May 13, 2000

5:46 PM

bla-bla.com and grrl.com (a new chickclick style portal from womensforum.com) are on the hunt for independent female sites to lump together and sell off to their advertisers. what have your experiences been with .commers? how do you feel about advertising on yr own site? what kind of money is actually earnt from being part of a portal (which seems to be their major selling point)? what resources are available to independent site owners? perhaps another branch of the metafilter community could be dedicated to informing people about what does happen when a site signs on to a portal business, and what the alternatives are.
posted by gusset (8 comments total)

erratum - it's grrl.net. grrl.com is a personal site - without advertising.
posted by gusset at 6:05 PM on May 13, 2000

bla-bla has bugged me several times about listing my site in their content network. I told them that on-site ads weren't my bag, and they quietly buzzed off.

To me, advertising cheapens the effect of a personal website. There will be no advertisements in the story of my life.
posted by Succa at 6:19 PM on May 13, 2000

I would never choose to have it on any personal site of mine, but advertising doesn't bother me (I can always choose to go elsewhere) - as long as people are up front about it. The sneaky affiliate links are another matter entirely. I've been to sites where the owners swear up and down that they aren't making any money off of you if you click on their affiliate link. I followed through on two of these 'claims' and found them to be true. . . they weren't making money. They were being paid off in software. So now if a suspect link catches my interest I type it into the location line myself.
Chick "clique" has made advertising and affiliate links very palatable to the majority of teenage girls. It's crammed down their throats every second that they're surfing the CC sites. One of the questions I was asked at chickclick sign-up was "Are you carrying plastic right now"? And they weren't kidding.
posted by the webmistress at 8:40 PM on May 13, 2000

it's being done by human beings, not by 'bots; when a sales staffer finds a site she likes, she sends a personal note to the site's author.

there's no cross-checking between staffers (no database), so you're likely to get several offers.

i'm not interested in ad banners.

they apparently offer other services (free bulletin boards etc.) but the few times i've gone for a look-see, i've crashed. your mileage may vary.
posted by Zeldman at 8:49 PM on May 13, 2000

DOH!!!! I meant to say: I was gonna ask Bonnie Burton if she knew she was a new "a new chickclick style portal"....

Forgot to close the </A> ...DUH!!!
posted by EricBrooksDotCom at 9:40 PM on May 13, 2000

"sneaky affiliate links are another matter entirely"

Webmistress, I'm curious why affiliate links upset you so?
posted by daveadams at 10:35 AM on May 14, 2000

Well, I wouldn't exactly say that they upset me, but the operative word was 'sneaky', Dave. Like I said, advertising and affiliate links and all that don't bother me at all if you're up front about it. Me personally? I would never invite you to my personal site and then try to make money off of you. It's like a casual acquaintance in RL who keeps inviting you to tupperware/ gourmet/ lingerie/ candle etc. parties that she's hosting so you can buy things so that she can get money and presents. But. . . if I had, say, a typography site, or maybe a site that offered filters or photoshop actions or something along those lines (a non-personal site), I would probably have banner ads, especially if I offered those things/services for free.
posted by the webmistress at 11:23 AM on May 14, 2000