Hello HWS Community,
after more than four years and a thought process of one year, I decided today to end the era of Google Ads for HWS.
There will be no Ads on HWS Connect, the HWS Forum and my eW Tools anymore.
Why?
Well, beside the fact that nobody really like Ads (at least if they were not made by Ryan Reynolds) Google went over the year quite aggressive with popup ads, fly out ads and what not.
Let alone the space they consume, reducing the content I want to deliver.
The trade-off was of course getting paid for it. But the share I got was very variable, since I didn’t always did the perfect “feed me with Ads” approach from Google. Sometimes I was punished and sometimes not.
Take the last year as example:
- the more “in your face” the Ads are, the more you get. Hence the HWS Header (the Ads you saw in HWS Connect at the top) gave the most.
Overall you see the money I got in total did not even cover the cost I have to pay for keeping all websites running.
Over the years I got quite a lot of complains about Ads and I think it would put me off on first sight as a player myself. So here we are.
The benefit of no Ads is better slight performance as well of course.
And while it was a nice little Patreon benefit as Elite to not get any Ads, it wasn’t that lucrative in the end, since before you login, we can’t know if you are a Patron or not, hence showing even for Patrons Ads.
I’ll come up with a better Patron Benefit anyways 
But…
There is of course a missing income for me now and doing this as full time job means to look for alternatives.
The only way of Ads I find acceptable are “Rewarded video Ads”. For now only usable in (mobile) Apps.
For websites I didn’t find a good one, Google started only recently a closed Beta program for it.
Rewarded video Ads are ok, because it’s a better trade-off in my opinion.
You watch an Ads video and you and me get something in return.
You 1 Gold Ore for example and I the Ad reveneu share.
But it’s a pro-active thing. Only if you want it, you click it. It’s not passive blocking content away.
So maybe in the future this would be the way to go.
All this means that we will increase the prices of the top 10 best-selling packages by a maximum of 1-5% tomorrow.
That is for the HWS Website, HWS Connect and this Forum.
For my eW Tools I try to come up with something else that doesn’t affect you, players.
I hope I explained my decision well enough and you can understand my reasonings.
If you have questions, please let me know.
Now, back to HWS+ 
Your HWS Team
