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CancelAds Offers Readers a Way To Support Bloggers and Remove Ads
Back in the late ’90s, one of the sites I read regularly decided to offer a “no-ads” subscription for $80/year. They claimed that they had thousands of subscribers over the life of the program. To make it work, they added more ads which helped to increase subscriptions.
Today, Svetlana Gladkova (she is editor of the Profy blog) is launching a similar program to support bloggers and remove ads at the same time. CancelAds hopes to offer readers a quick and easy option to remove the ads on a blog or website for a specific period of time. I think of it as the next level of “tipping”.
From the release, “CancelAds is based on the idea that all the online publishers are compensated for their content by their visitors and users: some pay for premium services while other visitors watch ads. The much-criticized trend is that the vast majority of web publishers rely on advertising as their only source of revenue. This is exactly where CancelAds offers a solution as the startup is intended to ensure the badly needed diversification of revenue sources.”
CancelAds provides bloggers with a line of code to add to their template and buttons to allow readers to purchase blocks of time that the ads will be “cancelled”. Payment is made via PayPal and after the payment is made, readers surf ad-free for the purchased time period.
Naturally not every reader is going to use CancelAds, in fact my guess is that the percentage will be relatively low. But it’s an additional option and the service costs nothing to install. Bloggers and CancelAds share in the revenue generated from each purchase. There are a variety of content topics where I think CancelAds could work (early adopter blogging isn’t one of them) and overall I like the idea of a potential additional direct revenue stream for blogs. I’ve been a fan of blog revenue models that layer instead of replace.
Editor’s note: Svetlana is a friend.
Sounds really familiar to Contenture.com
Holden – I think the difference is that contenture sells in bundles, cancelads sells individually but it is along the same overall path.
this won’t work, I don’t think people care that much about ads.
Darren, your comment proves that you have never participated in discussions between bloggers and users of AdBlocker Plus – these discussions make me think that people do care about ads a lot though of course some will prefer to simply block them away.
I find this idea a great way to generate revenue for bloggers but I find it difficult to prosper overtime especially for start-ups and blogs that don’t have that much followers or solid fan base. Given the fact that it can earn a blogger some revenue, some people find ads either obtrusive or tolerable. People who find it annoying might pay while others who are not willing can just ignore it.
no but if they use ad blockers and they are effective I cannot see them changing their habits and paying out.
good luck with it but people that use ad blockers are leeches that think its ok to block ads so I cannot see them doing it.
Sound like a great product. Revenue diversification is much needed for purely ad supported sites. Each year CPM rates seem to fall.
On another note, I don’t see cancel ads option on profy ..
@Darrren: As Allen said “I think of it as the next level of “tipping”.” – that would be one market segment of supporters who love the blog/website. This would also find lot of other market segments like educational – We run an educational service and repeatedly get requests for removing ads by paying. The product has potential!
My only problem is that I like seeing ads on most of the blogs I read, since the ads are sometimes interesting.
Darren, I care about not seeing ads while reading content as well. Thats why I use RSS subscriptions to my favorite content. It cuts down on them tremendously.
But saying something like “this wont work” with a subjective reason like people don’t care about ads shows you are not seeing the market they are trying to go after. I mean maybe they have some potential clients already lined up or are thinking about approaching. Maybe they are going after what sites people use AdBlocker Plus on the most…
Will: Service is opt in and as Allen pointed out its “Naturally not every reader is going to use CancelAds”
Yeah I guess I am not the target audience on this but I will say that it needs to be micro payment amounts.
check out intergrating http://www.zaypay.com/public/en/docs/overview so people can pay via thier phone.
I might come across hypercritical but I just don’t think that there is a market for this on the sites I visit.
The days of silly ads seem to have gone but I guess there might be a few hanging around.
also how would your advertisers feel if they saw you were offer a service not to show thier ad.
[...] Stern of CenterNetworks has published a great review of CancelAds and his readers are now engaged in a very interesting conversation in the comments [...]
[...] is where CancelAds comes into place, and as Allen Stern from Center Networks points out, this is a revenue stream that is a layered approach. Loyal readers might just go for paying a few dollars for an ad free site, while casual users get [...]