Devious ways bloggers make money: Part II
Fri 30 Mar 07 04:06 | Tags: Blogging, Profit
Okay, time for the second (and final?) article on devious ways people make money by blogging. Please read my earlier article on this topic first, if you haven't already.
First, a little clarification to my fellow bloggers out there; the intended audience for these articles is not bloggers, but readers of blogs. Thus, this is not meant to be a guide on how to make money online by blogging; rather, a guide for readers on some of the more shady ways bloggers profit from their readers, and how and why to watch out for them. So bloggers might find it a little boring, redundant, or even insulting, but hopefully blog readers will find it interesting. All right, let's get started on the next devious ways bloggers profit.
Agloco
What it is: Perhaps this is in the wrong article, since I don't think anyone outside of the Agloco corporate HQ will ever actually profit from this complicated scheme. I might get a few things wrong trying to explain this, but here goes. Agloco is a company which is making a Viewbar (not a referral link). The idea is that, when you surf the internet with this Viewbar installed, it will periodically display ads from participating advertisers. You earn points for using the Viewbar, even if you don't click on or "convert" on ads. You can also refer other users to the Agloco Viewbar, and you will earn points when the people you've referred use their Viewbars as well. These points will accumulate over time. If, if, HUGE BIG FAT IF, Agloco ever goes public and earns a profit, you will be paid an unspecified sum dependent on how many points they have accrued. Many bloggers have taken up the Agloco cause; some have even started entire web sites dedicated to singing its praises and getting as many first- and second-level referrals as possible. Meanwhile, the Viewbar software has yet to be released; its release date has been repeatedly pushed back.
How I use it: I don't. Two reasons. One, the simplest reason, is there's no indication that the Viewbar software will be Mac compatible. And as I said in the previous article, I wouldn't want to refer someone to a product a service that I wouldn't (or couldn't) use myself.
Second, there is just no guarantee that any effort that anybody is putting out to get Agloco referrals (and some people are making a lot of effort) will ever come to fruition in the form of cold hard cash. There's just to many "ifs." If the Viewbar software is ever released, and if the Viewbar software is successful, and if Agloco is successful in bringing in more advertisers, and if Agloco has an IPO (it will probably be at least a couple years before they get to this point, if it happens at all), and if Agloco's profits and share price rises, and if this whole thing isn't a scam from the get-go… then Agloco members will see a pay-out of an unspecified amount.
Me, I'm willing to bet any time I could spend promoting Agloco and fishing for referrals could be more profitably spent flipping burgers and scrubbing toilets; and at least doing that, you get a guaranteed paycheck or two every month, not a theoretically possible pay-out years from now. And the whole thing sounds very pre-dot-com bubble. Kumiko thinks Agloco will never make money and that, even if it reaches an IPO, investors won't be interested in it. A site calls the Trader's Narrative gives further analysis of why traders will find it laughably worthless, and also states that the concept of giving "members" shares of a company for free would be illegal under various trade laws; Agloco may be doing something illegal.
Some bloggers may try to get you to drink the Agloco Kool-Aid by telling you of the riches you can make by just sitting on your can and surfing the internet while the Viewbar is open, and by referring your own new members underneath you. Be aware that the odds are against you receiving any money at all from this program; it's a waste of time, and time is money.
Automatic contextual advertising links
The one at the bottom was actually playing a Flash movie. Ugh!
What it is: The blogger signs up with a contextual link advertising provider, of which the two most common are IntelliTXT and Kontera ContentLink (not referral links). The ad provider provides the blogger with a bit of code which calls a bit of JavaScript on their server, and the blogger puts that code into their web pages. When you visit the blogger's site with your web browser, your browser will download and execute that JavaScript code. What the code does is searches the text of the blogger's pages for certain key words or phrases which have been purchased by advertisers. When it finds one of those phrases, it creates a new link with that phrase that links to the advertiser's site. In addition, when you hover over the new links, you will see an incredibly intrusive panel pop up next to the link, covering the text of the page.
How I use it: Once again… I don't use them. As I've stated before, I hate these things. Hate them hate them hate them. And I will never use them. They are bad for readers, and they are bad for writers.
