I figured I’d announce that I’ve decided to scale back the ads on this web site. Something about putting ads on this blog has always felt a little odd to me. The extra revenue is nice, but I’m not sure its actually worth the commercialization ads bring.
There are still two ads on the site, the Google Custom Search box on this blog’s sidebar, and an ad on the Text Ascii Art Generator (TAAG). The search box is actually functionally useful and the ad on TAAG will still allow a little bit of change to trickle into the site. I don’t plan on adding any more ads until I need to upgrade hosting services.
Part of me wanted to justify my decision with the idea that “ads turn away visitors”, so I decided to make a chart pitting TAAG (which has an ad) and against the VB Array Tutorial (which doesn’t have any ads). Surprisingly, it appears that the ad on on TAAG didn’t have a noticeable negative impact on the number of visitors it received:
This might be like comparing apples to oranges, since both pages probably appeal to a different group of people. However, TAAG’s ad was added in April, so if it bothered visitors I’d expect its growth to go down after April, but instead it seems to have continued on with the normal growth of this site (the spike in June is due to it being popular on StumbleUpon for a few days). This doesn’t change my opinion on removing ads from the blog, I still feel they add an unwanted commercial element to a personal outlet, however, I figured I’d post up this chart for those of you interested in how ads may/may not effect site growth.
Hey Pat, I noticed you still have a link to my defunct blog at the end of the Array Tutorial. If you have the time, could you remove that? It’s definitely not coming back and the address has been automatically purged by the host, so it’s pretty dead.
As well, could you remove my current handle after my real name in the article title? (Ch…) It’s not really connected to the “programming me” and your site is also the last thing easily connecting the real me to my online persona in Google. 🙂 I’m trying to clean up before I get out into the job market in the next few years.
I also noticed that in the “Adding New Elements on the Fly Section” the last line of code is mangled: “Erase strSongNamestrSongNamestrSongName”
– Adam
The tutorial has been updated. If you ever want me the change the name or add a link to some new site you have let me know. The tutorial is still really popular (google “vb array” and other like terms). And even though it’s static content, it seems to be growing in daily visits. Check out the latest stats:
Anyway, it’s always good to make sure potential employers can’t find anything bad about you online. I had a professor I was working for find my old livejournal and read through it. It was pretty embarrassing. Some of his students (who I was teaching a lab for) also found it, though that wasn’t really embarrassing since a couple found some of my texture synthesis stuff kind of interesting. Girls I’ve dated have also googled me – the list just goes on and on.
Btw, I remember from before that you said you were bored with programming, are you still passing it up for something else? Whatever you do, going for a masters degree right after getting a BS seems to be the best advice I took. Most people just don’t have time to go back and get it, or it takes them 5-6 years of going part time and it eats up all their free time.