What effect do Pop Ups have on Signup frequency?
 

I have a question and I know at least one person reading this will have the answer (from experience).

This is my situation:

Like everyone, I'm always looking for opportunities to increase my income. I have built a fairly large network of sites in the past year (speaking relative because I work independently) and combined they get a decent amount of traffic every day.

So I found a site that pays $3 per 1000 popup ads. It's one of those popups that occur when the visitor clicks something on the site. So if they visit the site and do not click anything, there is no popup.

I think $3/1000 is a good rate (and if you have a better rate, please share) but what is the catch?

The catch is, it's not just 1 annoying pop, there are 2 ugly popups that show up upon the first link clicked on the site. I suppose the good news is, the popups only show up on the first click, all clicks on my sites after that are clean.

(if you want to see this popup code in action, you can see it at EVANOTTY.NET and clicking any link on that site)

My question is if anyone has been in a similar situation and tested their signup ratios before and after adding popups to their sites and whether there was a drop in signups and if there was a drop, was that drop significant?

I have a theory that this will have a significantly negative impact on signups because... let's just imagine this scenario: Visitor comes to site, watches a preview video, clicks "WATCH ENTIRE VIDEO" link, and suddenly 3 sites popup, with the signup page buried somewhere in the mix. Some visitors might say "what the fuck is this" and not only close the site and the potential sign up form, but they might decide not to come back either. I think this is a realistic scenario... at least that is probably how I would feel in that situation.

..but that's just a theory, some of you might know the real answer based on experience.

Thanks for reading.

My #1 rule is "don't fuck the surfer." I personally get annoyed with popups so I don't use them on my sites. I've never made enough money from popups to justify annoying my surfers with them.

Well here is what I have noticed so far.

1. Signup frequency has not changed.

2. The rate of the bonus I'm getting from these popups is on pace to be better than any check from an affiliate in 1 pay period.

3. When testing the popups myself, I noticed that when the user clicks a link on my site, it is the desired destination that comes up FIRST and the popups are behind that, so, that should decrease the likelihood of surfers getting pissed off a bit more than I anticipated. My main worry is that I didn't want visitors to be trying to dig out what they were trying to get to... not the case with this code...

So far... I'm looking at a best case scenario... but I might have just jinxed it :X