Friday, December 12, 2008

Brought to You By

I've sold out to the man and added ads to my blog. Actually they are here for a limited time. An editor, I met at a writing conference has been encouraging me to sign up for Google ads for a month or two and then write about the experience. I'm trying to build some non-fiction creds and he's promised to publish and pay me for the piece, so I've taken the leap.

Besides, I have a morbid curiosity as to what kind of ads Google will pair up with my wandering mind. And I'll be interested to hear what you all think of the ads, if they bother you, if you even notice them, if you are offended or amused by the ads Google pairs with my post. Let me know so I can incorporate y'alls reaction in to my article.



28 comments:

Anonymous said...

Took me a minute to find them, they don't bother me me. Hope they make you rich beyond your wildest dreams;)

David said...

A few years ago, before I had a blog, I added Google ads to my Web site. It was fun seeing what ads popped up. (Google chooses the ads based on words and phrases in the page. Some of the ads were strange.)

I didn't get rich, but I did get a small check for the first month.

Then Google e-mailed me to say that they had detected an impermissible pattern of hits on the ads, or whatever word they used. In other words, they seemed to be accusing me of having people click on the ads repeatedly to make me money. They terminated my account and refused to respond to my WTF? e-mails.

It was an interesting experience, but ultimately a very annoying one.

Angie Ledbetter said...

I'm either blind or my popup blocker's doing a great job. Don't see a thing.

Dizzy Ms. Lizzy said...

Okay - - THIS is weird. If I'm in Internet Explorer, the ads do not show. If I am in Firefox, the ads show up.

STRANGE . . .

alex keto said...

I can't find them, so as ads go, that pretty much explains whether they are any good.

Anyway, let's speculate on the ads that might appear
1) Shiner Bock beer
2) Bacon-Cheeseburger delux cookbook
3) Guns and ammo
4) Texas life

Ads that google probably won't put on the site

1) Peta
2) The complete Vegan diet book
3) Living in Hong Kong on 5 dollars a day.

Cloudia said...

Travis: I'm "rocking" the windows MILLENIUM browser and don't see a thing. Glad you entered the mine-field of commercialism ahead of me; I can wait and see if your readers stone you - or you get rich!
Yesterday I signed up with amazon Kindle to sell subscriptions to auto-download of Comfort Spiral (my blog) on the kindle reader. I'll let ya know if I get rich, and I'll be watching you (as always, Teach!) Aloha-

Melissa Amateis said...

I don't see any ads, either, and I'm on Internet Explorer.

Terrie Farley Moran said...

Travis,

Please don't mess with the mind of a senile old lady--what ads??

Terrie

March2theSea said...

i signed up over a year ago with it..and haven't even gotten to 100.00. I figure someday they will just cut me a check. I figure I'd use it to host Mp3's etc..but I haven't gotten there "yet". I'll click away to help..

Unknown said...

Those ads suck, sellout. Is that good for your story? I can get even more belligerent, if you wish. Let me know.

Actually, I don't see them cause I use IE. I checked with Firefox as per Ms Lizzy. If I get diagnosed with Diabetes anytime soon, I'll click on a link.

You get out for some pheasant, yet?

How is your mom?

SL

G. B. Miller said...

I had ads on my blog for a while. Never earned anything for them, and found them to be annoying.

If I found them to be annoying, I could only imagine how my readers felt.

So out they went.

In any event, good look with them and congrats on the writing gig.

debra said...

No ads for me either---I'm on Firefox. I can try Safari.....

preTzel said...

I don't see any ads either and I'm on IE. Maybe your ads don't like me. LOL!

Patti said...

i see nuthin'...but then i have been out shootin' all afternoon. all i see is a big green man silhouette. with requisite 9mm holes in all the right places.

Nnairda's said...

I had to scroll down a bit to find it. It's non intrusive and this ad was relevant to your blog. It was about writing.

Not so bad of a sell out I say...

Charles Gramlich said...

Will be interesting in seeing your reaction. I'll let you know what I think. Good use of research time though.

Angie said...