There's a few reasons why I believe they're bad for readers. One, for unsavvy readers, they may look like "real" links. On most sites these links are distinguishable from real links by their color or by their style (eg, they may have two underlines instead of one), but some readers may not notice the difference, or may not understand the significance of the difference if they do notice it. The barrier that should exist between advertising and content may not be broken completely, but it is definitely degraded to an uncomfortable amount.
Two, this is going to get a bit nerdy, but… in terms of human-computer interaction, we expect certain actions to have certain reactions. If we are in a text editor and we press the letter keys, we expect characters to appear in the document on the screen. If we're in a paint application and we click the mouse button, we expect a dab of paint to be placed on the canvas. Furthermore, when we do an action on the computer, we expect the results of that action to be relevant to a certain place. In the text editor app, we expect text to always appear at the cursor; not at the start of the document, not three lines above or ten characters after the cursor, but always at the cursor. And in the paint app, we expect the dab of paint to always appear underneath the pointer. When a computer user triggers an action, they expect the action to take place in a certain place, and nowhere else.
Where am I going with this? Well, these types of links and their pop-up panels break these rules of interaction in two ways. One, it is an action that is triggered merely by moving the pointer. As computer users, we are not used to triggering actions by merely moving the pointer without the mouse button held down; at least, not large ones. (Yes, when you mouse over links here on RGR, their background turns gray, but I don't think this qualifies as a significant action; it doesn't impede the legibility of the text in any way). Two, the pop-up panels, given their size, appear not underneath the pointer, but off to the side and/or above or below the pointer. So, to make the long story short: by moving the pointer, an act which computer users are not used to having trigger a drastic change in terms of a web page (or any other computer app), the reader can accidentally make a distracting panel appear which covers up the text of the web page they are trying to read. Evil!
But how are they bad for writers? After all, this type of advertising is profitable and lucrative, and that's a good thing, isn't it? Well, yes, but at what cost? You're letting someone else change the content of your writing, in terms of adding links in certain places. As link placement is determined by a computer algorithm, you sometimes get strange phrases linked, or the pop-up panel will reveal that the advertiser that the link is linking to is totally off-topic and out of context in terms of the text. For example, Inside Mac Games' preview of a new Star Wars game contained the following sentence;
Ahh, LucasArts and your affiliate developers who have time and again saved the Star Wars series from George Lucas’ attempts to club it to death…
In that sentence, the word "developers" had an IntelliTXT ad that read "Think you can improve Solaris? Do it. Join the OpenSolaris community." Now, enlighten me, please. What does Solaris have to do with a Star Wars game? And how many Mac gamers -- a perfectly focused advertising target -- would be interested in it? Surely the person who wrote that line did not have OpenSolaris in mind when he was writing it. When bloggers use these programs, they are letting a computer artificial intelligence tweak and reformat their copy in an artificially intelligent (in other words, stupid) way. Maybe I'm just proud, but I don't want that happening to my prose.
"But," defenders of this sort of advertising will say, "you can't specify what AdSense ads you get either. Those ads are often out of context for the sites they appear on too." That's true, yes, but with ads with AdSense and their ilk, the ad stays in its own little ad box; it doesn't go around mingling and mucking with my content. It goes back to the whole thing about the barrier between advertising and content.
Really, though, the fact that I find these ads annoying as a reader is more than enough reason to not want to impose them on other readers. I'm a bit bummed, though, because -- and this was really the inspiration for this series of articles -- influential blogger John Chow recently promoted Kontera ContentLink on his site. Since a lot of bloggers interested in somehow profiting online (including myself) read his blog, I'm afraid this might mean I'll be seeing more and more of this ContentLink nonsense spreading throughout the web. Interestingly, another blog I read, Dosh Dosh, has an article promoting Kontera, but it appears that that site no longer uses it. Maki, if you're reading this via the trackback; care to enlighten me in the comments why you've reversed your position on it? Did you eventually find it annoying as well?
Beware those trading pride for profit.
Well, that's all for now. I may revisit this subject in the future if I find more devilish new ways other bloggers are making money that I want to share with you… and I'll keep you informed about the nefarious ways that I'm trying to make money as well.
