Sunday, August 19, 2012

Metapost - A question to those who use feeds

I noticed recently that my ads had gone white, looked into it, realized I'd failed to do some of the paperwork, and verficiation and whatnot, did that stuff, and am now again a godless capitalist who is in it for the money.  Why today alone I have earned, in theory, one penny.  (US penny.)

Clearly I am rolling in money, and like any soul selling capitalist I naturally want more.  What was it that Eddie Izzard said the American dream was? "[T]o be born in the gutter and have nothing. Then to rise up and have all the money in the world, and stick it in your ears and go PLBTLBTLBLTLBTLBLT!"  Sounds about right.

So, clearly, more money is what is called for here.

More seriously, Google thinks I should use ads with feeds because they're Google and that's the sort of thing Google would think.  If non-feed ads are any indication I get paid just by having a certain amount of people look at them (almost no one clicks my ads*, and having seen the ads myself I don't blame them) and pennies theoretically add up.

So maybe it would be a good idea to have ads in feeds.  But I don't want to alienate anybody so if someone who reads this is going to hate me forever if I click "Yeah, sure, ads for feeds," then I'd rather not do it.

So, people who use feeds, what are your thoughts?

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And since I'm talking about money, turns out the donate button does indeed work, I've actually known that for a couple of weeks now, but now that it's been used twice I figured some kind of mention might be in order.  So thank you.  Thank you both.

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* 37,815 page views, 14 clicks.

3 comments:

  1. You have ads? Hmm... *turns off Ghostery* Oh, there they are. (There wasn't even a big obviously-blocked blank spot.)

    Given this, my answer is "Go ahead and do it. I probably won't even notice the difference." (Which isn't the most positive of answers, really. Though I could whitelist you if it'd make you feel better.)

    I have earned, in theory, one penny.

    How many pennies do you have to get before they're more than theory? One hundred? Five hundred?

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    Replies
    1. How many pennies do you have to get before they're more than theory? One hundred? Five hundred?

      Nothing so attainable. The pennies aren't, I think, in danger of disappearing in the same way the larger amount I get for clicks is if the clicks are determined to be somehow illegitimate.

      But to actually be paid anything is going to take a whole lot more pennies. You don't get paid until you've earned 10,000 pennies. Clicks and non-clicks combined I've earned 1,399 since I started having ads. So, you know, at this rate it'll be ten times* this long before I'm paid anything.

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      Though I could whitelist you if it'd make you feel better.

      On the one hand, it might, but you'd have to determine whether it's worth it for you since the ads do seem to range from strange to annoying. (For this post I'm getting Special K breakfast cereal in a language not-english, and four ugly looking links.)

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      * Technically 7.14796283059328091493924231594 times this long, rounded up to the end of the month, then an additional 30 days. I think.

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  2. My feeds get squashed down to plain text, so Google ads are just random extraneous URLs sprinkled through the article.

    I think your click rate is about the same as most sites. Ad revenues have been going down for at least the last ten years, and the small guys get less per click too because hey, "don't be evil" looks really good over the door but "make lots of money" works too.

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