Dynadot

Namebio forcing u to click ads now...

Spaceship Spaceship
Watch

alcy

Top Member
Impact
37,533
so before when i entered namebio an old grey guy add popped.. ok.. annoying. but it had X to close it.... i guess tis started couple months ago.

today, same full page ad, no X to close.. forcing a click.

its becoming complicated to enter namebio

are we gonna be forced into more things in time or is this as bad as it will get before people can just see some sales? @Michael
 
Last edited:
5
•••
The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
Show some support to the developer @Michael for offering such an amazing service for free.

If you don't want to support him, just stop complaining and start using a good adblocker.
 
Last edited:
6
•••
@Michael should add a donation option and accept Crypto payment imo
Or do like others have and put buymeacoffee link on contact page. I'm not sure my little usage grants a membership but I'd definitely buy this man a coffee. Happy Birthday!
 
8
•••
Also, happy birthday @Michael!!!

I wish that mean guy who sent the hate email, dies of his own sins. Such thankless people, they don't even know what its like to offer a free service and devote hours of time & effort, very sad to see the replies to this post and the post itself :(


Wish you all the best and hope you are safe and doing good!
 
Last edited:
7
•••
@Michael why don't you monetize the site with Adsense or any private banners .. i am sure many would be interested to advertise
 
3
•••
Ok, I hear you guys. It's 15 seconds now, I'll jump straight to the lowest I can go for testing, but if clicks are hurt too much I might need to inch it back up a little. Thanks.

I am so not used to people being able to take a feedback not defensively, that I was literally surprised at this response. You are amazing.

Happy birthday and thank you for the great service. I will make sure to place some paid ads once my website is ready for campaigns.
 
7
•••
You don't have to click on it just wait... these type of ads have always been like that, especially on mobile apps.
 
2
•••
Guys, if you can't wait for ad completion, just refresh the page again, ad will not display :)

I'm surprised you suggest something like this, especially if you have an epik staff badge, it means that each of your actions represents your company
 
3
•••
this is not anonymous, sometimes I watched NB ads
 
1
•••
Unfortunately the clicks went down quite a bit yesterday, and I'm not sure which of the changes caused it. I'm going to have to test the settings, like how quickly before the first showing, the number of actions before it shows again, how long it has to stay up, etc. Please bear with me as I get things dialed in and find the right balance between delivering clicks while being as unobtrusive as possible.

@Michael why don't you monetize the site with Adsense or any private banners .. i am sure many would be interested to advertise
We have auction widgets that we created, which replaced all the banner space on the site. Those are populated by Park.io, Sav.com, Register.to, Docky.ly, and GoDaddy. We use affiliate programs, sell Featured Listings, and have paid memberships. So we have some decent revenue streams.

The popup started as a way to draw more attention to our memberships. Since we still had a waiting list for regular banner ads with nowhere valuable to put them, and it didn't make a ton of sense to have the membership banner show 100% of the time, I offered some of the popup space to the waiting list.

We don't really have anywhere to put AdSense, and that generally only makes decent money on extremely high traffic sites anyway. Most of our traffic is on our homepage, which almost never reloads and has a time on page of more than 23 minutes, so impression-based ads wouldn't earn well. And AdSense gets removed by most ad blockers. The bloggers who use AdSense are probably making less than $100/mo from it, and are only doing it if they can't fill all their spots since its better than nothing. It wouldn't be worth it.
 
3
•••
Honestly I don't find anything wrong with it, huge fan of Namebio and I don't mind supporting them.
 
2
•••
Only seen this ad once in the last month, didn't bother me.

However, I just signed up for the membership, primarily to support @Michael.
Hope others reading/posting in this thread might consider doing the same.

https://namebio.com/memberships

I have been contemplating on signing up for a membership for years. I think it's time to join not because of the ad but because I need to save money to advertise on the site.

I just hope since someone created this thread that people quit using Namebio altogether just because they are annoyed by it. And just when I finally got around to joining.

I'm thinking for my plans the plan that gives a 50% discount for advertising will be the most beneficial for me for promoting my upcoming domain auctions.
 
1
•••
It shouldn't be possible for a paying member to see the ad. Are you sure you're logged in? Can you send me a screenshot the next time that happens? Thanks for the kind words.
It seems to have gone. Thanks.

Namebio data is very valuable. I download it everyday to add to my local database of more than 180,000 domains sold. This is my "big data" which gives me a fresh list of the most popular keywords everyday. Then my program uses this list to filter the thousands of expiring domains everyday down to a manageable volume of several hundreds which I can then scan manually and then do research on the selected ones. Without Namebio, I wouldn't be able to "pan" for good domains everyday..
 
Last edited:
7
•••
It seems to have gone. Thanks.

Namebio data is very valuable. I download it everyday to add to my local database of more than 180,000 domains sold. This is my "big data" which gives me a fresh list of the most popular keywords everyday. Then my program uses this list to filter the thousands of expiring domains everyday down to a manageable volume of several hundreds which I can then scan manually and then do research on the selected ones. Without Namebio, I wouldn't be able to "pan" for good domains everyday..
maybe one day you can publish some of your recent research
 
1
•••
I download it everyday to add to my local database of more than 180,000 domains sold. This is my "big data" which gives me a fresh list of the most popular keywords everyday. Then my program uses this list to filter the thousands of expiring domains everyday down to a manageable volume of several hundreds which I can then scan manually and then do research on the selected ones.

