advertising in email alerts

[eric merrill]

Has any thought been given to allowing subscribers to opt out of the

advertising now being inserted into the email alerts?

 

Yes, I understand photo.net needs to make money. I also understand

that subscribers are already contributing money. To me, the biggest

benefit of continuing to subscribe would be my not seeing any more ads.

 

I can always set up a technical solution on my end to strip them out

before I see them. But why should I have to do that when I'm already

supporting photo.net?

 

Thanks for listening.

[peter_evans4]

Perhaps it's the advertising that causes my despamming service to zap all such mail that Photo.Net sends me. Or anyway I've never received any of these messages (or indeed any message telling me of a user's address).

[mottershead]

When you subscribe to a newspaper or a magazine, do they send you a version with a different layout without ads? Is the ACDSee ad in the alerts really so difficult to ignore that you would invest time and effort (and want us to invest time and effort) so that you don't have to see it? Or is this just a generic anti-advertising posture you've adopted?

 

We don't have that many subscribers at present, and it wouldn't cost us that much in advertising revenue if we did what you want, although only two subscribers have made an issue of it so far. But to be honest, such a policy kind of rubs me the wrong way. What this basically would say is that ads are a nuisance and that a "subscriber benefit" is that we won't annoy you with ads -- but we don't mind annoying a few hundred thousand other people who don't subscribe.

 

We would prefer a business model where subscribers paid for the site. That would allow us to focus on delivering content and services to photographers -- which is the reason that we got into running a photography web site.

 

But since people don't subscribe in sufficient numbers to generate the revenue we need, we have a revenue model that makes advertisers our customers as well. From a revenue point of view, a main "business" of the site is delivering an audience of photographers to advertisers. Given that advertisers are our customers and we are depending on them for the site to continue, it does not seem to me to be playing fair with them to publicly adopt the attitude that advertising is a nuisance that subscribers can pay us to avoid, giving the advertisers access only to the more casual and ephermeral part of our audience.

 

My philosophy has therefore been not to privelege subscribers over non-subscribers when it comes to ads, and to find a good balance for everyone who visits the site between the usefulness and potential for distraction of the ads. I might be compelled to abandon my point of view by the fact that quite a lot of other web sites let subscribers buy out of ads; but, as I said, this seems to be playing a little unfair with our advertisers (who are customers as much as the subscribers are), and it rubs me the wrong way.

[eric merrill]

Brian:

 

If I can get a newspaper or a magazine for free, I don't complain about the ads. If there is no difference in a free version of a magazine and the paid version, why should I subscribe?

 

Yes, the ACDSee ads in the alerts break up the text and make it difficult to read email threads. Putting ads between messages is disruptive to reading. I thought I'd offer a suggestion that would make the reading experience more enjoyable to me as a subscriber. Put enough ads in between messages, and photo.net ceases to become an enjoyable experience.

 

"We would prefer a business model where subscribers paid for the site. That would allow us to focus on delivering content and services to photographers -- which is the reason that we got into running a photography web site."

 

I don't claim to be an expert on business models for paid sites. I'm not aware of any sites that are currently thriving when they offer the same content to both paying and non-paying readers. I've enjoyed photo.net. That's why I'm taking the time to comment. If I didn't care, I'd simply opt out and go away.

 

I suspect there are more than two of us who are annoyed by the new ads in the emails. I almost didn't say anything myself because I hate coming across as complaining, especially when I can use a technical solution to solve the problem for myself. Hardly seems fair to the advertisers, though, to claim their message is being delivered when it's not.

 

Possible solutions? Insert the advertising blurb a limited number of times per day. First alert of the day gets it, and the rest don't. Insert the advertising blurb only once per thread being monitored for email alerts. I'm not against advertising. I'm against advertising that makes it difficult to follow a conversation. If magazine ads were inserted between each paragraph of an article, I would no longer subscribe to that magazine.

[mottershead]

Well, we've never tried to make the subscription benefit be a difference in content.

 

Perhaps we are naive or idealistic, but the reason that we expect people to subscribe is because it is a subscription site which wouldn't exist if people didn't support it. BOTH subscribers and advertisers are needed.

