I’ve been working on methods of earning money on the internet lately, not just for me and my family, but for lots of others who find themselves needing to augment their income while staying at home. Stay-at-home parents, homeschooling parents, parents of children with special needs all have a dire need for avenues for staying economically sound in a two-income economy.
One of the most promising methods has been internet advertising, Google’s AdSense at the top of the list. I see people working very hard to provide quality content in order to then be rewarded by the income from the ads on pages containing that content. The vast majority of ads are unobtrusive and don’t really get in the way. There have always been those that abuse advertising, using popups or other annoying gimmicks to lure people, but they are the exception.
I share advise and ideas on a message board for AdSense users and recently was informed about AdBlock Plus, which is a FireFox plugin that blocks ads. I installed it, and looked at some of my sites, and sure enough all the Google ads were missing. I researched a little more and found a method of detecting people who use it, and began sending them to a special page that told them exactly what I think about people who take things without paying for them. If people are not allowed to earn an honest living on the internet, much of the usefulness of the internet will vanish.
But I wanted to do more than that. I wanted to confront these people with the truth that by using this add-on they were stealing. Now, the people who make it, and the filters that decide which ads to block are aware of me and are trying to defeat my block. How’s that for hypocrisy. They want people to block ads, but they don’t want web site owners to block their plug-in.
Eventually I developed some javascript code that uses Google’s Adsense itself to determine if ads are being blocked. I know of no way around this except whitelisting Google Adsense. Here is the code, but remember you’ll need to enclose it in “script” tags.
function dieAdBlockPlusDie()
{
var giframe = document.getElementsByTagName(“iframe”);
var blocked=1;
for (var i = 0; i < giframe.length; i++)
{
var name = giframe[i].getAttribute(“name”);
if(name == “google_ads_frame”)
{
var blocked=0;
}
}
if(blocked){window.location = ‘http://articlewagon.com/thief.htm’;}
}
setTimeout(‘dieAdBlockPlusDie()’, 2000);
If enough web sites utilize techniques to block AdBlock plus users, then the plug-in will become more of an annoyance than it’s worth, and honest people can reap the fruits of their labor.
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