first time posting here, so i say 'hi to this great community.

about my question: do you think ads and banners on your typical shareware-game site would scare away potential buyers? if i think about it, ads would probably compensate the costs for webspace etc.. on the other hand, getting the user to download your game or actually fill in that order form is probably hard enough :) (don't have a site for my games yet so i don't really know), and most sites with ads on them have this unprofessional "i just wanna earn money" look.

so far most sites i've seen are completely free of ads and of course i appreciate that as a visitor, but that doesn't excactly answer my question.

Adverts are designed to attract attention of the viewer. Having managed to get a potential customer to your site I don't think it would be good to then allow them to be distracted from buying your game by an advert for someone else's product.

I would avoid ads, unless they are links-exchange to other indie websites, in this case it would be mutual help and wouldn't be too much annoying.
Beside that, I don't know if placing some banner could really make you money, unless your site generate a lot of traffic.

Definitely don't do it. There's no real money in ads unless you go for porn or pop-ups, which are much worst than normal ad banners. Personally I would never trust a company that sells out its own site for a few extra bucks, that tells me they are desperate for money and might sell my information, put spyware in their applications, etc. Imagine if Blizzard had a punch the monkey ad above their Warcraft page or if Microsoft started telling you about $200 in free gas :D

yo,

thanks for the definite answers. it really was a stupid idea :eek:

I used to do a banner ad swap with several other developers in 1999. I'm not sure how well it worked though because each of us had our own ad rotating system, and I didn't track sales from the ads back then. I know it generated hits, but I don't know how much it helped with actual sales. It was done very informally.

Eventually I redesigned this site to be ad-free, so I stopped doing the ad swaps. Most of the other developers did too AFAIK.

The way I view my Web sites as "end content". Sure, the Web is made up of links, but eventually the links have to go somewhere.

With that mindset, ads are the last thing I want.

It can be worthwhile to swap links, sure, but not in the manner of an ad. When it happens, it should be more like providing additional content, either of a similar nature to your own, or of a complementary nature.

-David

I would never put ads on a page unless it was a free resource/help page where I wasn't trying to sell anything. Even then I would have to go with simplistic text link ads. There's no money in banner ads anymore, unless porn is involved as stated before.

Wow, hi aspiral!

Is there anybody from Serbia or Ukrain?