I read through the Google Reader, so I don't even see your blog per se unless I click through to comment.

Funny though -- when I did come here to comment, I looked for the ads and the only one showing was an ad for Google Ads, LOL!

I hope you make a few bucks off of them. And definitely drop us a link when the article comes out.

Angie

Unknown said...

Well I tried the follow this blog button...but my computer is on teh fritz AGAIN!!! Ack.... so I will come back and follow you as soon as I shut it down and wait the 15 years for it to load back up again... blah!

Hilary said...

You've nestled the ad fairly far down the sidebar and it's a tiny innocuous ad in text only. I hope it works for you but from everything I've heard over time, I has m'doubts.

Junosmom said...

Hi Travis,
I don't have the readership you do, but I do have Google Ads, and have had since four years ago when I started my blog. For four years of blogging, I now have $70 in the account - so in other words, no one much pays attention to it. AND you are not allowed to ask people to click on it or you break the rules, which stinks because how else are you to get people to pay attention to it? You are also not allowed to put other ads on, though I sometimes put links to Amazon and have actually made money there through the Associates program.

Some advice for you:
For some reason, IE and Firefox do have different layouts. Your ad does not appear on IE, but does on Firefox. This caused me to see if there was anything else missing and there is. You have a list on Firefox of Blogs of Decision Makers and also archives, which I do not see appearing on IE. I don't know why this is.

Your ad is too far down on the page and no one will notice or look for it. Again, you aren't allowed to repeatedly point it out, they have to see it immediately. You need to put it at the top. If you are going to do this, don't apologize for it. It isn't intrusive, but it must be visible.

Your ad doesn't stand out - it looks like the rest of the margin, and if one is used to coming to your blog to read quickly, but only peruses the margin if one has extra time (like me), it is unlikely anyone will notice. You must make it stand out - different color with a box around it. Maybe make it white.

You can make money from blogging. How to? You are doing the right thing by going around and commenting on other blogs, getting readership. That's not enough. Google ads won't put food on the table unless your Technorati is through the roof.

If you are serious about blogging for money, you should consider finding networks, (women have some like blogher.com or mommybloggers.com etc) to write that link back to your blog. People who do this often have their template redone by a web designer, and have bigger, more visible and striking ads in the margin. You can even put a "rent this ad space" in the margin and sell it yourself. I wish I had the time to do this myself. My family considers my writing on my blog to be an addiction and do not value it. I should be doing other things, I suppose.

I strongly encourage you to figure out how to do this, maybe get your own dot-com, because readers do seem drawn to you. That would be one thing to figure out - why - so that you can target how to make money from blogging. It may be that some of the things you write that have the most hits can be sold to magazines. Your story on the birth of your son certain would sell to a woman's magazine (no offense but that's the type of stories they run).

If you do not know how to know which blogs get most hits, let me know and I have suggestions. HTH

Junosmom said...

PS I don't mean to be suggestive by saying if you click on mine, I'll click on yours.

Jenster said...

Very cool!!

Jenn Jilks said...

Junosmom has wise words. The issue is that you make very little money. I, too, have succumbed on my Health Care blog-- with a Line of Credit for self-publishing my book I figured it couldn't hurt!

My sitemeter tells me what people are looking for and gives me ideas to blog there, as well as subjects people are keen on. It can't hurt and you really have to test it out! There are weird rules, as David said. I was exploring and found a site: 13 Reasons your Facebook account may be terminated. They have all the power and make the rules to protect themselves from the billions of users, and the hackers that exploit and spam the 'net.

Lyzzydee said...

I am another one blind to the ads, can't see anything!!!

Lana Gramlich said...

Good luck with that! It'll be interesting to see how it turns out. BTW, I sent you an e-mail about that "November" painting a while ago now...Don't know if you got it...

laughingwolf said...

i rarely pay attention to ads, but dunno why david got no explanation from google as to what happened....

Barrie said...

I'll be curious to read about the experience.

Aaron said...

Knock yourself out, dude. After you generate a certain amount of traffic, it just makes sense. Besides, you don't care about your street cred. :P