After two months of no interest from advertisers, suddenly BookMooch is quite popular with them, with four ads submitted to me this week.

However, with success sometimes comes trouble. One of the advertisers, under the guise of a free Starbucks gift card, was actually trying to get people to sign up for a $9.99 recurring charge on their mobile phone. Apparently a few people got caught by this, and complained to the admins. I'm really sorry about that, and suspended the ad as soon as I heard about it. It ran for a day and a half before being halted. It was my birthday yesterday (42!) and I was (unusually) out all day having fun, which is why the ads didn't get halted within a half day.

Thankfully, unlike with Google advertising, I have the ability to remove any ads with the advertising company I use. I also get same-day rejection rights on ads before they appear on BookMooch. Unfortunately, while I had reviewed the Starbucks ad, I didn't see anything shady with it, and so I let it through -- apparently the shadiness came after the initial signup page. I'm going to be more careful now.

There are three ads currently in rotation, and all look much more like the kind of thing we want on BookMooch. One ad is for a new book from Macmillian, another for a new book from Random House.

Great!

The feedback from my original blog entry "BookMooch Blog" about accepting ads was that people were quite positive about book related ads, and so I'm quite happy to *finally* be getting ads for new books.

The other ad in rotation today is from http://www.50summersteals.com/ which *appears* to me to be legit. However, there's only so much I can tell by looking at a page, so please, if you think that an ad on BookMooch is shady, please email tech support http://bookmooch.com/m/email_support and voice your concern. I have the ability to "pause" an ad while we investigate, which is what I'd do if any ad needs scrutiny from us.

On the positive side, this week's advertising raises $1371 for BookMooch, which goes a long way to paying for the $2000 booth we rented at the American Library Association conference last week.

If you find the ads annoying, you can opt-out of them with a setting at the bottom of your profile:
http://bookmooch.com/m/profile

A few people have complained that the ads appeared again for them even though they opted out. I haven't been able to cause that to happen in my own testing, except if I leave the member section (http://bookmooch.com/m/) and go to the non-member section (without the /m/ on the url), in which case you have left the member area, where BM shows ads all the time. If you do not want to see ads, first opt out of them, and then be sure that you're in the member section (where every page starts with bookmooch.com/m/)

-john

I don't mind the ad's themselves, however, I am finding that they are making the page load funny in IE. There is a huge space at the top of the page the size of the top ad, if that makes any sense.

Are you still having that problem now? I am testing with IE6 and IE8 and don't have that problem.

When you use the Recent feed & click on a link, you are thrown onto a non-member page, & there you are - stuck with an ad again.

I've fixed that, thanks for pointing it out. Now, links on the "Recent books" feed default to logged in, and redirect you to the non-member page only if you hit "cancel" when asked for your name and password. If you're already logged in, everything just works as you'd expect.

Maybe I need to go back to using Firefox, so I can block them on my end.

It is the case that AdBlock on both Firefox and Chrome, effectively removes the ads from BookMooch and from other sites.

I thought these wouldn't bother me, but I find them quite distracting.

In which case I do recommend "opting out" of the ads on BM, and let me know if you find any other cases where you get redirected to the non-member section and the ads show up again.

-john

Thanks, John!

Firefox.

The add-on of course is AD-Block Plus. The Ad in question would not have come through no matter what your settings. It didn't for me. I since have fixed my settings, to not allow ads in BM. When I am fully gainfully employed again, I will get back on the "I give a little program".

@Hercules: I use a hosts file, so my OS does all the work during dns lookups rather than having the browser parse pages.

I use Adblock, and with Adblock turned on I do not see the large white space ( nor the ads) but with Adblock disabled I see the large white space above the links ( and the ads of course)

Rob

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1159676/Pics/BM/AdblockOn.png
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1159676/Pics/BM/AdblockOff.png

First and foremost, a belated happy birthday to you.

Aside from the scam aspect of the Free Starbucks gift card advertisement, I could not see how that ad was book related; IMO, it should never have qualified to be seen in the first place.

