Kate says:

Yes, the good news is there are things you can do to support Parsimonious and the other sites we host that don't require you to pay any money.

1. The first thing I'd appreciate enormously is if you use ad blocking software for your web browser, please turn that off when you visit or allow ads on this site. We don't have pop-up or pop-under ads, or interstitials (full page ads you have to click through to get to the page you want to view), nor do we have layer ads that appear over the page you're trying to see, so our ads, although they're not pretty, wont directly intrude into your experience of browsing the site. 

Given the popularity of ad blocking plugins and programs, its likely that several hundred of our daily visitors are using ad blocking and therefore their traffic isn't generating any revenue. That means several dollars a day of potential revenue is simply not there. Personally I'd much prefer to take money out of the pockets of big corportations like Microsoft, Walmart, Apple and so on, than I would want our regular visitors to dip into their housekeeping or their pocket money to fund us!  Obviously if you do see a product or service that is interesting then clicking on that to go and see what its all about does no harm, but even just seeing the ads in the first place does increase the chances that I'll get some money rather than none, however small the amount.

2. One VERY useful thing you can do is take this survey - if you have only enough time to do one thing for us then please do this!

It is provided by one of our advertising networks, it can help them better understand who visits this site, the more information they have, the easier it is for them to 'pitch' this site as a good place for companies to advertise their products. Targeted campaigns pay better than regular 'indiscriminate' adverts so its good if Parsimonious gets chosen more often for these targeted ads, in addition we also get more general campaigns for the site other than the relatively poorly paying Google ads. In other words you'll be indirectly creating more ad revenue for Parsimonious! It takes a couple of minutes, you are not tracked in any way or required to submit your email address - no nasty surprises. I've filled it out once or twice myself in the past so I can vouch for the fact its quite safe and the questions aren't at all scary or too personal. 

Additional January 2008: last year we had nearly 4000 responses to the survey and as a result got chosen for an entirely new ad channel along with our 'default' computer games channel - meaning a whole new set of ads and campaigns so this really does make a difference!

3. Other than taking the survey you can also help us by spreading the word, if you recommend us to other Simmers then we get more visitors which means our advertising page views will increase, especially if you send a first time visitor to the site who might spend a lot of time looking at lots of pages. If you are a site owner then adding us to your links section is very helpful! (Yes, it also qualifies you for a return link from us so do leave us a message with your site details and where we can find your 88x31 link button so you can be added at the next links page revision!). Any place you can post our link around the www is good for the site (so long as its an appropriate place of course!) so get out there and spread the word!

It is especially helpful if you're a Sims 1 player if you can spread the word around Sims 1 communities who may not be aware we are here and still updating with new content so any ways you can find to promote us is a big help.

4. Lastly you can vote for us on the selection of Top-List sites we're registered with (look here under 'Vote for Us!' on the left middle of the page). The purpose of the top list is to generate traffic for websites, some of the larger ones bring in a significant number of visitors each day and its often a starting point for new users looking for appropriate sites to go to. Needless to say the higher up we appear in these Top Lists, the more likely we are to get more clicks in from people using those list. 

It doesn't register if you vote more than once per day (or whatever the reset period is for each particular list), but if you have time to periodically click through the selection featured then that is a genuine help to us.