www.Tobold.com
Tobold@GMail.com
A blog with my thoughts regarding games I am playing and other stuff in life. Please read my Terms of Service
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
No Advertising
Now that blogs have become so popular, people developed special search engines for them, like Technorati or Google Blogsearch. These enabled me to find some other MMORPG blogs. And looking at them I noticed that most are having advertising on them, powered by Google AdSense.
Now I am not against advertising, and I am not an anti-capitalist. And the idea to have targeted advertising appeals to me, which not offer the visitors of a blog about lets say goldfish some unobtrusive ads for aquarium equipment? But my blog doesn't have advertising, and I have no plans at all to put any of them up, for several reasons:
1) The MMORPG companies I endorse don't use Google Adsense. And many of the companies that do use Google Adsense, I don't want to have anything to do with. Some Google ads I saw about MMORPG I would consider to be scams, especially those that offer to sell you all kind of secrets to easy leveling and gold. These "secrets" are either illegal exploits and will get you banned, or are just a worthless compilation of information you could have gotten for free elsewhere. Many Google Ads are about selling gold or accounts for real money (Real Money Trade, RMT). Now if you want to buy 100 gold in WoW for your level 40 mount, I have no personal problem with that. But be aware that such a transaction can get your account banned in WoW and in several other games, so I definitely don't want to have ads about RMT on this blog. And the last type of MMORPG ads are advertising small MMORPG games, most of which are frankly not very good. So as I would require that ads are useful to my readers, and MMORPG ads generally aren't, I don't use them.
2) Economics. Both Blogger and Blogspot are free, so neither managing nor hosting this blog costs me anything. I can easily recover zero cost with zero advertising revenues. :) Of course receiving large amounts of money for a small modification of my blog sounds tempting, but I have serious doubts that would work. I get just over 100 hits per day at the moment, and even if Google paid me $1 per CPM (thousand views), I'd only earn 10 cents a day. Google doesn't say how much exactly they are paying you unless you actually start putting up the ads, so if you have better information about how much you earn from your blog, I would like to know. But I have the impression that there are many blogs out there which never ever got over Google's $100 threshold, and thus never received any payment at all.
3) Credibility. I am not a journalist, I am "just" a blogger. The disadvantage for my readers is that whatever I write is just my personal opinion, and that I only write about what I play or think about at the moment. But the advantage is that whatever I write is my honest opinion, and not influenced by financial considerations. You can be sure that whatever I write about a game or a company is not influenced by them paying me. Mind you, what I write could still be wrong or just a mule-headed strange opinion, but at least it isn't bought. :)
- posted by Tobold @ 10:33 AM Permanent Link
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As I'm one of the authors of the german WoW Weblog Living in WoW I have to comments on this one. We, too, have Google Ads on our weblog, but only on the detailed entry pages, not on our homepage. As most of our articles have no "read more" option the majority of our readers isn't even aware of the ads.
Concerning the kind of illegal service to buy gold, items, characters, etc.: We are constantly watching the ads delivered by Google and if we or one of our readers finds such an ad we simply add the url/domain to our Google Ads Blacklist, so that no more ads show up for their website/service.
The earnings from the ads are not paid out to the authors or something like that, they just cover our hosting and domain costs. And that's about it: No one earns money, ads seeming illegal are banned from our site and no author even has to think about hosting costs or anything else. And our credibility really isn't in any danger, as we are all together just a group from random to hardcore gamers, telling all the world what we think about the game and how we experience it.
Concerning the kind of illegal service to buy gold, items, characters, etc.: We are constantly watching the ads delivered by Google and if we or one of our readers finds such an ad we simply add the url/domain to our Google Ads Blacklist, so that no more ads show up for their website/service.
The earnings from the ads are not paid out to the authors or something like that, they just cover our hosting and domain costs. And that's about it: No one earns money, ads seeming illegal are banned from our site and no author even has to think about hosting costs or anything else. And our credibility really isn't in any danger, as we are all together just a group from random to hardcore gamers, telling all the world what we think about the game and how we experience it.
# posted by 
: 19/10/05 12:39
: 19/10/05 12:39
OK I admit I have ads on my site. I am experimenting out of pure curiousity with eMiniMalls and Google adwords.