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Devious ways bloggers make money
Thu 29 Mar 07 02:35 | Tags: Blogging, Profit
Since I started RGR on a whim almost two months ago, I've been reading a lot of other blogs as well; many more than I ever did before. A feed reader and web feeds makes this possible. I read a lot of tech and computer blogs, to be sure, but I read just as many (if not more) blogs about web site promotion and how to make money online. I'm hoping to make a little pocket money from this thing, after all.
It turns out there's quite a few ways to make money blogging. Some are obvious, such as the AdSense and AuctionAds blocks I have littering my own site; some are a bit more… well, somewhere between "subtle" and "nefarious;" your favorite blogger may be profiting from you without you even knowing it. If you're more interested in reading blogs than writing them, here's some of the more sneaky ways bloggers make money that you should watch out for as a reader. In the interest of full disclosure, I'll also explain how I am using (or why I am not using) these methods to try to line my own pockets.
Referrals and affiliate programs
What it is: Sometimes a blogger will enter into agreement with a company to promote that company and link to them using a special link. When you click that link, the company can recognize that you came from the blogger's site. If you "convert" -- that is, you do a certain action desirable by the company, such as buy a product or service, sign up for a newsletter, or so on -- the company will pay the blogger. This payment might be a flat fee per capita (one dollar for everyone that signs up for the newsletter) or a percentage of sales (five percent of your purchase cost).
Sometimes bloggers will disclose that they are linking to something as part of an affiliate program, either in the sentences surrounding the link or by placing something like "(aff)" or "(ref)" after the link. Sometimes you can also tell by the link's address. Compare these two addresses; can you guess which one is likely an affiliate or referral link?
http://shopping.xyz/?product=82
http://shopping.xyz/?product=82&aff=38122
Referral links may not always be that easy to discern, though. However, it's a fallacy to assume that any commercial enterprise that a blogger links to is paying off the blogger; perhaps the blogger just likes the company and is happy with their service even if they're not getting paid to say so.
Ethically, in my opinion, a blogger should only participate in a referral or affiliate program with reputable companies that the blogger would have no qualms patronizing even if it were nothing in it for them. Disclosure that they are being paid for promoting the product or service is a good thing to do as well.
How I use it: You see the link in the sidebar that says "RGR is hosted by asmallorange?" That is a referral link. Check out the address:
http://asmallorange.com/services/hosting/?refer=raygunrobot.com
If you click that link and then "convert" by buying a web hosting plan, I will be credited the equivalent of one month payment for the plan you ordered. So if you order the $20 a month plan, I will get a $20 credit towards my next hosting bill. As I mentioned when I moved RGR to asmallorange, it's not the most lucrative web hosting referral deal around, but it's better than nothing.
In addition, I've recently signed up to Amazon.com's Associates program which lets me link to products in Amazon.com's catalog with a special link. If you click that link and buy the product, Amazon will send a small fraction of your purchase price my way. I haven't used it yet, but… Heck, why not do it now? I think Japanese Groupsound! looks like a cool album; it's Japanese bands covering the '50s hip-swingin' mod style. Dig some of the audio samples on that page. There, see? With full disclosure to the reader and when linking to products and services that are genuinely cool, referral and affiliate links aren't too bad for anyone involved.
Paid posting
What it is: A blogger is paid flat-out for posting about, and linking to, another website. It doesn't have to be as bad as that sounds, though.
There are a few companies which link up bloggers and advertisers for paid posts. The most notorious is PayPerPost. (Note that PayPerPost and the other paid posting companies I will link to in this section may have their own referral programs, but as I am not an active member of any of them, they will not be referral links.) Bloggers create an account at PayPerPost, then search through "opportunities" by advertisers. These opportunities will list various specifications an advertiser is looking for in their post, such as word count, linked keywords, addresses to link to, and so on, as well as how much they are willing to pay for the post. Bloggers can select an opportunity, then create a post that matches the specifications and submits it to the advertiser. The advertiser can either reject the post because it does not meet specifications, has a negative tone, or for pretty much any other reason; or they can approve it, at which point the blogger posts it on their blog. The company gets forward-facing links and positive copy that may entice blog readers to visit their site, but even if no readers do, they still have one more link pointing towards their site for search engines to count. And the blogger gets paid.
