Pascal van Hecke recently used WordPress.com as a case study in making money with AdSense without annoying your users. I found his post via that girl again, a WordPress.com user annoyed by, among other things, the way it uses AdSense.
Pascal’s post is mainly about “the hoops you have to jump through, in order to enjoy the privilege of being served ads on WordPress.com.” He identifies many such hoops; I have no reason to suppose that he does so inaccurately. Despite the hoops, I still feel that my purchase of the WordPress.com CSS upgrade should entitle me to an ad-free blog.
I’m not clear on why you feel that purchasing a css $15 per annum editing upgrade that allows you to edit the appearance of one blog should entitle you to an ad-free blog.
As we have discussed before with the css upgrade making sure that advertising is not displayed on your blog is easily accomplished. Just add
div.postcontent table {display:none} and the ads will not display on your blog.
I’m wondering if you feel the same way about purchasing a domain and a domain mapping upgrade? Do you feel that purchasing these upgrades also ought to entitle bloggers to an ad-free blog?
For clarity, as both upgrades are worth $15 per blog per annum then, do you believe that all those bloggers who pay wordpress.com $15 per annum per blog (whether or not they technically upgrade) ought to be able to have ad-free blogs?
I think of paying for a CSS upgrade as paying for control over the style of the blog. It seems silly to pay for that if there’s the possibility of ads being stuck on the blog. Of course, that might just mean that I’m silly to pay for the upgrade…
I don’t think that the domain mapping upgrade is relevant to the ad issue.
That may be well and true, but you also run the risk of getting your blog ToSed by Automattic b/c it’s technically not allowed. It’s been discussed before.
Frankly, if you’re paying for domain mapping, then ads surely shouldn’t be displayed when people land on your own domain sans ‘wordpress.com’ in the URL. I’d delve deeper into the topic, but it’s time for my dinner.
-KB
People who are paying for any upgrade should be exempt from having ads displayed on the blog to which the upgrade applies. Why? Because trying to make adsense pennies out of paying customers is just greedy. They’ve already fleeced us on the upgrades (the markup on those must be incredible) and I have real trouble thinking of any other host which forces ads onto the pages of its premium users.