Then, too, I smelled the scam right away. I've never yet seen a high amount gift card like that given away legitimately - that is, without strings attached. I clicked through to their sign-up page, and in the fine print, the word "participation" gave me a second clue that the offer was a scam. Don't worry; I didn't give them any information...

One thing that might be helpful is if you could tweak the ads a bit so that we have the option to see graphics in them or not. I prefer to have only text ads, so I'm currently blocking graphics in the ads - first and foremost, the animated graphics have got to go - secondly the static ones.

My reasoning behind the blocking of graphics is that they slow down the page load times... especially when the connection is slow and/or if the ads are new. And, for the curious, I do have DSL... but it's not always what it's cracked up to be. I still get slow connections sometimes.

The bad part about blocking the graphics, is that I have to block them individually, in case there might, in the future, be some ad that might inadvertently be blocked if I chose to block things in bulk.

The ads do not appear to cause any page slowdowns for me, and I'm pleased that the ads have been vetted by John and the BookMooch community. BookMooch is the only site whose ads I'm willing to unblock.

I clicked on the Penguin and Macmillan ads, and briefly explored the publishers' sites. Terrific -- more book ideas!

Happy Birthday, John!

Happy Belated Birthday John!

I have been a member for about 4 years(?) now and just LOVE it! Thank you for all your hard work. I got rid of all my kids beloved baby books (had no more room for them anyway) and loved the idea that I was able to pass them on to other families to enjoy with their little ones. Now I am getting Cliff notes, Shakespeare and other college bound classics for my two high schoolers. Your site has saved me a TON of money. That means a lot since I am a single, recently widowed mom on Social Security trying to make ends meet. To think it all started when a school (how could they?) was THROWING out over 200 sci-fi paperbacks. I couldn't stand to see them go into the trash and felt I HAD to find a home for them. I did a search on how to recycle books and found YOU! I have been in love ever since! Keep up the good work!

Monique

I was never in favor of ads, and am opted out, so it's rather annoying to have one pop up there even briefly.

1. Could you implement a way to limit 'related editions' and 'recommendations' by language? I know there aren't that many books here in languages other than English, but it's still frustrating to see numerous copies of a book I'm looking for that I wouldn't be able to read. Several times I've nearly requested one before I read the full description.

2. When you hide a book in Recommendations or remove one from the Wishlist, I wish it would remember where I was. It's frustrating to have to rescan the list to remember where I was, or try to remember which book I just hid so I can continue searching. This actually should work in someone's inventory as well. When I mooch a book from someone I'd like to go back to the same spot in their inventory so I can continue to check for books I'd like.

3. A minor suggestion, sort of 'would be nice'.....to be able to mark books in someone's inventory temporarily, so I could choose which ones I would prefer to mooch. If someone has 100 books in a genre I like, it's frustrating to mooch one, then find out two pages later they have a book I've needed for ages. I suppose most people wouldn't mind if I mooched 5 or 6 at one time, but I feel like I'm being greedy doing that.

Thanks John, for providing this service. I love BookMooch and recommend it every chance I get. I don't hit the second hand bookstores as much any more but have been thinking that I should take a handful of BookMooch bookmarks next time I go, and place them in random books. :)

That said, Book Mooch is stillthe only game in town -- I'll just have to post more books.

You might however think of adding a clause to your status (that people see when they mooch a book from you) asking for your fellow countryment to mooch more than one book at a time, which would at least reduce your postage costs inland marginally.

Perhaps too offering to angel the occasional book from abroad to your country might encourage others to 'import' English-language books as well, and you would be eligible for points from the angel charity.

Like you I think that people should be removed from wishlists after a set time - I'd keep it down to something like three months!- to give the loyal Bookmoochers more of a chance to get the books they want, rather than be 'pipped at the post' by someone who only uses Bookmooch as a way to be notified of and get hard-to-find-on-other-swap-sites books that they then dispose of on those sites!

I am just an inveterate key-puncher and look in all the nooks and crannies for how a site works! Hope it helps, otherwise mail me and I'll do some more research.
The angel charity can be found via the charity link on the home page too, and that should tell you all about what the angel charity was set up for and what it does.
Gill