them even became a Trillioaire for a while before (allegedly) transferring the money offshore.

Laws dont apply to the wealthy, I am writing this on an i5

somik

@AnthonySmith said:

@somik said:
Summarized, @AnthonySmith says cant accept donations since he is the owner of LES as well as Tierhive and promotes Tierhive on LES. So donations by hosts can be seen as them buying special privileges.

I say, if the orange monkey from the united pedo freedom can do it, so can @AnthonySmith. I mean MAGA was (allegedly) sponsored by the big corpos and they (allegedly) received special benefits from it. One of them even became a Trillioaire for a while before (allegedly) transferring the money offshore.

Laws dont apply to the wealthy, I am writing this on an i5

Ain't that the truth!

rpqu

@AnthonySmith It's not donation, it's a tip jar.