Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
III
No-ads Upgrade
WordPress.com blogs include ads, unless you pay for a No-ads upgrade for about $30 per year.
WordPress bloggers never see ads because they don't show up for people with a WordPress
account. The frequency of ads varies depending on the topic of your blog and the eagerness of
advertisers, generally and on particular topics. We've seen descriptions of the number of ads that
run, which range from “hardly any” to “a lot,” but there's no definitive information available.
The ads can be quite intrusive. See Figure 10.2 for an example.
Figure 10.2
Ads can be a
pain to your
users.
If you get too many complaints from your blog visitors that your blog is hosting ads, you might
want to consider the No-ads upgrade. Also, many blogs, even quite small ones, can't tolerate ads—
either because of being strictly noncommercial or because ads that show might be competitive or
objectionable. (For example, a cancer charity is not going to want to take even a small risk that a
tobacco company ad might run on their site.)
This is not an unreasonably high cost to opt out of ads, but many of those who must purchase this
upgrade are small organizations with limited budgets. It's also a bit frustrating to have to pay for
No-ads when what you really want is the ability to run
your own
ads on your blog, and are frus-
trated by the complete ban on any kind of commercial activity on WordPress.com blogs.
WordPress.org contrast
: WordPress.org has no ads from Automattic, and as many or as few ads, or
other commercial activity (such as product sales) as you'd like.