 

When people sign up they are informed that they are expected to subscribe if they visit the site frequently after some length of time acquainting themselves with it. People are not expected to subscribe if they visit the site infrequently, or if, as a student, retired person, etc, they cannot afford it. (However, I should say we do tend to think that someone who can afford photography as a hobby, as well as a computer and an ISP account ought to be able to afford a photo.net subscription.)

 

If you insist that subscribers should have extra priveleges and benefits, there are of course a few: (1) the patron icon, which identifies you as a supporter of the site to other members, especially other supporters; (2) a @photo.net email forwarding address; (3) unlimited photocritique alerts; (4) higher limits in the Gallery on photo critique requests and space for photos.

 

While these things are nice, I wouldn't imagine that anybody would think of this bundle of "benefits" as worth $25.00 -- or, at least, they would need to be planning to use all of them to max. Thinking of access to the site as "free" and the benefits as worth $25.00 is the wrong way to look at it. Rather, regular access to the site is $25.00, and the benefits are a "thank you" for being honorable and paying it.

 

So, in my mind subscribing is not so much a matter of selling people on "benefits" as expecting/hoping that people will be honest and honorable and will pay for something for which they know they are expected to pay.

 

You're a subscriber, anyway (thanks). Why did you subscribe?

[ecarter]

I don't know if anyone there listens to NPR (National Public Radio) out there -- it could be I'm one of the few. :-) But I treat photo.net in a sense in the same way as NPR. Just because I'm a member of NPR doesn't mean I won't hear the same pledge drive stuff when it comes up, nor does it mean I get any additional content.

 

Instead, you pay NPR because you put some value in it and know that if the bills aren't paid somehow, it may not always be there.

 

Same reason I subscribe to photo.net, really. I cannot imagine that the site brings in a huge amount of money from referral ads, etc - so it has to come from somewhere.

[bobatkins]

The only problem with the NPR/PBS approach is that the minority end up supporting the majority, and that they can't raise enough money to support themselves by subscriptions.

 

I know in the case of PBS that they get about 5% of their viewers subscribe, and that the money raised only covers about 25% of their expenses.

 

The only really totally listener supported (no advertising, no corporate support, no government support) radio is something like the Pacifica Stations (e.g. WBAI in New York). Of course they are constantly on the verge of bankrupcy, always in danger of being sold off and depend in large part on unpaid volunteers to run the station and create the programs - not unlike photo.net!

[garry edwards]

Personally I don't have any kind of a problem with adverts appended to email notifications, but my email software does, and consigns them to the spam folder.

 

The PN philosophy on subscriptions is both intersting and laudable, but you only have to look at many of the posts both here and on the internet generally to see that there are a lot of people out there who seem to believe that the internet was created just to provide them with free services.

 

Personally, I believe that I get far more from my membership of PN than I contribute, and anyway US$25 is a very small amount, but this seems to be a minority view.

 

Obviously I don't have any figures, but I see that one of my own photos has been rated by 106 non-subscribers and only 16 subscribers, and if this ratio is typical then perhaps more could be done to encourage subscriptions.

 

Perhaps more could also be done to encourage paid advertising - I'm interested in advertising on PN myself, but my request for information received no response

[bens]

being idealistic and incentivizing subscriptions are not incompatible. its how you incentivize that reinforces or alters values and integrity. i think you've got the opportunity to do more to obtain subscribers, and that a larger base of people feeling something invested in the site would improve its atmosphere. one suggestion -- periodic subscription drives, using banners and intra-site links showing its value on strategic pages for a period of time periodically (say a week every quarter?). i don't care how broke you are -- and i've been there --, 25 dollars is affordable for just about anyone for a year, particularly for a resource like this in a hobby that cost hundreds to just get started. fortunately or unfortunately, you always have to prod people in the direction you'd like them to go; inertia is a powerful thing. i signed up after brian implied i should in a curt response to one of my feedback messages. i should have done it a year before.