Google adwords... I don't see how they ever will get to the $100 mark without millions of page hits. Google basically advertises it via blogspot like you could make a little extra on the side... but in turn you never will without millions of hits.
On the other hand eMiniMalls perform well, look nice, and offer a decent service.
Can't discuss earnings, but within a week I am pulling money from at least one -_o Not quitting my day job lol... but its fun to mess around with.
Doubt I will have them around in a few months when I get sick of looking at them.
Google adwords... I don't see how they ever will get to the $100 mark without millions of page hits. Google basically advertises it via blogspot like you could make a little extra on the side... but in turn you never will without millions of hits.
On the other hand eMiniMalls perform well, look nice, and offer a decent service.
Can't discuss earnings, but within a week I am pulling money from at least one -_o Not quitting my day job lol... but its fun to mess around with.
Doubt I will have them around in a few months when I get sick of looking at them.
Luckily, I don't have any need for ads really - a friend lends me a bit of space on a webserver he's paying for anyway, but doubt I'm anywhere nearly popular enough to be able to make money out of my tangential ramblings, although if I were, I'm sure he be the first to Have Words about rental, etc. :)
It does seems a bit strange that Google Ads rely on people blacklisting content they provide themselves, after the fact. Must be an extremely automated process at their end, hence the sometimes ridiculous 'context sensitive' junk that can turn up.
The line between Journalism and 'just' Opinionated Rambling is something I particularly look for in a Blog...I much prefer reading about what people like me think and do in MMOs, rather than just seeing IGN parroted in diary form. News posts are okay, but it's the Blogger's *opinion* on the news I'm more interested in.
It does seems a bit strange that Google Ads rely on people blacklisting content they provide themselves, after the fact. Must be an extremely automated process at their end, hence the sometimes ridiculous 'context sensitive' junk that can turn up.
The line between Journalism and 'just' Opinionated Rambling is something I particularly look for in a Blog...I much prefer reading about what people like me think and do in MMOs, rather than just seeing IGN parroted in diary form. News posts are okay, but it's the Blogger's *opinion* on the news I'm more interested in.
# posted by : 19/10/05 17:50
: 19/10/05 17:50
Oh but being a blogger now is instantly wrong.
Where as in the past... blogging was what is was meant to be. Someones opinion on a day to day basis.
God forbid you promote your opinion... because then you will just be wrong all over the net :P
Where as in the past... blogging was what is was meant to be. Someones opinion on a day to day basis.
God forbid you promote your opinion... because then you will just be wrong all over the net :P
German heavy MMO themed blog writing fellow here. I am reading your site for a couple of month, really like it. This entry is quite an interesting topic. I thought about ads too and came to the same conclusion as you. I do pay hosting costs for my site though, but i am lucky enough to earn enough with my real life job, to spare the hosting costs. Others may not be able to spare those costs and i see a sense for ads there, even if these are junk like those IGE oder sploit site ads.
Does ads mean a loss in credibility? I am not sure.
Does ads mean a loss in credibility? I am not sure.
# posted by : 20/10/05 10:19
: 20/10/05 10:19
I can imagine two situations where ads mean a loss in credibility. One is if you write on your blog a rant against RMT, and the Google Ad next to it sells WoW gold. The other is if you have a specific banner ad for a game, not just random Google Ads, and then you write a review saying that this is the best game ever.
Also something I'll never understand about advertisements... don't these companies know that fans of a website will just click the links to generate revenue?
Got me how it all works... still expermenting. Interesting to say the least.
Honestly I couldn't see anyone ever clicking an advert on any site. We will see what I think of them in a month or two :P
Got me how it all works... still expermenting. Interesting to say the least.
Honestly I couldn't see anyone ever clicking an advert on any site. We will see what I think of them in a month or two :P
Wow I found this very informative. I'm currently awaiting the approval of Google AdSense on my MMOMatchMaker dating site.
I need ads to re-coop the money spent getting the site up and thought that AdSense would be the way to go. But after reading this I'm not too sure.
If AdSense is out I'm not sure where to turn short of asking game companies directly.
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I need ads to re-coop the money spent getting the site up and thought that AdSense would be the way to go. But after reading this I'm not too sure.
If AdSense is out I'm not sure where to turn short of asking game companies directly.
# posted by : 10/9/08 20:31
: 10/9/08 20:31<< Home
