Tech Tips for Catholics

I received an e-mail from Catholic Exchange addressing their decision to sacrifice a great amount of income, for the good of their readers.  This could be an advantageous lesson for other Christian blogsites as well.

About a year ago in an effort to create a new revenue stream, Catholic Exchange subscribed to rotating Google ads based on keywords. A lot of you noticed and commented on the ads, which are ubiquitous on the internet and are used on many other Catholic sites. Some of your comments were simple expressions of annoyance. We understand; many people are tired of seeing these ads. We admit they were kind of cheesy, but you know what? Cheesy or not, they helped us generate some very much needed income.

Other complaints about the ads expressed more than just annoyance. Some of our readers were outraged when, for example, under an article about adoption, Google presented an ad for a gay adoption lawyer. Others fumed when they noticed ads promoting certain anti-Catholic sites. Our editors handled these complaints explaining that we could block ads, but only after they ran and only if we were given the URL. After a while, we blocked all the most egregious ads and the complaints dwindled to a trickle. We think most of you came to understand that even when you saw a questionable ad, CE was not responsible for it and you learned to ignore or help us get rid of them.

I don’t have to worry about these annoying ads, because I’ve implemented the steps from my posts How to get rid of sponsored ads on Google and MySpace & Mozilla Firefox.  I think StBlogs uses Google ads as well, but I never see them either.

Some say that the blocking of ads is unfair to the companies who spend money to post their ads, or perhaps that it is unfair to the sites hosting the ads.  I disagree.  The way Google ads work is that a person must click on the link in order for the transaction to take place.  I don’t normally click on Google ads, so I’m not hurting anyone by getting rid of them altogether.  If anyone is doing a disservice, it’s the type of ads that Google’s service recommends for certain key word searches.

Cleaning Our Temple

In this season when the pursuit of holiness in preparation for the joy of Easter becomes a greater priority, we felt the special need to cleanse our site of anything that does not glorify our all-holy God. So we have made the hard decision to stop using the Google ads.

We have sacrificed a reliable funding resource, trusting that God will supply our needs through your generosity and help us meet our budget each month…

By getting rid of the Google ads, we have made CE a more attractive daily stop for the tens of thousands of visitors from 139 countries seeking bedrock answers to the seemingly intractable problems of our day. We have shown you that our commitment to the Faith and to prudent use of the internet means more to us than the thousands of dollars we were generating annually.

I commend Catholic Exchange for making this decision.  It was not an easy decision for them to make.  They will need the support of their readers to bridge this financial gap!

Do you use Google ads or ads of another service on your blog or site?  Not including the ones that you have no control over, like StBlogs’. Is it worth the income?  Is it wrong for the average web user to block ads?  We’d love to hear your opinions.