Sausages and Erectile Dysfunction

James wrote us to say

I read bike hugger in a feed reader and I was disturbed to see a Jimmy Dean sandwich ad appear below a story on bike commuting in the rain. I went to the BH front page and there’s a big ol’ Viagra ad posted below the same story.

Besides being really tacky these ads aren’t apropos of cycling or in my opinion any healthy lifestyle.

Can you guys be more selective about who you let advertise on your site?

and I responded, “at Bike Hugger we’re friendly to all sorts of cyclists, including those that eat sausages or take erection pills.”

Joking aside, the ads are provided by our friends at FeedBurner and they use a sophisticated delivery system: if readers don’t click, the ads don’t show – if you refresh the page frequently you’ll also see that the ads only show a few times and are replaced by Google text ads. The ads are also geotargeted, so you may not see Wendy’s or Circuit City that are also running.

As we move forward with the business of Bike Hugger, described here, we’re working with advertisers on unique programs, podcasts, and more. To bring our readers more blogging, the ads pay our hosting and underwrite costs. If you’ve read us for a while, you’ll notice we’ve gone from periodic posting to daily, to multiple times a day.

Brought to you by

We also run an Amazon Store and Amazon Affiliate ads. The “Brought to you by” sidebar are the retail goods we’ve made and sold, including my book. Brought to you by includes ads for Elliott Bay, Schooner Exact, and other Seattle-area businesses.

One thing we don’t do is pop-ups or interstitial ads (click on ad before seeing content) or ones that float over the page because that totally annoys me.

If you’ve got questions/concerns about our ads let us know here in the comments or via our contact form. I’ve been doing this for a long time and been on both sides of the “web should be free” debate.

Sidenote: the lingerie line sold on Amazon with “hugger” in the product description cracks me up every-time I see it. The lingerie periodically shows up and sometimes is just a small scroll from the Viagra ad.

We're riding townies, adventure, and mountain bikes. Find recommendations on our store page. As Amazon Associates we earn from qualifying purchases.