There's also ReviewMe and recently-launched workalike SponsoredReviews.com. With these services, advertisers typically find bloggers instead of the other way around. The advertisers hire a blogger to link to and review their site. They may specify a word count limit and suggest certain things to write about or pages to link to, but once an advertiser accepts a blogger's offer, they have no editorial control over the content of the resulting post. This means that occasionally posts written by these bloggers will be outright negative. It may not be in the blogger's best interest too write posts that are too negative, though; advertisers may not wish to hire a blogger that they believe will write a negative review of their site. So if the blogger thinks that they would review the site negatively, they may decline the advertiser's offer, or they may accept it, but "pad" the shock of their negative reviews with lots of suggestions for improvement.
Suggestions for improvement from users are quite valuable for many web sites, though. Buying posts through ReviewMe and SponsoredReviews.com will usually be more expensive than PayPerPost (sometimes costing into the hundreds or even over a thousand dollars), but they're also usually longer and, since they do not allow the advertiser to have editorial control as is the case with PayPerPost, they also will garner more respect and attention from savvy readers who know better than to take a PayPerPost post seriously. And whether positive or negative, the site gets an incoming link for search engines to find; an incoming link from a site with a high PageRank may be worth the cost alone.
ReviewMe and SponsoredReviews.com require, as part of their terms of service, "full disclosure;" that is, bloggers that write a review after taking an offer through their service must disclose that they have done such. PayPerPost used to not require such disclosures from bloggers for their posts, but, after taking a lot of flak about their seeming encouragement of bloggers to spam their own blogs without disclosing that they're doing such, they have since changed their terms and now require disclosure as well.
Besides offering filthy lucre, paid posting services also provide bloggers literally with something to blog about; a way to break through treacherous "blogger's block" and make a few bucks at the same time.
How I use it: I don't. When SponsoredReviews.com first became available to the public, I applied to write reviews on RGR, but I was denied because, according to the "standard" metrics such as Alexa rank (which I'm not a big fan of, Technorati rank, and the aforementioned PageRank, RGR gets less traffic than a North Korean highway. I may try reapplying again after some time has passed and my stats have improved. Should I be accepted, I will, of course, disclose that any paid posts I make are such, and I will be honest in my reviews.
Same Robot time, same Robot channel
There's a thing or two more I want to write about, but I'm going to wrap this up for today. Please check back tomorrow for at least one more sneaky way that bloggers are profiting from you.
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Why only idiots use disposable batteries
Sat 24 Mar 07 04:14 | Tags: Green, Hardware, Profit
Note: I'm still feeling a bit sick, but I figured I really needed to get an article done today lest I be revealed as considered a lazy blogger. As the old head's still a bit cloudy, please forgive me if this article has a few more examples of bad grammar, typos, and just plain idiocy than normal.
Is that title provocative enough for you? Cool bloggers always use eye-catching titles, even if they're edgier or more hostile than the text of the actual article. Still, it's the twenty-first century. Why are people still buying disposable batteries?
Cool bloggers always use images in their articles. (This blog now sponsored by Quantaray! …Not really.)
Their use must be declining, to be sure; if not volume-wise, than by the percentage of the devices that use them. Laptop and palmtop computers, digital audio players, portable video game systems, cell phones, and other common consumer electronics come with their own rechargeable batteries built-in nowadays. But there's still many other devices that do not come with their own batteries; remote controls, video game controllers, and flashlights, to name some common examples. If you're smart, you're buying and using rechargeable batteries in those devices too. Here's several reasons why you should use rechargeable batteries instead of disposable ones in any electronic device that gives you the option.
Cool bloggers always use lists
- There's less of an environmental impact. Now I'm far from a tree-hugger, but it's a fact that batteries contain a soup of chemicals that aren't a lot of fun to have around. If you can have one set of batteries that you use five hundred times, you're keeping four hundred ninety-nine servings of that soup out of landfills. You're also not wasting the metal casings the batteries are made of, and are avoiding the environmental impacts of the batteries' manufacture and shipping. Every little bit helps.
- You won't run afoul of the law. What the heck do I mean by that? This goes along with the ecology thing. Here in California, it is actually illegal to throw away batteries nowadays; they are classified as hazardous waste and must be either recycled or taken to a hazardous waste disposal facility. Granted, this law is often flaunted flouted, but if you want to live within the letter of the law, you cannot throw them away. You may have similar laws on the disposal of batteries on the books in your area; ask around at electronics stores. Needless to say, if you have to dispose of batteries in some annoying way, rechargeable batteries are a great choice since they do not have to be disposed of as often.