Nice idea, I didn't even know they offered the full sales list each day for download, that could be the use case that makes it worth the price of a membership right there.

Otherwise, right now I am just running a couple or searches a month, if that.
 
0
•••
Happy Birthday, Michael! ty. :)
 
1
•••
I have been contemplating on signing up for a membership for years. I think it's time to join not because of the ad but because I need to save money to advertise on the site.

I just hope since someone created this thread that people quit using Namebio altogether just because they are annoyed by it. And just when I finally got around to joining.

I'm thinking for my plans the plan that gives a 50% discount for advertising will be the most beneficial for me for promoting my upcoming domain auctions.

Correction: "I just hope since someone created this thread that people DON'T quit using Namebio altogether just because they are annoyed by it. And just when I finally got around to joining."

lol sorry about that @Michael forgot the word "Don't" in there.
 
1
•••
We are used to this type of ads on mobile phones especially android free apps. 45secs for free membership use is not bad but its annoying seeing same ads like 20 times.
 
3
•••
1
•••
1
•••
If you want to use a service for free, you see ads. If you pay, you won't see them.

So why are you complaining? That is internet basics.

I bought a membership @Michael. Keep up the good work. 👍🏽
 
4
•••
If you want to use a service for free, you see ads. If you pay, you won't see them.

So why are you complaining? That is internet basics.

I bought a membership @Michael. Keep up the good work. 👍🏽

Ads are fine. Its when they become intrusive like this that it has the opposite effect and drives users (like me) away.
 
1
•••
Can’t blame them for monetizing their content.
 
5
•••
Can’t blame them for monetizing their content.

There's better ways, less intrusive ads, to do so. But @Michael made his choice. and some people won't care. Some will. whether not those who will are significant enough to cause any loss of traffic or revenue given time @Michael will see for himself. He's made his decision, I've made mine to stop using NameBio.
 
1
•••
There's better ways, less intrusive ads, to do so. But @Michael made his choice. and some people won't care. Some will. whether not those who will are significant enough to cause any loss of traffic or revenue given time @Michael will see for himself. He's made his decision, I've made mine to stop using NameBio.
I think it will be ok since the display logic is usage-based. People who don't get enough value from the site to consider it a reasonable trade-off would rarely, if ever, see it anyway. Those that know how to harness the data for a profit will see it occasionally. But they'll probably also consider it a fair trade-off in lieu of supporting the site with a membership, or will subscribe if it bothers them enough. The data is backing this up so far, traffic continues to rise and we're getting more new memberships than we ever have before. I really appreciate people being so supportive and understanding.

I must admit I didn't anticipate a reaction like yours though, in that you don't use the site enough to see the popup (except because of a bug which has been fixed) but you're still leaving. I can't say I understand the logic in that, but thankfully you appear to be in an extreme minority of users who feel that way. I also don't understand coming back to this thread every day for the past few days to re-announce that you're leaving to anyone who is being supportive.

Out of curiosity though, what website do you operate? You keep insisting that less obtrusive ads are a perfectly viable alternative to this popup so I assume you're speaking from experience. I would love to learn more about how you're making money from ads that can be easily ignored/blocked. This popup delivers more clicks in a day than a static in-content banner would deliver in a month or two. I know this because we used to have static in-content banners before we replaced them with auction widgets.

As a general update, I'm still dialing things in, but for now where we stand is:

I changed the window from a rolling seven days to being the first day of the previous month. This should mitigate an issue where the popup wasn't following the "every 50 search actions" intention. It's a bit hard to explain, so I'll give an example to illustrate it better:

Day 1: 2 search actions.
Day 2: 48 search actions. (see the popup on the last search)
Day 3: 25 search actions.
Day 4: 25 search actions. (see the popup on the last search)
Day 5: 10 search actions.
Day 6: 15 search actions.
Day 7: 25 search actions. (see the popup on the last search)

The intention was that on Day 8 you wouldn't see the popup until you did 50 more search actions, since the last thing you did was see the popup. But because of the rolling window where two search actions dropped off the count, it would knock you back under the threshold and you'd see it after two searches.

It could still happen for one popup view on the first day of each month, but now it isn't possible to happen daily. Although it wasn't a huge deal because it could also work in your favor and probably balances out.

I also made it so that if you click the banner the popup closes. That way if you visit the sponsor you don't need to keep staring at the ad for no reason. I also set the countdown back to 45 seconds from 15 seconds, that was too short and clicks dropped off a cliff. You don't have to wait that long anyway if you visit the sponsor. Refreshing will also not bypass the popup any more.
 
3
•••
Non-paying members have to watch that ad.

Yeah, but the delay on closure is too long. I went to sign up for a membership, left because I'm not waiting 38+ seconds for the pop to close.
 
0
•••
Back