> If you want to support your favorite authors: send then money. A dollar helps more then viewing ads ever would.

This isn't really true. I ran an ad-supported site at one point with my content, just a small banner at the top of each page. The ads paid for a significant portion of my monthly rent. Getting a few dollars from the occasional viewer would not, since 99.99+% of people are not going to do that.

I don't like viewing ads, but let's not pretend like they don't make money for content creators. They absolutely do.

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neogodless 3 days ago | parent [-]

Reread the statement though. Does one person viewing ads pay you more than one dollar?

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crazygringo 3 days ago | parent [-]

But it's not one person viewing ads on just your site. It's across all the sites they visit.

A person viewing ads over the course of a year is generating much, much more than a dollar in revenue.

And in a parallel universe without ads, they're definitely not sending a dollar to every site they visit.

You can't compare one person who sends a dollar to a site with one person's ad revenue to a site, because as I said, 99.99+% of people are never going to send you a dollar.

The author is implying ads don't generate meaningful revenue but paying a dollar does. That's just false.

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sceptic123 2 days ago | parent [-]

But the ad dollars are ruining the internet, ad revenue based on impressions/clicks/tracking is whe we end up with more and more invasive ads and more and more content farm websites trying to get enough eyeballs and clicks to earn some of that money.

The parallel universe I'd like is where websites/publishers had small, privacy protecting, static banners or ad text on their sites. In that universe lots more people would feel comfortable with not using ad blockers.

	▲	crazygringo 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Of course it's ruining the internet, zero disagreement there. All I'm saying is that the author is painting this fantasy picture that individuals voluntarily sending a dollar to site creators is somehow a substitute for, or even better than, the ad revenue they get. It's not. It's not even close. Everyone agrees ads are terrible. The issue is that nobody has been able to come up with a viable alternative. Lots of ideas around micropayments exist, but so far they've failed for all sorts of reasons.