> Perhaps I was a whale with a blank check, reading the blog entry to find out more. One popup and now I'm gone.
You don't run websites (especially ecommerce websites) hoping and praying for a "whale" to come along and bless you with their deep pockets... just like you don't play baseball hedging on hitting only home runs. That's a recipe for failure.
> Its self-serving to stick a dialog box in somebody's face
Yes, that's the point. I want their email addresses.
> then spend 100's of words defending that choice by denying the obvious.
Frankly, you cannot argue with the effectiveness of popup email collection. Every time we blast our 150,000+ email marketing list (mostly gathered via the popup as well as other means), the websites are almost crushed under the traffic load. 1 email can generate $10's of thousands in revenue... so yes, collecting emails is of very high importance for us, and many similar ecommerce companies.
> are not about the visitor gaining value by reading a blog entry
You are certainly right -- it's more about the company gaining value, however, a great many of our customers gain value by seeing deals on products they are interested in. That is a win-win for everyone.
> And those who object to the process are "not my target".
If you aren't buying something from my site, or clicking an ad, then you are not my target. Instead you are just consuming my company's resources and ultimately won't convert into a sale. To be frank, we don't want those types of visitors on the website, although it's unavoidable (ecommerce generally considers an average 3-5% conversion rate to be good).
The point is, you are annoyed by popups, and choose to punish sites that employ them. Just like some choose to punish sites that provide free content but pay the bills with ads. It's a strong bias to impose on the rest of the internet users... especially when you are in the minority percentile.