One word: blech

Clever idea! Just don't start looking like something from NASCAR.

Heh, and just when my heartburn started acting up.

This is pretty sad. The internet is well on its way to becoming just as irritating as television, in terms of commercialization.

David,

How did you phrase your Google Ranks query? Just wondering.

Using baseball and sf Giants, OBM ranks 3 or 4, depending on what day you check, and number one among non-MLB affiliated sites. The other guys you cited use Explorer, which I don't, so I am invisible to them, (of course, your hits per day is vastly greater than mine).

It's the Google page rank, which is on a scale from 1 to 10. If you have the Google toolbar, you can get the page rank of any page with a click.

I have no problem with ads, as long as you don't get sanctimonius about stuff like the spiderman logos on the bases.

I'm never thrilled about advertising, but do what you need to do to stay around. I'd rather have advertising on this blog than no blog at all.

How about a tagline in a post instead. Sell them to someone looking to promote his/her blog or whatever else but does not want to go through the trouble of making a graphic or picture?

You could sell a day's or week's worth of posts for a certain amount of $$. Or maybe consecutive posts.?

I think that once a certain amount of advertising is added to a blog like this, the blog is dimished somehow. I feel like it is hawking its wares to me. I'd rather have a monthly request for PayPal donations or something like that. I regularly donate money to various web comics that I read, and I've donated to several baseball blogs when they have asked for various reasons. In my mind, advertisements like these belittle the blog and the reader. It seems kinda sad.

Go David, make that bread. I'm all for making a buck at doing what you love. However, if you begin sliding product references into your postings, or allow for obstructive advertising (animations, any type of audio accompaniment, or those damned windows that grow, get in the way of text, or follow your mouse around), you'll have crossed the fine line between clever and stupid. Keep it simple and collect your dough. Why not?

Targetted unobtrusive ads is the goal.

I like the way b-r.com does it.

David S, if you don't mind these new large, obtrusive ads that Pinto is now adding to his blog, I don't think that you should complain when he ads sliding ads that follow your mouse or audio accompaniment or popup ads or anything else. These are just the first step. They're ugly, obtrusive, and the detract from the blog.

Ads are fine. The reality is that people need to somehow support these things.

Support what? The blog? It's just a little space on a server somewhere. Sure, the domain is $20/yr or so, and the web space is $10-20/month. But do you really need ads to support it? That's ludicrous. To me, it seems like someone who puts these kinds of ads on a blog like this is just trying to milk every last dime out of it with little regard to the readers.

But maybe I'm just in a pissy mood today, who knows.

I have no problem with ads, in fact, I encourage them. What you're forgetting is that it not only costs money to maintain this webpage, but it also costs a lot of money to purchase the data that David is kind enough to provide us with and time to break it all down into something like his model of range, not to mention the amount of time David spends making various interesting posts. Hell, I would hope that you could have enough advertisers to this stuff full-time.

It parallels the sad history of the Internet in general. Back in the day, there were no ads. None. Anywhere on the Internet. Then the Internet became commercialized. Just like blogs. When blogs started, they were a labor of love. Remember what that felt like? When people did stuff just because they loved doing it?

Don't get me wrong: I am a loyal reader of Baseball Musings, and I have a lot of respect for David Pinto. I've been reading this blog for a long time and I still enjoy it. It's one of the few blogs that actually writes about baseball every day. No poker. No basketball. No reminiscing about when he worked for the Coen brothers. Straight up baseball. I just feel that the ads, done this way, cheapen the site. If you HAVE to advertise, then do it tastefully. There are bloggers (and web comics) that are a business. Yeah, there is advertising on these sites (pvponline.com, penny-arcade.com), but it's done professionally. A giant bottle of Rolaids in the middle of the page is disgusting, obstrusive, and cheapening.

Oh, and I don't know if Mr. Pinto pays for all the stats he gets since he works for a baseball statistics company. I would hazard a guess that he has plenty of access to stats from work. He DOES advertise for them after every single post.

golly gee,

Some people need to get their head out of the ground.

Ads are a small price to pay for high quality free web content. The other options are no baseball musings at some point as it probably is not worth the time and effort it takes to do it or having to pay a-la ESPN for Neyer. I much prefer ads, than either of the other two.

I don't think it is fair to david to put up a few numbers saying that it does not cost much to run a website, ignoring whatever amount of time he spends on it. Whatever golden age of ad free internet you remember, it has not existed for damn near a decade. Let him make a few bucks off the website without making him feel guilty about disrespecting the readers or cheapening the blog. THe blog stands on the content. It is far better to have passive ads then begging for people to hit the tip jar.

Go for the ads in whatever form you like David, if the content remains high, people will keep reading.
Later

Tarik

I'd rather pay a fee to Mr. Pinto than see any more ads
than he currently has.

One webcomic guy put it in his reader's court: he said that if he were to quit his job he would be able to spend more time on the comic and give his viewers higher quality work put out at more frequent intervals. He said that if his readers were able to donate the equivalent of one year's salary, then he would quit his job. The readers (including myself) came through with flying colors, donating significantly more then he needed. He promptly quit his job, and his web comic is even better then it was before.

hi david!!!

i think you should do ads if you want to. as long as they aren't pop-ups, or paid for in the article - like, this blog entry brought to you by preparation-H, the favorite cream or catchers in MLB or something like that...

I would hate to pay a fee. Ads are much better than having to pay. I agree 100% with Tarik.