I’m not exactly fired up enough to do anything about it yet, but I am annoyed that WordPress has started adding ads to my blog. Among the sources of irritation is that I don’t know when, exactly, they started adding them. They show up at the bottom of some posts, but they are not visible to me when I am logged in to WordPress. I find this practice somewhat deceitful, as most of the time when I visit my own blog, I am indeed logged in. I think that’s probably the norm for bloggers.

What I see when I am logged in:

What I see when I am not logged in:

I know that there has been fine print places saying that WordPress may put ads on blogs, but for a long time I just thought there weren’t any on mine. It was only a couple of months ago that I started seeing them, on my blog, and on other WordPress blogs that I visit. And now when I go to my “dashboard,” I have the option to buy an option to “upgrade to pro” for $99.00 a year. So if I want to get the ads off, I have to pay about a hundred dollars a year. That just doesn’t seem right to me.

I guess I can understand that WordPress is a business, and they need to make money somehow. I just feel a bit like I’ve been given free samples, and now that I’m a junkie, I have to pay. Plus I have no say over what ads they stick on my blog. So far, the ones I’ve seeen have been innocuous. But can I be assured that they will remain so?

I don’t like ads. One of the appeals to me of WordPress is that it was ad-free, and bloggers aren’t even supposed to add ads. But do I want to pay $99 a year? What are my other options?

So, do you see the ads? If so, when did you first notice them? Did you think it was me who’d put them there? Just curious.

And how do you feel about ads your own blog? Or on other blogs you visit?

Edited to add: I see now that there is an upgrade option just for removing the ads for $29.97 a year. But that still seems steep to me. And irritating.