Namebio forcing u to click ads now...

[alcy]

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

 

[Michael]

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

It doesn’t force you to click the ad. After you wait for the countdown there’s a link to close it. Clicking the ad doesn’t close it either, you have to wait for the Close link to appear. It’s just like those ads on free mobile apps and games, where the (X) button is disabled until you wait a certain amount of time (usually while a video plays).

I realize it’s a bit obtrusive, but it only pops up after every 50 homepage actions (searching, paginating, sorting) and only lasts 45 seconds. For most people that might mean once every day or two, for heavier users it might be a couple times per day. If you don’t want to pay any money to use the site I think it’s fair to give up 45 seconds of your time every once in a while so that advertisers can support the site instead.

We have users who do thousands or even tens of thousands of searches a year, make a lot of money from the data, and don’t have a membership. That’s because we give a lot of functionality away for free. Rather than changing the site to only allow people to do a few searches a day for free like Estibot, or otherwise restricting the site for free users, we’re creating new advertising opportunities.

If it bothers you too much you can always pay as little as $60/year to get rid of them, and get lots of other benefits as well. Otherwise you’ll have to see some ads.

I’m not planning on any other changes, I think we’ve maximized what we can do with ads on the site with this, all the auction widgets, and featured listings.

 

[Michael]

Guys, if you can't wait for ad completion, just refresh the page again, ad will not display

Wow, worked great!

It warms my heart to see people so dedicated to not providing a single ounce of support to the site. Especially coming from a representative of another industry service provider. Classy.

I didn't close that hole because I figured one of two things would prevent it:

1. You're ok with giving a little back in exchange for a free service.
2. You don't want to lose your search filters and/or pagination by refreshing.

But inspired by your dedication, I went ahead and made it a little harder to work around.

Thanks to those of you who help support the site through your membership or through supporting our sponsors. And also thanks for the understanding about this new intermittent ad unit.

 

[Michael]

Some of you are blowing this way out of proportion. Yesterday there were only 28 users who did enough volume to see the ad more than once. 8 were paying members and thus didn't see it at all.

So that's 20 people on the entire planet who could have possibly seen the ad more than once yesterday. And that's assuming someone who did 52 actions saw it twice, when in reality they probably only saw it once. The actual number is probably closer to 9 who saw it more than once. Thousands of users in that same time period saw it at most once, or not even at all. Those are tiny numbers.

The most anyone could have possibly seen the ad yesterday was 3 times. A total of 2 minutes and 15 seconds of his life wasted in exchange for using the site for hours yesterday. You know how many searches he's done without subscribing? 24,980. I think he got his money's worth on that exchange.

I hardly think the site is ruined for seeing a 45 second ad every few days, let's not be melodramatic. I woke up today, on my birthday, and had an email from someone saying they hope I die of Coronavirus because of the ad. You know what's funny? That person hadn't even done enough searches to see the ad. Unless his IP changed recently he was just jumping on a bandwagon, and either way he's a garbage person.

Let's look at some examples, most people fall into the bottom three tiers:

50 Search Actions / Day: You'd see it once per day at most.
20 Search Actions / Day: You'd see it two to three times per WEEK.
10 Search Actions / Day: You'd see it once per WEEK.
7 Search Actions / Day or Less: You'd literally never see the ad EVER.

At 100 searches per day, which there is a single-digit number of people who hit that level, you'd be giving up 90 seconds a day but using the site for hours per day. Hardly a big deal.

To answer some of your questions:

I will experiment with the time that the ad shows. The 45 seconds was in place because when I removed the close button I originally had the ad automatically closing itself after that time, so I wanted to give people enough time to read it and act before it disappeared. Then I thought it would be better if the ad just reveals a close button, since the user might have walked away or switched to another tab. With the ad not closing automatically any more, such a long time is probably not necessary. Give me a few days to get baseline measurements, then I'll drop it to 30 seconds and see what happens, and after a few days I'll drop it again. I'll go as low as I can without seriously impacting clicks. I doubt 45 will be the final number.

