Blocking ad-blockers

There is another discussion raving on sitepoint today. It's about subverting pop-up blockers.

My stance on blocking people with ad-blockers has always been strongly and firmly:


If you have a lot of people coming to your web site, find out how to make money on them. Don't turn them away, you goddamn idiot.

It's not good business sense, unless you are shooting for exclusivity, which you are most likely not.

As a busienss owner, you should react to consumer trends and react to them as soon as possible. There is a very strong trend away from popups, and even from web advertising as we know it in general. In fact, the trend has been in-your-face-waving-with-lit-fireworks for the last two years. Sitepoint saw this trend quite some time ago, and has thus moved to the way more stable and profitable model of book publishing. While other webmaster sites are making peanuts, Sitepoint is making millions. They don't have skyscrapers. They don't have a fastclick popunders. They don't have banners. They don't use adsense. I remember Matt saying that the adsense revenue was pathetic, and not worth keeping on the forums, which tells a lot about what they make from their books.

Move your business model away from advertising as soon as you can. It's ridiculously competitive, risly and it's almost impossible to grow your business with it. As aspen so eloquently put it once, eCommerce is where it's at. As long as you are advertising other peoples products, you are just getting breadcrumbs. Go for the loaf instead.