Serverdome - News for bloggers, advertising observations and traffic building.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

1. Text link ads on your content (the ones with the double underline)

Yes they will draw my attention but only for the wrong reasons. The popup with the ad text that appears when you move the mouse over the ad completely spoils the flow of reading the actual content. There is so many of them even in the smallest amount of text that it proves a pain to move my mouse from one side of the screen to the other. And more importantly, it makes me not trust your normal links. When 80% of your page links are automatically generated and paid for, it sets the mood for the rest of it.

2. Preview screenshot popup on outgoing links

It’s all web 2.0 fun and games until you take a somewhat good idea (tooltips) and give it to the wrong people. First of all, there is no way i will ever manage to figure out what is going on from looking at a 125Χ125 screenshot, you might as well be showing me blurred images of catfish. Secondly, i don’t think i have ever paid attention to those screenshots after the first time i noticed they existed and said “wow, these might get annoying soon”.

If and when i want to stumble/del.icio.us/digg/whatever your site, ill do it myself. If you absolutely must have a million of these links, please keep them below each post.

4. Paypal donate buttons

Even the big guys have donate links, and if you’re giving something for free you depend on the generosity of others, but when there’s adsense, textlinkads and two paid product reviews on your main page alone, then the donate link seems a little too much. It reminds me too much of web cam girls posting their amazon wishlists so creepy old men will buy them stuff. This is a drop in the ocean compared to other pitfalls, but it annoys me to no end.

5. Only date based archives

If i find a blog i enjoy and want to read more, the obvious step is to go for the categories. Let’s say i just finished reading a marvelous post about catfish care on your blog and want to see if you have more catfish related content, the obvious choice would be to look at the categories on the sidebar, or on the tags associated with the post, not under “August 2006″. Date based archives are generally useless on the main page.

6. Partial feeds

The debate still rages on, but the general sentiment is that full feeds are way ahead. Publishing partial feeds to force me to load your ads wont help your cause. If you must offer partial feeds, then do us the courtesy of also offering a full feed option.

7. Ditch the default Wordpress theme for something better

There is a wealth of excellent Wordpress themes available to download for free. The default Wordpress theme might be well designed but reminds me too much of spam sites. If you can’t take 5 minutes of your time to upload a new theme, how can you convince me to trust your content?