No More Banner Adverts

You may notice the next time you visit that the banner ads you saw at the bottom of every page on the site have now gone and I thought it was worth talking a little about why we've done that.

When we first started WalkLakes back in the winter of 2011-2012 we thought that we could generate enough income from the web site using adverts, both banner and property, to fund our work in researching walks and developing and maintaining the GPS mapping software. At first this moderately successful but our revenue from banner advertising in particular has dwindled. Meanwhile our page hits have soared so it's clear that this isn't the lack of visitors, it's just that people are clicking our banner ads less often, a lot less often.

So this summer we experimented with a new income stream, selling the printed versions of our walks and the GPX route files for them at £1 a go. Although this isn't going to make us rich it is now generating more income than our banner ads and so, as we hate banner ads as much as anyone else, we have decided it's time for them to get rid of them.

So how can you support our work if you don't buy our walks or GPX files?

Well, if you're looking for a holiday cottage or a B&B or hotel then don't forget our Lake District room finder and, for the rest of the UK, if you use our links to Sykes Cottages or LateRooms to make your booking with them then we make a little commission that way.

And remember you can always make a donation towards our work. We use PayPal to take payments but you don't need an account with them, just a credit card.

Donation of £

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