- You'll save money. Starting to use rechargeable batteries is initially expensive; the batteries themselves can be around three times the cost of disposable batteries, and you must buy a charger as well. Consider the cost an investment; depending on how quickly you burn through batteries, this cost will eventually pay for itself because you will no longer be having to run to the store whenever you need new batteries. And keep in mind that you don't have to buy all the rechargeable batteries you need all at once; you can mitigate the cost over time by simply waiting until the disposable batteries your devices expire, then replacing those with rechargeable batteries instead of disposable ones. Like disposables, rechargeable batteries are typically fully-charged when they're sold.
- You'll never run out of batteries. If you keep a spare set of rechargeable batteries available, then whenever a device's batteries expire, you can just swap those for the spare, then recharge the expired ones and set those aside as the spare set for the next time. You'll have very little down time for the battery-eating device, and since you'll always have a set set aside as spares, it's like you have a bottomless well of batteries to draw from.
How to get started
So have I convinced you to take up the rechargeable battery cause yet? Glad to hear it. Here's how to get started.
The first thing you need to do is choose which type of rechargeable battery you wish to use. There are four types of rechargeable batteries in common use today; lithium-ion (Li-ion), nickel-cadmium (Ni-Cad or Ni-Cd), nickel metal hydride (Ni-MH), and rechargeable alkaline.
Lithium-ion batteries are typically the types used in cell phones, video game systems, and "built-in" to other consumer electronics. To the best of my knowledge, no company makes li-ion batteries in standard forms (AA, AAA, etc), so don't worry about those.
Rechargeable alkaline batteries are basically like disposable alkaline batteries, but with a special composition which makes them more conductive to recharging than disposable alkalines. (Don't try to charge a disposable alkaline; it may work, or it may explode!) When I first started using rechargeable batteries, I used rechargeable alkalines; you may recall that Rayovac had a huge advertising push for their Renewal brand of rechargeable alkalines. However, I wouldn't recommend using rechargeable alkalines, because by my own experience, the batteries can be prone to leakage. (In a possibly related note, Rayovac has discontinued their Renewal line, though other companies still sell rechargeable alkaline batteries and chargers.) If you see a crystalline white grit on an alkaline battery or in a charger or device, this is leaking battery matter! It's corrosive, so try not to touch it with your bare hands, and wash with plenty of water if you do. Dispose of the batteries, put on some gloves and try to swab the white gunk out of the device with some water and paper towels -- if it's worth trying to save it.
Or just avoid the risk of leakage and go with nickel-cadmium or nickel metal hydride batteries. Ni-Cad and Ni-MH batteries can usually use the same charger, so long as you only charge one type at once (you should not put these batteries into an alkaline charger or vice-versa). I've been using the same set of Ni-MH batteries in my digital camera pretty much ever since I got it two and a half years ago, and have been satisfied with their performance. The main difference between Ni-Cad and Ni-MH batteries is that Ni-MH batteries are less susceptible to the memory effect; with Ni-Cads, it's recommended that you discharge the batteries as fully as possible before charging them again, but this is not necessary for Ni-MHs. UPDATE: Matt says in the comments that I've got this wrong, and that you should recharge batteries "when they're close to discharged, but not fully discharged." Hmm, perhaps I got confused.
One disadvantage that nickel-based batteries have compared to rechargeable (and disposable) alkalines is that their voltage output is actually a little bit less; an alkaline AA battery will put out about 1.5 volts when fully charged, whereas these batteries will put out 1.2 to 1.3 volts. However, modern devices are smart enough to deal with battery output this low, since battery voltage drops over the life of a battery anyway; for example, a flashlight with fresh batteries puts out a brighter light than one with nearly-dead batteries. I've never had the lower output of Ni-MH batteries be an issue in any device I've used them in. Another disadvantage is that nickel-based batteries take longer to recharge than alkaline ones, if I'm not mistaken. Still, I think that Ni-MH batteries are a better choice.
