Adblock ate my website!

So, lots of bloggers out there have been hurt by adblock. What do we do about it? Typically we find ourselves financially starved, frustrated, and eventually we give up.  OMG THE WORLD IS ENDING, HOW CAN I PAY MY HOSTING BILL WAAAH?

Well guess what, I'm not going to give up just quite that easily. *Rocky montage*



Adblock plus works on the premise that if an element of a page matches a filter list, then that item isn't downloaded (theoretically) or displayed (more likely).

When you install adblock plus, it adds one of 2 filters, randomly. Easylist, or fanboy's list.

Now, I'm actually a heavy user of Viglink (yes, that's a referral link, so if you sign up for it, click the link first) It's an affiliate marketing system that auto affiliate links any link on a page. Essentially, it tells the company you linked to, when their link is clicked, that it came from you. It's a company backed by google, and leaves absolutely zero visible disruption to the user. It's also very good for the lazy admin. I like lazy!

I don't really allow it to affect my work, I just link things here or there. Unfortunately, that was being blocked. You probably don't even see it, anywhere in the site. I recently requested on the adblock plus forums to have this fixed, and the filter administrators seem to actually be willing to. If you use this service, expect your money to increase, soon. So quite literally, you have to do nothing! Skimlinks does not yet have this protection.

I did find work-arounds on the internet that allows your ads bypass adblock for ads. You can use custom image sizes, rename the ads to not have ad-sounding names to them, host your own images, etc. OMG THAT SOUNDS LIKE WORK, WHY IS BLOGGING SO DANG HARD!?!?

Unfortunately, that limits you to extremely small subset of types of ads.

There is a better option. Do something about it.

Some people use popups asking people to disable adblock for that site specifically, some people will place text in the side of the page about it. I'd rather attack the root of the problem.

If you go to adblock plus's acceptable ads page, if you follow specific guidelines, can get your site exempt from adblock, if the user doesn't uncheck a checkbox in their settings (it's by default allowing acceptable ads). It's like winning the lottery.

That's all you really have to do. Add Viglinkto your site, format your site to have non obtrusive ads, and sign up to by whitelisted. Winning!

You'll actually make reasonable money, assuming your content doesn't suck.

Btw, Viglink is pretty great if you share stuff on google+, twitter, facebook, pintrest or whatever. You can use the Viglink Anywhere tool to make money, whenever you talk about a new cool thing you found or bought.

Hell, you can use it just to allow your spouse (or significant other) to have a discount on things.

Today's economy is tough, so here are some easy peasy ways to make cash.