Advert policy - Why there will be no banners on Nipponster.com

D.B.E.

We were contacted via email recently by a company that offers popular advertising solutions for websites. To reap a profit from it, the service would likely require the posting of banners on this site.

Though this particular company's service seems to be becoming ubiquitous on sites with a focus similar to ours, we declined them.

We were congenial in all of our correspondence with them and although we declined we even offered to interview them on our new blog Daily J (because we think their service is ok, it's just not for us). But there was no reply...

So I am sure that declining their offer certainly won us no friends in that company but we have
to stick to our guiding principle:
"Does this make things better for Japan-enthusiasts?"

In this case we decide that the answer was "NO" for two reasons:

1. It would distract from the purpose of Nipponster. That purpose is to quickly give our users only the information they are looking for. Not the clutter they are not looking for.




2. The service is a "freemium". It's free for the basic functions but if you want to get the full service you have to pay a fee. There's nothing wrong really with freemiums, but Nipponster was started with the goal that everything we provide we provide 100% free.

In the end we are crazy dreamers, right? So regardless of any monetary benefit we would have reaped we would not and will not give up our dream and our principles.

We hope that is clear to everyone and I personally hope that will never change.