Way too many ads on WSO
1.5 year WSO member here.
Is it just me, or is the owner trying to seriously cash out on this website? I get that you're trying to revamp your business model, but I'm not interested in buying interview products, becoming a Certified User, or paying for a Wall Street Mentor.
I check this forum daily to read financial news and opinions by douchebags like myself.
What do the rest of you monkeys think?
Adelbert
GTFO then.
^^ WSE = Wall Street Escorts?
OP, let me get this straight: you're calling a former banker a sellout? Have you seen the name of the site? And do you realize that he's providing a very valuable set of services to people that may or may not have the privelage of having everything handed to them?
Everyone has such well thought out responses. I'm going with
What do I think?
I think a user who has been a member for a year-and-a-half but only has 36 bananas and doesn't even know Patrick's name is someone whose opinion (about our community) I don't give a fuck about.
The idea that you could blame an ex-banker/PE associate for wanting to monetize a site filled with capitalists, libertarians, and objectivists is entirely illogical. Perhaps you can ask Patrick to create an add-free site that YOU CAN PAY FOR.
If you don't like capitalism, then you can GTFO good sir.
Beat me to it. Couldn't have said it better myself
Exactly. And its not like you are getting some random titty website Google adwords. The guides, interview help, etc are all products that prospective monkeys who visit this site actually want and need to help them break in.
It's not like 30 pop-ups are appearing every time you open a page. Is it honestly that big of a deal?
Why not switch to a 3 column layout and have the products and services offered by WSO along the left hand side?
And can we take off the "sign-up for WSO" pop-up that appears every time I load? I know it's because I'm not logged in, but I check this site often during the day and for various reasons I can't/won't log in.
All I see is this ONE cfa banner on top. Hardly "too many ads on WSO."
This is one of the cleanest sites regarding advertising that I know of. No pop ups, no talking, no weird ads, no nothing really. Do you remember a few years back when we had the Zwinky epidemic and those crazy talking ads that you couldn't shut off? Patrick fixed that because we all saw the benefit in it. The ads here that you mentioned are
1 very helpful because they advertise things that people want during recruiting season
2 Not on here all the time. Certified users (which is free), and the interview guides are god. The wall Street Mentors thing is, IMHO, helpful to people for interviewing tips- even if they do not sign up. I am not sure if I like the fact that the logo is in a small box at the top, but other than that I think the Ads are fine.
Also, for the "sign up for WSO", Patrick said he was fixing the problem that it comes up for every page. But the main page makes sense for it to come up.
Also I see a total of 5 ads on here. I had to hunt for them, one is in the bottom right corner far below any content. On is below content below the comment box. There is one at the top. And there is a small one below the post. This is the least amount of ads on any website I frequent, and these ads are relevant, safe for work, and not screaming at me.
After some time you don't even notice them anymore. I honestly gloss right over them at this point.
OP, how about you get firefox and block them. But no, you come on here crying like a vagina.
hey Adelbert....thanks for the feedback - good to know that it annoys someone...we want to make sure that you stay in the minority. We've been running ads since day 1 of WSO, so we haven't really changed our "business model". If anything, we just offer more products and services now with Wall Street Mentors, the interview / career guides, the financial modeling training discounts, etc. etc etc...
MMBinNC is correct, there are about 5-6 ad units per page, and we try to keep them fairly unobtrusive, however, we have been pushing more of these services and promoting Wall Street Mentors fairly heavily the past few weeks because 1) it is new and 2) we are right in the heart of recruiting season, so we want to make sure the new users and visitors know about them.
the current ads we have are...
Just as we removed #2 for registered users, we hope that over time we are able to remove more. We may actually remove the 728x90 at the top for logged in users and use that space instead to display user information, but that is going to take some serious web dev $s, and we just spent a lot last month, so I am holding off on that. Plus, users seemed more excited for us to spend $s on developing mobile apps and a Chat room (hopefully live tonight!).
Also, seems like that pop-up registration box really pisses people off. Can someone try hitting the site 2-3 separate times and see if it comes up the 3rd time? It shouldn't...
And yes, thank goodness we were able to get rid of the Zwinky ads, ha...we've come a long way :-)
Thanks, Patrick
Patrick is too nice. I was about to rage and he killed my buzz.
ha, figured I needed to make a comment before all the regulars came in and "raged".
honestly, criticism like this is important...it's how we have gotten better. If a ton of people were coming out and bitching about the ads (like when we had zwinky), then we would know to prioritize fixing/ changing that.
Ad revenue is still very important for WSO, so we can't just shut that off over night, but we are always open to suggestions on other monetization options that will keep the user experience enjoyable on WSO.
Just throwin' this out there--I can't even imagine how complicated the code is on this site. I just got through building my own site for my business and this site is so much more advanced. I can't even imagine what the HTML (or PHP) code looks like behind the scenes. Fuuuhh..uuuk.
yeah...think we're up to over 100 modules now. My server guy wants to kill me at times because we keep making it more complex and the database isn't getting any smaller. In other words, we may need a major "spring cleaning" within the next year or so depending on what traffic does.
I for one welcome the ads and our interweb overlord Patrick.
Just had a breakthrough idea. We can whore seabird out for some additional cash flow.
Patrick - I use ad blocker so I don't see any ads. Do you know if you still get credit for page views this way?
doubt it, but that's ok. Do you see any ads, like the one for financial modeling training below the comment box?
No. The next thing below the comment box is the "As Seen In" section. I might just turn off the feature for this site...
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