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Dave made a strategic decision when he launched DG that it would not be funded by advertisements. Only he and Trish can explain exactly what led them to that decision, but I think it's fair to say that to a certain degree, it was a personal preference (we all find it annoying to navigate around banner ads - especially for unrelated products and services; and pop-ups are the bane of the internet era, IMO.) The other reason is that by the time Dave felt the need to have revenue to help offset the rising cost of servers and bandwidth, advertising had lost its initial appeal for advertisers and consumers.
Instead, DG introduced a two-tiered approach, with free features available to all users, and our most resource-intensive features available to subscribers, so that those who wished to use them would be helping to fund the features they found most valuable.
In retrospect, I think Dave's decision was a good one. When the internet bubble burst a few years ago, it crippled the ability of most advertising-dependent websites to upgrade or enhance their features. Many of them are barely keeping their heads above water, and some have gone by the wayside as a result.
During the time when advertising revenue was drying up for other sites, Dave continued to expand DG with new features and upgrades, especially to the PDB and Watchdog. We've enjoyed a steady increase in membership and enhancements since implementing the by-subscription-only features. Many other sites are now following our lead including Motley Fool http://www.fool.com/ and Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/premium/
Many advertisers have asked if they CAN advertise on our site, and we've politely declined their requests up to this point. We are exploring ways that we could allow these advertisers to provide information to our users, but you can be assured that we'll carefully assess our approach, so that it provides helpful, valuable information in a non-intrusive manner.
This message was edited Wednesday, Aug 27th 9:41 PM
I honestly believe that I would not mind if a forum were included that advertisers (or perhaps garden supply companies) could use. It would be up to each subscriber whether we wanted to go there, but it would be a fantastic place where we could just ask if a certain plant or tool were available, rather than having to do an exhaustive search to find something. Often Google turns up so many references that are way off base, it gets discouraging.
But it would have to be very controlled as to content, for me to want to go there. No ads for the "Amazing Tomato Tree!!!" and all the other hoaxes abounding in the fringe gardening world.
I strongly object to all the pop-ups and pop-unders that infest the internet, and my having pop-up preventers in place makes many sites unavailable. I am better off without them, IMO.
