We recently upgraded our server for gpodder.net, which should have had a positive affect one the overall site performance. At the same time, it also affected our hosting budget, which is currently covered mostly by our private money and occasional donations (thanks to all donors, by the way!).
Therefore we recently started experimenting with Google AdSense on gpodder.net. The ads are shown at the bottom of most pages, and should not distract from the page itself. As it is not our intention to make money with other people's data, ads are disabled on podcast and episode pages, but are currently shown on all other pages, such as the directory, toplists, your subscription lists, etc.
The advertisement experiment will probably last for up to three month, after which we should know if it is worth the trouble of having ads on the site. If we decide to keep the ads, there will be some way of getting rid of them, maybe by donating, becoming some kind of premium user, etc. This still needs to be decided, and input is always welcome!
Please post your comments and thoughts on the ads either here or to the gPodder mailing list. Thanks!
Therefore we recently started experimenting with Google AdSense on gpodder.net. The ads are shown at the bottom of most pages, and should not distract from the page itself. As it is not our intention to make money with other people's data, ads are disabled on podcast and episode pages, but are currently shown on all other pages, such as the directory, toplists, your subscription lists, etc.
The advertisement experiment will probably last for up to three month, after which we should know if it is worth the trouble of having ads on the site. If we decide to keep the ads, there will be some way of getting rid of them, maybe by donating, becoming some kind of premium user, etc. This still needs to be decided, and input is always welcome!
Please post your comments and thoughts on the ads either here or to the gPodder mailing list. Thanks!
@lain: there is already a flattr account for the gpodder.net service:
ReplyDeletehttps://flattr.com/thing/2304/gpodder-net
and also for the client:
https://flattr.com/thing/146854/gPodder-Podcast-Client
Flattred.
ReplyDeleteMaybe expose the links a little more?
I would tend towards making your Flattr button more visible and prominent on the pages and use the larger interactive js button. AlternativeTo did an interesting thing for users of AdBlock, see http://blog.flattr.net/2012/02/turn-ad-blokers-into-supporters-alternativeto/
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry for this offtopic but it's very important for me.
ReplyDeleteI've recently found out that gPodder downloads only 128kbps files from SoundCloud while I can download from my browser files of much greater quality (even if I'm not logged in).
Is there anyway to change that in settings or if you could change that with some patches.
Yes, we download the "streaming" format from Soundcloud, which is always 128kbps MP3. The reason for this is that some Soundclouders upload their raw (WAV / AIFF) files to Soundcloud, and downloading these would cause more bandwidth usage and (on mobile devices where gPodder also runs) additional disk space usage and - in some cases with e.g. AIFF - non-playable formats on these devices.
DeleteFor this reason, we download the 128kbps MP3, because that's something that usually always works.
You could, however, file a feature request on bugs.gpodder.org so that we can consider adding an option to download the original files instead.