Once you've decided the type of batteries you'll use, you'll need to get a charger to charge them in. Picking chargers can take a bit of forward-thinking; you'll want to get a charger that charges all types of batteries you intend to use. Personally, I don't use C or D batteries in anything anymore, so I just have a small charger (shown in the picture) which charges AA batteries. It does not work with AAA batteries, but fortunately, I don't have a need for any of those at this point in life either; I imagine I may have to buy a charger which supports those at some point in the future, though. One essential feature to look for in a charger is a charging auto shut-off that can detect when the batteries are full and stop charging; over-charging can cause batteries to leak or explode. Most good chargers you'll find will have this feature, but some cheaper ones may not.
So get out there and get your charger, and the next time the batteries die in your digital camera or remote control, replace them with rechargeables instead. Whether you're interesting in saving the Earth or just saving some money, you can't go wrong with rechargeable batteries. (Cool bloggers always end their entries with energetic, positive sentences.)
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Advertising schmadvertising bodadvertising
Mon 26 Feb 07 20:46 | Tags: Advertising/Promotion, Profit
This is a continuation of a previous entry entitled "Advertising schmadvertising."
So what alternatives to the low-paying, bunch-of-irrelevant-ads Google AdSense are there?Well, there's a lot, but the ones I've tried so far haven't been a whole lot better.
First was Text Link Ads, which seems to be pretty highly recommended. I've created an account there, but when I tried to sign up Ray Gun Robot for ads, they rejected it. Apparently, they only allow sites that have a particular level of popularity; a high enough Alexa rating and such. Alexa is still unaware RGR exists; this thing has been going for less than a month, after all. So I guess I'm just not popular enough to be in their little club.
I also tried signing up for the curiously-named AzoogleAds. After a long and grueling session of filling out fours about myself and my site, they asked me to fill out and snail-mail a W9 tax form to them. …Sure, I'll get right on that. Seriously, though, they're supposed to have better payouts than Google. Maybe I'll give them another look in the future, but all the digital and real-world paperwork I've had to fill out to get this working is a real turn-off.
Project Wonderful is another ad joint I've created an account at. They only work with image ads. They have an interesting scheme by which advertisers will bid directly to be on your specific site, and a text link appears next to the ads saying something like "Your ad here, right now: $X.XX." Check out The Comics Curmudgeon for the idea; he uses these ads in the upper-right corner of the page, as well as right before the comments section on individual entries. I suppose it would be a matter of pride to get that bidding price up as high as possible. Alas, to place ads on your site, you need to be invited by the project. I signed up to be selected for an inivitation code, but as I said above, RGR is still new and fairly unread, so I don't have high hopes of getting accepted.
I'm currently looking into a service called AdVolcano. I haven't created an account yet, but maybe it'll be a bit more promising. I've read a lot of good things about eMiniMalls as well.
One advertising service I will absolutely positively never use is IntelliTXT. I'm sure you've seen these around the web; the double-underlined links that cause an ad to pop up when you hover over them. No; that's just turning the content of the site over to advertisers to an unacceptable amount, and they're annoying as all heck as well. I don't care how profitable they might be; I think that web publishers who use this service should reconsider the annoyance to their readers, not to mention the added clutter and noise they add to the page.
Well. I think this subject matter is all kind of off the topic of this blog anyway, so I think I'll leave it at that for now. Suffice it to say that you might see some more (and possibly more obnoxious) advertising here on RGR in the future, but content will always come first.
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Advertising schmadvertising
Mon 26 Feb 07 01:39 | Tags: Advertising/Promotion, Profit
Having been on both the buying and selling ends of the web ads game in recent months, I thought I'd give my thoughts on the whole mess.
First, context. I run a site called SigFeeder which basically converts RSS feeds into an image which contains the headlines from the feed. The idea is that people can put that image in the signatures on the web forums that they visit so that those that see their signature will have a frequently-updated view of what that person is blogging about; it's much more dynamic and interesting than "Click here to read my blog!," in my opinion. Anyway, at one time, SigFeeder was a for-profit gig which offered premium accounts with upgraded features for a small yearly fee, but I've since made it entirely free. While I was hoping to get paying customers to SigFeeder and make a whole bunch of money from it (hey, a guy can dream), I purchased ads for it via both Google's AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing.
