Issues relating to promoting and advertising

I have for the longest of time have not served ads on this site nor my community site, Nologam due to a couple of simple facts about advertising and promoting.

1. Advertisements get blocked. What is point in trying to serve ads on a website if all they are doing is being removed thanks to people that use Adblock. I will admit, I am a offender of this myself since I use Adblock myself, but if you want me to turn it off, you gotta need to give me a good reason. 1. Sidenote: Putting up a message to turn off AdBlock will not work. I would normally leave the site because of a message like that. Again, it’s depending on how the advert is being served.
2. “Sell Out”. “Promoting too much”.
   I don’t like to ‘shove’ the website down people’s throat. And maybe that statement is half the problem I have. I am trying to be fair by not advertising but at the same time, if I don’t promote the site, then I wont get the return that I am looking for.

And that is where this blog post is really boiling down to.

How do I promote my website, without ‘shoving’ down users’ throat nor having advertising on the website??

How to marketers do it these days? I am just one guy trying to promote a gaming community that has a game servers, a appealing forum and even a voice server.

It does seem to be really difficult.