Ads are gone from GoingLikeSixty.com.

It was no longer worth the irritation to visitors. And income had fallen so low that the decision was easy. If I was in this for the money, I would have quit a long time ago.

The final straw was a recent day when I couldn’t login. Upon contacting my web host and expert and friend, he said my browser was timing out because of all the stress and strain the site was requesting of the server. After getting the “load” lightened, he asked the big question: “Are you making any money from those ads? Because they really slow down the site.”

A quick look at Adsense.Google.com revealed that the answer was easy. “No.”

I’ve been told by a number of readers that they never saw the ads because they use some method of ad blocking. There is a lot of chatter among publishers because Apple has launched an ad block method for iPhone and iPad. It’s a big deal.

The downside is that many web publishers ARE in the business of making money.  By using ad blocking readers are depriving publishers of their primary source of income. Dooce.com, one of the biggest and most successful mommy-bloggers, recently all but quit blogging.

These days, Armstrong says she wouldn’t recommend blogging for money. The popular aphorism advises, “do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” Armstrong did what she loved, so she never stopped working.

“I wrote a blog because it was fun, and I loved doing it,” she said. “Then it became my job and I hated it. You never want to get to the point where you’re like ‘Ugh I have to go do that thing that I love? Ughhhh.’”

Personally, I was only irritated by the gigantic ads that take over the screen, or popup over content, or linger under content after the browser is closed. I used to use those types of ads because the cost per thousand impressions was so much higher than regular banner ads. But when I ran across them on other sites, they bugged me, so I discontinued banner/display ads on GoingLikeSixty.com. (You may run across an ad in the archives that are text link ads.)

But ads served to me as a banner ad on most websites don’t bug me. Sometimes I clicked on them because they interested me. The tracking of my activities on the web served me relevant and meaningful ads – usually. Of course there are the times when I made a purchase on the web and within seconds started seeing ads for what I just bought.

That’s kinda creepy, but I know how things work and that Google knows all.

Creepy fits here, but not on the ads.