Feedback about HP from a reader-- comments invited!

1. 83

   Denmarkguyposted 8 years ago

   The following comment was in my inbox this morning awaiting approval. It's not the first time I have seen something like this.
   
   Along the lines of similar discussions about adblockers and how they affect HP writers, I increasingly am wondering if this sort of platform (not specifically referring to HP) is slowly becoming obsolete, and whether the entire idea of "writing content with the hope of getting paid" is becoming obsolete?
   
   Here's a straight copy and paste of the comment... inviting feedback and discussion!
   
   ~Peter
   
   "I have enjoyed your content in the past - it's excellent. However, recently (Sept 2015), the web pages are extremely sluggish. This page needed over 400 HTTP requests to display! (A content only web page requires 1 HTTP request. Each image requires an additional request. PLEASE DON'T LET YOUR CONTENT GET LOST IN THE ADVERTISEMENTS!!!"

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   1. 54

      paradigm searchposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Yep, I use an ad blocker for visiting my main HP account. What with my constantly doing maintenance there, I got sick and tired of waiting all the time for the pages to load.

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      1. 89

         Patty Inglish, MSposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         Gee, that is a good idea. I should have thought of that before. Thanks!

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         1. 94

            sallybeaposted 8 years agoin reply to this

            This past week has been particularly bad.  I have never seen our images take so long to load, even our profile image!

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   2. 83

      Denmarkguyposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      The irony, here, is that most of my pages (including the one the comment came from) have no more than 2-3 book recommendations specifically related to the subject matter of the Hub. So my part of the equation is being accountable for three Amazon links... the rest is "content" served by HP.

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2. 81

   Mark Ewbieposted 8 years ago

   It is interesting to remove all ads from your site.  The place seems so much more pure somehow.
   
   "But how do you make money?" someone might say if they gave a crap.
   
   "It's simple" I respond.  "I don't".

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3. 95

   Sue Adamsposted 8 years ago

   For a long time, many of us have been saying the same thing as your commenter:  Too many ads slow down loading time and people walk away without reading anything, let alone clicking on ads.
   
   http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/132652

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4. 94

   jansharesposted 8 years ago

   Wow. That is indeed revealing and disappointing from a reader's point of view. I've seen Paul Edmonson refer to "reader satisfaction" a lot. This is not a good sign. It also confirms the sentiment of what some writers have expressed as well . . . too many ads. I posted a forum about slow-loading images which may be related to your reader's concern. It was said to be FIXED but isn't really. Profiles still load slowly. Images in hubs are loading very slowly.
   
   I removed most of my ads in January when HP requested us to do so. But it seems that theirs were not decreased. I've been confused by this for some time. We cannot ignore the correlation between increased ads and decreased traffic. The images on our hubs have always been there. So is it the ads? Thanks for posting this very real concern, Denmarkguy.

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