Previous to SigFeeder, I ran a blog about sandbox video games) which featured ads via the Google AdSense program, and, of course, this blog is showing ads for Google as well, over there on the left. (I eventually stopped the sandbox games blog after I got bored after a few weeks and stopped posting about it. I'm still greatly interested in that style of video game, however.)
Buy buy buy buy
Both Google and Yahoo!'s systems are similar in that you can purchase ads to appear both along search queries in the respective search engines and in ad boxes on others' sites.
With Google's AdWords, you create a campaign that includes an ad style (which can have a couple different variations) and various keywords you want associated with that ad. With each key word entry, you place a "bid" on how much you are willing to pay if your ad is clicked. Ads with higher bids will appear more often and closer to the beginning of ad sections. If your ad is clicked, you are charged for the click, but the charge may not be your full bid payment -- I believe it works in that you are charged whatever the highest-bidding ad beneath yours in the group was charged, so if you bid fifty cents per click, but your ad was in a group where the highest bid besides yours was forty cents, and your ad is clicked, you are only charged forty cents. Please don't take my word for that, though. Anyway, at the end of the month, Google adds up all your click charges and bills your credit card.
Yahoo!'s Search Marketing also lets you create ads, specify keywords and place bids in a similar manner. The biggest -- and most annoying -- difference is that Yahoo! doesn't do monthly billing; it requires pre-payment, then will run ads until your payment depletes. When I decided I no longer was going to try to make money with SigFeeder, I was able to stop running -- and stop being charged for -- the Google ads the same day. My Yahoo! ads are still running, though, because I have not yet depleted my initial payment! Try searching Yahoo! for "blog promotion", and an ad for SigFeeder should still show up. (But please don't click on it; that's costing me money!) What's also frustrating about the pre-payment thing is that Yahoo! will re-charge my account by automatically billing my credit card when the funds in my account are depleted. I cannot find a way to turn this automatic billing off. I contacted Yahoo!'s customer support about it, but they never got back to me; I'll try again soon. Failing all else, I might have to do something like change my mailing address so that the credit card number no longer matches the address or something.
All that being said, though both Google's and Yahoo!'s control panels are capable, I prefer Yahoo!'s; their web site seems a lot more stat-filled and it's easier to find info about the campaign I'm looking for. The pre-payment thing really is a bummer, though.
Sell sell sell
AdSense is probably the most popular advertising service of its kind. There's good reason; it's fairly easy to use (though their ad block designer tool doesn't work properly with Safari -- boo, hiss), there's few exceptions about the type and popularity of the sites it'll accept (porn sites are the big no-no), and it has lots of advertisers. I'm not too happy with it, though.
AdSense's TOS prohibit me from talking in-depth about the number of ad clicks and such I've received, how much individual clicks are paying out, and so on, so I won't. I can talk about total payouts, however, so I will say this: the ads on Ray Gun Robot have currently earned me $0.00 in income. I'll let you do the math.
Part of it is probably my fault. I do not have the ads in the most ubiquitous of places; at my previous blog, I had the ads in between blog entries, and I was able to earn a total of about four bucks that way. The ads here could probably stand to be in a more obnoxious place. (The current location, along with many other things with regard to the design of the blog, was inspired by John Gruber's Daring Fireball.) Really, though, I don't know if it's worth it for the pure pennies that Google pays. Some people are apparently able to make serious money with AdSense, but they must have just massive amounts of traffic (and clicks) in order to make that so. I don't expect to make that much money, but enough to buy a meal at a good restaurant once a month would be nice.
One thing that kind of bugs me is that there's lots of ads which I would rather not appear on my site. There seems to mostly be two types of ads which appear here; ads for toy-related sites and ads for web hosting companies. The former is clearly not relevant to the audience and subject matter of this blog, and as for the latter… I'd much rather people use my DreamHost referral link for that! It is possible to disable ads from particular domains through Google's control panel, but having to do that for every single bad ad is quite annoying; it would be much better if I could disable ads with certain keywords, like "hosting" and "toys."
Google only pays out once accrued funds are greater than US$100, which, for me, will happen some time around December 14, 2078.
I've investigated some alternatives to AdSense, but it's getting pretty late in the day, so I think I'll save that for another post.
Read the follow-up to this post, entitled "Advertising schmadvertising bodadvertising."
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