JAMES, please tweak

[E&N]

What's happened here? The board seems so, well, dull, compared to what it was a while back. We may have gotten rid of the grumpy, irritating 'anons' [good], but we seem to have lost those great, meaty discussions we used to have [bad]. The categories are off-putting: can you add one at the top [as opposed to the afterthought "other" dangling at the end of the list]. Simply "Travel writing" or "general discussion" or whatever to generate some free-wheeling conversations. Maybe it'll bring more of us out of the woodwork.
Thanks, E

[Glenn]

Sadly, I fear the answer may lie in the sate of the industry. More and more of my writer friends who specialize in travel are moving into other areas as well to fill the gaps created by markets closing, paying scandalously low wages, or relying on wire services for their travel content.

Sign of the times, I fear.....

[Richard]

Back in the day there were a lot of great threads. It would be nice to see more discussion about travel, its inherent joys and problems and about the travel writing industry itself.

I would be very interested in more discussion on how websites can pay and how to go about monetizing them.

[Don Douglas]

Back in the day there were a lot of great threads. It would be nice to see more discussion about travel, its inherent joys and problems and about the travel writing industry itself.

I would be very interested in more discussion on how websites can pay and how to go about monetizing them.

Due in large part to the advent of Adblock Plus (or at least I think that's a major reason) javascript-based advertising links are not what they used to be. When I can get around to it, I'll probably delete AdSense from my site altogether. To sell advertising space directly and place text, JPEGs or GIFs which link to client sites still would work as it is not blockable. What seems best to me at this point is to create downloadable, reasonably-priced and informative PDF publications and/or Apps for portable devices. One thing I like about this idea -- using your site to market your own creative output -- is that it seems to be relatively profitable for sites with a smaller number of visitors as well as larger ones.

P.S., Rich, have you ever been to Grand Marais, MN?

[Durant Imboden]

Due in large part to the advent of Adblock Plus (or at least I think that's a major reason) javascript-based advertising links are not what they used to be.

I doubt if one in a thousand non-technical users has even heard of Adblock Plus or similar products. IMHO, the real problems with advertising are:

- A decline in display-ad CPMs across the industry, thanks to (a) too many pages chasing a finite number of ads and (b) automated media-buying tools; and...

- A decline in AdSense clickthrough rates across the industry, thanks to "ad fatigue" or "ad blindness."

If you've got enough traffic, the right topic, the right demographics, and a rep form with good connections, you can fetch premium display-ad CPMs that are fairly decent. But with the flood of content-farm and user-generated content sites on the Web and the general state of the economy in much of the world, publishers--both large and small--are finding it harder to sit back and drink Daiquiris while the ad revenues roll in.

[Richard]

Hi Don.... No I haven't been to Grand Marais, MN. Is there a reason you ask???

Rich
http://www.richarduhlhorn.com

[Don Douglas]

I was out shooting at dawn a couple of days ago and there were several other photographers. One off in the distance resembled you and was shooting with what appeared to be long white Canon lenses. It's a long hike from Washington state, so I rightly figured it wasn't you. Then later I thought, well, the guy does travel after all so I'm gonna ask. Interesting place, by the way. Last evening we had a display of northern lights here.

[Don Douglas]

Download statistics on Adblock Plus according to Mozilla are here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/statistics/addon/1865

I don't know now 133.6 million downloads compares to the total number of users.

[Richard]

Nope... Wasn't me Don, but I would have loved to watch the Northern Lights over there.

Rich
http://www.richarduhlhorn.com

[Don Douglas]

It was fairly dramatic, although the psychedelic green is courtesy of the way the sensor reads it. To the naked eye it was grayer.

http://dondouglas.com/grand-marais-mn-northern-lights.html

Cheers,
Don