I didn't intentionally make it restart at 45 seconds if you refresh the page, just to be vindictive. It was just more work to have it keep track of how many seconds you already watched, rather than just keeping track of if you let it finish or not. I removed the anti-refresh thing for now though, if you're willing to lose your search filters and/or pagination just to get rid of it I probably shouldn't stop you.

Nobody will just come to the site and immediately be greeted with the popup. It doesn't show up until you've done at least 50 homepage actions in the past week. So there's no concern about the popup being someone's first impression of the site, it isn't possible.

There will be four ads in rotation, one of which is our membership banner. There's already one in a 25% rotation, I'm still waiting on the other banners. It won't be the same ad every time.

We're not going to become a members-only service. When we launched memberships we didn't reduce the free functionality one iota to encourage signups. In fact, we did the opposite and extended the free benefits by letting you have 50% more results if you register for free. There are too many new domainers in developing nations that need the data to learn and be successful, and we don't want only people who are already successful and can afford the membership to have access.

I think that covers everything. Thanks again to those of you who are level-headed and were supportive and understanding that a free service needs to make money, and that this is the only banner ad format that really works these days. To the rest of you, please, take a breath and realize it's only 45 seconds a few times per week.

 

[Nikul Sanghvi]

I woke up today, on my birthday...

Happy Birthday Michael - and thank you for everything you do for the domaining community.

 

[BrandPlease]

You guys have provided a "backbone" service for free for a long time. Asking to watch an add to help support the work, rather than member only seem more than fair!

Go fill your coffee or restroom and let the ad run - to the end is usually best.

 

[wallet2it]

Guys, if you can't wait for ad completion, just refresh the page again, ad will not display

That’s not really fair to Namebio ....I suggest to do the right thing ....just let the video run as suggested by other members

 

[Nikul Sanghvi]

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

 

[Michael]

Genuinely wondering what is the point of making anyone stare at a static ad for 45 minutes? That is enough to read everything there, then have the whole life flash in front of your eyes and still have plenty of time left )))

Honestly haven't seen something like that anywhere else. It is not good for the advertiser either. 15 sec is the max countdown I have come across.

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.

 

[Michael]

My display resolution is 1360x768 (Landscape orientation)

so small correction to my thread and title.. as this seemed to eb some resolution and or ad size misunderstanding. i never saw the countdowon at bottom really

This should be sorted now, I tried it on a laptop all the way down to 1024x640. If you think of it please let me know if it still doesn't look ok. Thanks for pointing this out, I can imagine how frustrating that must have been not being able to close the popup because the button was off the screen.

When I visit Namebio the first time in the morning, the ad pops up before I can sign in. It happened in the last few days.

It shouldn't happen any more, I fixed the bug this morning. It'll never show when you're logged in though.

Sorry to everyone that this wasn't a smoother rollout. Part of being small is that we can make changes very quickly. Sometimes that's a good thing, my favorite times are when someone calls me with a feature request and I add it while they're still on the phone explaining it. But it can be a bad thing in that sometimes I don't test as thoroughly as I should, and I don't have a second pair of eyes to catch bugs.

So to recap where we stand now:

1. The banner won't show on your first search, when you haven't searched in 7+ days from that IP.
2. The timer has been reduced to 15 seconds from 45 seconds, although I might still have to tweak it.
3. The sizing issue on small displays that aren't quite small enough for mobile-responsive is fixed.
4. The anti-refresh is gone for now, but hopefully with the timer at 15 seconds that won't be as tempting.

Hopefully this is tolerable enough to not make people want to leave. I realize the ad unit is a bit in your face, and I'm sorry for that, but standard in-content banners rarely get clicked. While Ryan says that is BS, it isn't. That's why I had to spend a lot of time creating the auction widgets instead of just having them be static banners, so we could provide value to the drop catchers.

Thanks again everyone for the feedback and kind words.

 

[The Durfer]

It doesn’t force you to click the ad. After you wait for the countdown there’s a link to close it. Clicking the ad doesn’t close it either, you have to wait for the Close link to appear. It’s just like those ads on free mobile apps and games, where the (X) button is disabled until you wait a certain amount of time (usually while a video plays).