[eric merrill]

Brian:

 

Why did I subscribe? I believe you wrote somewhere that this was a subscription site, and that we were honor bound to subscribe if we became regular visitors. Simple enough. I also help out when I remember by buying stuff through the link to B&H that gives a small kickback to photo.net.

 

The main benefit I get from photo.net is reading the messages. More often then not, I read them through my email client after expressing interest in a thread. And it's a pain to have a screen of messages with more ad text than message text. A big enough pain that I decided to say something. I figure that by helping support photo.net, I should get to voice my opinion. Notice, that I'm not expecting my opinion to be engraved in stone and followed by all.

 

If advertisers are more important than subscribers, then go that route. It will be hard to do both equally well. It sounds like advertising will support photo.net more than subscribers will. When the site and email notices become laden with ads and supporting subscribers get no preference over freeloaders, then I would not be surprised to find more freeloaders and fewer subscribers. But the increased revenue from the advertisers should compensate for this.

[garry edwards]

I think it all comes down to perception of value and benefits.<p>My own perception is that PN is by far the best site for both static and forum content - no other site that I've seen is in the same league.<p>But I don't think it does as well on the critique/rating side, and there are other sites that do much better IMO.<p>And yet the critique/rating/viewing side attracts the visitors, whether they are subscribers or not, they click through to adverts so they have a high perceived value.<p>And PN tries to encourage subscriptions by providing added benefits to people who want to upload a lot of photos. This is fair enough, but the benefits of subscription are far less obvious to people who don't upload photos or who upload very few.<br>It seems to me that the strongest part of the site is also the poor relation in terms of both perceived value and subscriber incentives.<p>I really like the PN attitude to subscriptions - basically "Pay a subscription if you can afford it and if you use the site a lot". I feel that there can be few people who are interested in photography and who work and live in the west who can't afford US$25 - but there are many people who can't work and who don't live in an affluent country.<br>If I made the decisions at PN I would try to distinguish those who can't pay from those who won't pay, and do everything possible to encourage those who can to do so. Nothing will ever persuade some people to pay their share but many people who can don't, for no better reason than that they haven't got around to it or they don't realise that they should. I was one of these until the 'Sandy campaign'.<p>Here are some very quick and dirty suggestions that may be worth considering:<br>A pop-up (that needs to be closed)for non-subscribers reminding them of the benefits of subscription (I'm sure that there is a software solution to prevent this if people have registered from a poor country)<br>More benefits for subscribers

[nikos]

There are many advertising and sponsorship options available to a site like photo.net on the market today. I am glad that so far, photo.net seems to taking those options that, while increading revenue, do not degrade the value of the site. Ideally I would like no advertising at all, but since this is not financially viable, I am content to observe that at photo.net:

 

1. Advertising is always clearly marked for what it is and easy to visually and semantically separate from the content.

 

2. The actual content and editorial plan is not used as an indirect advertising venue, as is commonly the case with many other sites. Photo.net hasn't 'sold' itself out to any sponsor, rather deals with advertisers as customers.

 

3. Even though recently ads have been popping up in just about every part of the site, the way they appear is still reasonably unobtrusive.

 

4. Adverts are relevant most of the time. The are not senseless 'offers' for things I am unlikely to want.

 

5. Total garbage ads are rare, if any.

 

With $25/year I can buy photo.net, with great content, lots of information, knowledgeable people to converse with, and an interactive gallery space for my photos. A few ads show up here and there, reasonably and unobtrusively. If I spent the same money on a photo mag subscription, (actually they cost more) I would get a useless wad of full-page ads, with a few pages of content inside, most of it crafted to showcase products that manufacturers "donated" to the mag.

 

I really can't complain about photo.net on this issue.

 

As a last note, the one section where it could be reasonable to offer ad filtering at a premium, is the personal galery space. Some photographers would perhaps be willing to pay the equivalent of a high-end hosting fee for their portfolio pages to be laid out with less clutter and no ads. But that's a whole different issue altogether.

[raj surati]

So as I understand it the truly annoying issue here is that

our email alerts are getting tagged as junk.

 

What might I ask are you using to filter your email Eric?

 

-raj