When will websites ever learn that irritating pop-ups drive away people just as fast as interesting articles bring them to the website?

I just had that happen to me. I clicked on a link that sounded interesting to me – something about China discovering gold off the coast of their country. Hey, I have a variety of interests including treasure hunting, I guess.

So I started browsing through the article when suddenly, a large white screen covered the article and started asking if I’d like to sign up to blah, blah, blah – I don’t even know what it was asking, but all I knew is that it was annoying enough to click “no thanks” and close down the website. Therefore, by their clever marketing schemes, they no longer had me on their site and I will be less likely to ever click on one of their links again.

Yes, us Internet users are fickle. We want everything free and without obligation, so you need to change your tactics if you want to be a legitimate site in my eyes.

The Internet is full of these kinds of traps which can be complete turn-offs for readers. I suppose there has to be a balance between getting folks who might spend significant time (and even a little money) on a site without completely making others turn up their nose at their tactics.

After all, even I have clever advertising on the top of my site. Of course I want to use it to sell my books, but I would never want my advertising to be so obtrusive as to turn away people from reading my posts. What benefit would that be?

So, website, find a new method if you want me to hang out there more often. If not, good luck on your annoying ways of finding new readers.