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?

March 2007 Results

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Well, everyone in PF blog world is announcing their results and crowing about how they make money on the Internet. I do like John Chow’s graph this month. I however, don’t have a graph yet; in fact, my income categories keep changing. Anyway, after February’s results, $705.39, March looks a lot less exciting.

Cash Stats

$587.82
Payperpost $150.00
Google $7.28
ReviewME $48.00
Other Blogs $20.00
Adlinks $232.79
Stockbroker $55.99
Hosting $61.54
Bank A/C $12.22

So what happened? Well, the Payperpost total revenue was quite stable for March, even though the number of postings dropped further. Google ads edged up slowly. The big change in March was my ability to sell a posting for Axiar for $50, as well as 3 special links for $75 each for a year. In addition, one of my hosting clients needed an upgrade on his forum software.

Traffic 

My blog attracted 859 visitors with over 1300 page views in the month, representing a good growth of 22% for visitors and 23% for page views. Nice growth. Also, I have noted that Google is generating much more organic traffic than before. Perhaps this is an area I’ll be able to enhance.

Ranking 

My PR ranking has remained stable this month at 4, but Alexa has shot up almost twice a week, standing at a little over 197K. It seems only a few weeks ago that I came in under 500K! Growth has slowed as I work my way up the long tail of Alexa. My Technorati ranking has also increased as I find people to link to my blog and favorite it, too.

Overall, I’m slowly working to my goal of $1500 per month income, but I did reach a seven month average of 29%. That’s not bad at all.

Tithing: A duty to God or a tax on idiots?

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Do you tithe? Do you give money to your religious organization? How do you decide who to give your money? Do you consider tithing to include money given to charitable organizations? I’d be interested to read your opinions. Comment away.
I spent a while reading the Money and the Bible section of Free Money Finance Blog, where there are excellent posts on the point of tithing. I originally prepared this post as a skeptical comment for posting on a blog but it kind of grew to be much longer:

… Of course, 10% of gross given to God sounds like a wonderful deal… for the churches. I mean here they get 10% gross of all their members’ salaries and income to do with as they interpret what God pleases… And that all sounds dandy and fine, until… you have to figure that there a number of problems associated with tithing.

  • 1. tithing started prior to national tax rates in excess of 20% of ‘gross income’, ‘compulsory contributions’, house taxes (depends where you are), VAT, fees, etc.. It is quite shocking once you begin to add up just HOW much money you give to Caesar, as an employee. In Roman times, tax rates were not as high!
  • 2. Then of course, you have to give 10% of gross salary to ‘God’, too. That’s 10% of gross from a salary that is NET of tax, ie. well in excess of the actual money you get to spend.
  • 3. These days, governments do try to care for poor people in the community, in many countries (hence we pay taxes as a form of social redistribution), based on humanistic principles that we should look after those less fortunate. Our contexts have changed…
  • 4. You aren’t really giving the money to God, anyway. You are giving the money to a bunch of people who may or may not be like minded. In other words, when you donate to your church, what exactly are you donating to. In the U.S., there is little or no oversight of religious donations, even when the scandals involving ministries are quite gross. One is only reminded of the scandals of televangelists.
  • 5. Lastly, think about that the reasons why this kind of commandment is frequently mentioned. Those in power in the religions (and Christianity is NOT exempt) use guilt to extract their pound of flesh from the congregations, otherwise many of them would cease to exist, they would have no power to run flashy TV stations, radio channels, expensive websites.

So when you hand over your money to your church or religious group or whoever, while you are fulfilling your good stewardship as a general command, who are you really serving? Your own bad feelings at not giving or God’s good graces? And who are you giving it to? What will they do with the money? Who will supervise them? Can they demonstrate that, in the essence of moneyspeak, they will have good governance over their financial resources?

Investors, if you tithe, you still must do your due diligence. I’m not saying don’t tithe, I’m saying – Pray about it, Think about it.