Glenn has a note on his site underneath a collection of links to stock blogs (BTW, thanks for the link Glenn) which reads:

Why do so many have to place ads everywhere on there sites? Does it really provide a source of income and why would you need it if you are a trader and good at it? What it does… is add clutter and slow down your site. The only ones who don’t use ads from the above are thekirkreport.com; brandonfredrickson.com/blog; fickletrader.blogspot.com thanks guys your sites are better for it! Personally I hate ads and never click on em, the only people who do are usually helping someone which is clickfraud.

First, yes, ads really do provide a source of income. My AdSense money from June bought my brand new shiny 60GB iPod as well as a couple of accessories. That may not be a whole lot of money but I’ll take it. There are bloggers making a lot more than I do from AdSense — see Darren ‘ProBlogger’ Rowse who made between ‘$10k and $20k in the month of May’ from AdSense.

So there are real people making real money from ads. While click-fraud certainly exists I don’t think it’s as rampant as Glenn seems to believe. I would suggest that anyone who feels like Glenn short the hell out of Google and Yahoo because their business are worthless according to that belief. It’s obvious to me that advertisers are getting value from advertising on the web. I just got a renewal BlogAd from Zacks today (thanks!). I doubt they would have renewed for August if the July ad didn’t pay off. And I won’t even get into the millions that are spent advertising on Yahoo…

As for why a ‘good’ trader would ‘need’ ad income I would ask why does Glenn want something for nothing? Why does Dan Zanger — who’s on the 2004 Trader Monthly 100 and made an estimated $10 to $15 million — charge for access to his site? Why don’t George Soros or Jim Rogers give their books away for free? I run ads on my site because it helps to diversify my income and it gives me an incentive to keep the site going. Do I not deserve to be compensated for my time?

Glenn praises the likes of Kirk, who doesn’t run ads but asks for donations, and requires a donation to access the ‘members only’ portions of his site. Why not ask why Kirk, who’s apparently a ‘good’ trader, needs to ask for donations? (Kirk obviously spends a ton of time on his site. Doesn’t he deserve some kind of compensation for that?)

I’m not mad at Glenn for disliking ads. I’ve been a hard-core TiVo user for years and I skip ads all the time. Likewise, I rarely look at ads on the internet much less click on them. But the fact remains that advertising seems to be the only model that works online. I’ve had a ‘tip jar’ on the site for a very long time yet I’ve only received 4 ‘tips’ in the two-plus years I’ve been blogging. (Thanks again to Karin (twice), Joe and Adam.) So if I had to rely on donations this site probably would have died out a long time ago. Thankfully Google came along with AdSense and created what I think is a very fair tradeoff for both publishers and readers.

(For those that really just despise ads perhaps you should just block them.)