I realize it’s a bit obtrusive, but it only pops up after every 50 homepage actions (searching, paginating, sorting) and only lasts 45 seconds. For most people that might mean once every day or two, for heavier users it might be a couple times per day. If you don’t want to pay any money to use the site I think it’s fair to give up 45 seconds of your time every once in a while so that advertisers can support the site instead.

We have users who do thousands or even tens of thousands of searches a year, make a lot of money from the data, and don’t have a membership. That’s because we give a lot of functionality away for free. Rather than changing the site to only allow people to do a few searches a day for free like Estibot, or otherwise restricting the site for free users, we’re creating new advertising opportunities.

If it bothers you too much you can always pay as little as $60/year to get rid of them, and get lots of other benefits as well. Otherwise you’ll have to see some ads.

I’m not planning on any other changes, I think we’ve maximized what we can do with ads on the site with this, all the auction widgets, and featured listings.

no problem, Michael, most sites have ads to supplement income. tyvm for what namebio does.

 

[carob]

I just want to say a big thank you to Namebio for all the free info you provide me with - I profit from that info and I know you put in a lot of work to get and display data. And you have always been very helpful and responsive on the forum, and informative.

Ads on Namebio don't bother me, that is the price of a free service and it's a bargain.

 

[Kassey Lee]

I am a happy paid subscriber of Namebio. Michael has done a great job and I find the data very useful. It helps me analyze thousands of domains everyday. Michael is also very responsive and answers my question very quickly. As a paid subscriber I also see the ad but it does not bother me. I'm very thankful for this great service.

 

[mAd MaX]

@Michael should add a donation option and accept Crypto payment imo

 

[tonyk2000]

Namebio should better become 100% paid service and asap. Those domainers who need it - will pay. Those domainers who do not need it - will use alternatives. Occasional endusers will not see anything which is what it should be. What we have currently, with or without popups, with or without ads, blocked by adblock or not instantly blocked yet - is not beneficial in any aspect for all parties. Imo.

 

[wallet2it]

The ad is too rude for me and the time is much, I think I will use an alternative site for now.

You can take a horse to the river but you can't force it to drink water.

Micheal is forcing user's to drink water, which is not really right... There are ways to go about all this.

Anyway Good luck

No one is forcing any one to use Namebio....but If you are using Namebio’s free service, it would be fair to support ....maybe you can ask Youtube and Hulu to stop playing ads first ...

 

[NameBuyer.com]

If it bothers you too much you can always pay as little as $60/year to get rid of them, and get lots of other benefits as well. Otherwise you’ll have to see some ads.

Agreed. Many people spend more than this amount in in-game purchases for their favorite app games, that make them $0. I've had ad annoyances on these games that are 10 times worse than this so no complaint here.

I've avoided many bad purchases by using NameBio. I've also made some great purchases because of the data. Heavy users should have a bigger annoyance of the ads and should really be paying for a membership.

Got my membership tonight. At $5 per month it's an easy purchase if you even do a minimal amount of domain buying and selling.

 

[Lord Antares]

Do you guys complain that free cake is not vanilla flavored, only chocolate?

 

[Bob Hawkes]

A late happy birthday @Michael - you should have told the group on the social hour so that we could have celebrated .

Seriously, though, I think we should all appreciate the incredibly valuable resource that NameBio is for our community. I can't quite imagine domain investing without the NameBio database. In addition, as @Kassey Lee mentioned, Michael is responsive and helpful in individual requests. We should all be appreciative that the information is available to us, and accepting that NameBio need to monetize the operation. The user interface is outstanding, making it possible to query in so many different ways. Thank you.

Bob

 

[Rich]

@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!

 

[arjun29]

I want a beautiful girl instead of that grandpa.. and everything is fine.

 

[Save Breach]

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!

 

[Recons.Com]

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.

 

[Kassey Lee]

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..

 

[koolishman]

Non-paying members have to watch that ad.

 

[Josytal]

I don't have problems with the ad. But why same ad all the time?