Blogging

Ideas for Blogging, including websites, information, and tips.

Lurid Ads on TLA: Change your options!

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Many blogs now display Text Link Ads (aff) and for many bloggers this has been a boon to revenue generation as it has provided a more or less stable income for many blogs. In fact, up until now it has generated about $75 for this blog. For other blogs, like John Chow’s, it’s been a lot more, in just March, he earned $1,308.06.

However, today I noticed a seamier side to the way text links are administered. It is possible for text links to become more ‘adult’ themed. Take a look of this screen shot from John’s site. I don’t know if it’s just one of those ads that slipped through the net, or if it was via a different system from TLA. There are a variety of services now providing text link ads.

However, I noted on TLA’s website that they claimed: “Reminder: TLA will not publish any adult, pharmacy, gambling or any site we feel is inappropriate.”

enlarge-ad

I guess I wouldn’t have noticed as much but since my blog is getting more popular, there have been a lot of very nasty spam comments (thankfully caught by Akismet), and so I couldn’t help seeing this one.

If you’re blogging and use TLA, you have a choice in their program about whether such ads appear or not. You can visit their Ad Approval Section and choose between one of two modes to approve ads:

Approval System A
Allow TLA to editorial approve advertisers to your website. Reminder: TLA will not publish any adult, pharmacy, gambling or any site we feel is inappropriate.

Approval System B
Receive an email notification every time an advertiser purchases a link off your website and have the ability to reject that advertiser. If advertiser approves the ad than the ad is immediately placed. If we do not hear back from you in 24 hours the ad will be reviewed by our TLA editors.

Naturally, their system is designed to generate revenue so they will tend to err on the side of the advertisers in their judgments, but at least you have a window of opportunity to reject advertisements you don’t like. Of course, if these advertisements are successful, more will follow. That, in itself, may be a problem.

In the meantime, I wrote John an email asking him about this advertisement. I’m looking forward to the resulting discussion (hopefully, controversy) as it should be good for traffic to our blogs! So, John, fire away! You know controversial topics and postings bring extra traffic.

Is this kind of advertising okay with readers? If so, would you visit the website? If not, why not? What would happen if all of our text links became like this? Naturally, some ‘readers’ might feel the need of such websites, do such website represent anything more than snake oil?

My Blog: Tweaked and Prodded…!

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Sometimes tweaking and prodding a blog with add-ons and plugins and javascripts and so on can really slow down the blog loads for readers.

Typical Add-ons

    1. Alexa box
    2. Google Ads
    3. Directory Images/Code
    4. Community Plugins like mybloglog
    5. Technorati Javascripts for displaying stats…
    6. Images and stuff from other website like YouTube.
    7. banners for ad rotations

So it’s important for your blog to limit the number of add-ons you can, utilize your server for as much as possible so that you don’t have to load stuff from other places, this all can slow down your blog.

I noticed my pages loading much more slowly than before, so I checked the features that I had added. I decided to drop as many as possible to speed up pages, especially since some of the features were quite redundant really.

    Out went Technorati scripts. There is no need for them really, in the short term. The feeds are logged anyway, as I’m a member, and I don’t think many members really go to Technorati from my blog anyway.
    I don’t have any Google ads right now anyway, so that’s okay. But the Alexa box is necessary. Unfortunately, it is quite often slow to load on my page, and I can’t cache it. Still it helps to keep the stats on Alexa rankings uptodate, so I need that.
    I had a referral image from Payperpost.com that slowed down my blog, but wouldn’t allow itself to be cached as it was a script! Goodbye!

Those are the items that went out with my garbage. See if the site loads faster for you now!

So make sure that your website doesn’t have too many items stored on other servers! It can make a difference!

Revisiting the Boards: On Segmentation

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A lot of PPP’ers have had problems with segmentation‘s arrival. While it’s more than likely a good thing overall for advertisers in general, and bloggers in general. I wonder if there’s another side to segmentation, that hasn’t been explored as much. In other words, is segmentation a sword that cuts BOTH ways, for both advertisers and bloggers?

For advertisers they get more focused postings, perhaps from higher rated blogs than before. But they may no longer get a breadth of postings from different kinds of blogs: is that good or not? E.g. you may have a blog tool that you want different postings from, but because of segmentation, you only get bloggers posting about tech stuff or web stuff…MyHTML1

For myself as a blogger, I realized that since segmentation has come, I’ve started segmenting my own opps much more carefully. I guess this is something we all did from the beginning, actually.

It’s odd: I used to post more PPP than I do now. In fact, now I’m much more selective than I used to be. Days can go by without my posting a PPP opp now, though I post twice or more on my blog most days.

In fact, this is (for me) my own form of segmentation in fact.

  1. I don’t do opps that don’t fit well, even though they are in my category and pay WELL.
  2. I don’t do opps that require too much (unless it fits really well).
  3. I don’t do opps that pay poorly (200 words for $5). I don’t chase the more popular opps (no more multiple clicking on opps for me).
  4. I resubmit opps that have problems quickly, UNLESS the problems can’t be fixed. In that case, I remove the post.
  5. I don’t do opps that have websites that don’t work, look sloppy, look like scams, (and these are the ones allowed by PPP!), sell snake oil like products (you know what I mean!), or opps that would likely have a negative effect on my blog or its PR ranking (this is very open!) (I have a finance blog).
  6. I no longer do opps that repeat often, even if they are from different advertisers, I can only do SO many posts about credit cards and loans.

Since I began blogging I have kept the basic stats about the number of posts, price, and so on. Reviewing my stats this month, I was quite surprised at how segmentation has changed my blogging.

The numbers tell an interesting story by themselves (apart from Sept.). The more I blog, the less money I got per post. In Dec, I did 27 posts, but in Feb. I only did about 55% of that number, yet I achieved a markedly higher return per post, despite the total dipping. In March (to 28th) I only took 12 opportunities, that is the lowest number since I joined except for October, but I earned nearly $12.50 per post on average. In addition, with my blog, I was able to earn additional revenue through Blogsvertise and private postings that came my way.

As I expected, it seems with PPP segmentation, plus my own, I’m becoming more careful in which posts I take, preferring to take higher paid postings when possible, not worrying about taking $5 opps much now. Result: a more efficient return on the time spent.

However, I don’t know if that was PPP’s intention or not. But it has clarified my own intentions regarding the program: to cut the number of times I post, to cut my dependency on PPP somewhat, and to try to take the better paying opps. Perhaps PPP’s intention is to help bloggers who would post sporadically rather than bloggers who post opps 2 or 3 times a day on the same blog (I’m guessing).

However, PPP’s success is solely dependent on the bloggers’ goodwill who make up the ranks. For most bloggers, it is NOT a full-time job posting opps for PPP. Therefore their requirements can’t be too onerous as it will drive away the contractors and/or it will drive up the price (see above).

A blogger wondering where it’s all heading… Could it be just a mirage of white elephants stampeding towards Shangri-La? Comments, please!