Worries about Brickset becoming a portal for affiliate sellers

Brickfan50

Since we have Brickset 2.0 I'm noticing that the homepage (brickset.com) is overwhelmed by "shopping news". Toys R Us, Smyths Toys, Target, Daily Mail actions and many more.
It's a nice thing to get informed about discounts from certain vendors, but I don't like it that this is being displayed on the home page.
The main interest of Brickset should be to inform the users about new Lego sets and everything else that relates to their hobby.

Instead I would like to see on the home page more random sets and real Lego news. On April 29 Huw did an article about collecting old sets (link): that's the kind of news I would like to see more!!!
By implementing all kinda API's into the Brickset user interface the owners of Brickset receive a considerable lot of money.
If you live in the UK or USA this may be helpful. But the rest of the world has no access to UK or USA web stores. I suggest that shopping news no longer should be mentioned on the home page. People who want to this news can go to the "Buy" pages.

Dear Brick friends: how do you feel about this?

Legoboy

Hey. I understand and appreciate your comments to some extent but I just zip right past them if they are of no interest to me and to be honest, they don't get that much in the way for me.

Let me ask you this, in return for removing the affiliated links and advertising from the most prominent page of the site, would you instead be prepared to pay towards the upkeep and maintenance of the site out of your own pocket? Would the other hundreds of thousands of our fellow members?

I think affiliation is an unnecessary evil to make it as pain free for us members.

Pitfall69

^You mean necessary evil...correct? :)

Legoboy

That's what I said.

Pitfall69

Um...sure.

Huw

@dutchlegofan50, I appreciate they are of no interest to you. If you wish you, can hide them by changing your news preferences: untick shopping (UK) and shopping (USA) and anything else that doesn't take your fancy.

bobabricks

News should be more about new sets during the time when there is news, Spring is a weird season for Lego because there is not much news regarding new sets except for a couple Winter sets and possibly a May 4th set. Summer is when we get news about the next year's set names, Fall is when we start to see low res pictures and then Winter is when we see better res pictures and set names/pictures for Summer sets.

Shib

Anyone who thinks that websites can run without advertising/affiliate links has no idea about the costs of keeping a website. If you can't tune out bits of advertising I have no idea how you can function in the modern world.

CCC

For many of them, I see them more as "now available" rather than blatent advertising. For example, the Daily Mail polys - it is a useful reminder in case anyone had missed the fact that they were coming. Smyths, TRU etc are only ever shown when there is a good discount or offer, so I see that as news rather than advertising.