Glen More

IF YOU DO THIS YOU ARE MAKING PEOPLE HATE YOU–>

Google AdSense sounds great in theory: Toss up some ads and convert all your hits to real cash. Well, it doesn’t work unless you have about 10,000 viewers a day. And if you do, it is time to turn off your webcam before your mother catches you, and to begin talking to targeted advertisers. I could go into a rant about how frequent readers of blogs are offended by advertisements, or how it diminishes credibility…blaa, blaa corporate shill…blaa, blaa, pretentious assumption your ideas are financially worthy…etc. but I will leave that to your local teenager / social activist / vegan, as the case may be. Fact is AdSense makes virtually no money.

An example I have is when I added advertisements to my thriving video game community (~16,000 hits per month). I took a long time placing the ads in tastefull locations and styling them to match the theme. Then I sat back and waited for the fortune to roll in. And waited, and waited.

Herein lies the tale, and both advertisers and fortune-seekers pay heed: no one clicks on ads. Think about the last time you clicked an ad (other than that one that has pictures of ‘Single Women in [your town here]‘. we all clicked on that…). Of the 16,000 hits per month I received 31 ad clicks. This was after announcing to everyone that the money was going to pay for site maintenance. For those trying to do the math that makes 0.2% success. With those stunning numbers I received about $85 for 250 clicks. That is ~$0.34 per click. It is a tough way to make a living when the ads are often offensive to the senses to begin with. On top of that you only get a cheque in $100 denominations so my il-gotten gains have been in limbo for months.

In summation, when you are thinking of using AdSense, punch yourself in the face…and click on my ads…

Google AdWords feels to me like a cross between hiring a hooker, and sitting down to do your taxes: it leaves you feeling dirty and when you start out, you are not sure if someone is going to show up and steal your wallet afterwards…what a terrible analogy, but I am going to try to work with it. One of the many perks that almost everyone recieves with a hosting package but never uses is a Google AdWords coupon “$25 AdWord coupon! That means my site is, like, free!”  AdWords is Google’s revenue stream for sucking the lifeblood from small advertisers, allowing people targeted links, like the ones on the right side of any Google search, based on the words a person searches for. These are paid for on a per-impression (i.e. the ad is displayed) and per click (i.e. someone clicked your link) basis.

Like showing up at a timeshare presentation because the girl that invited you was hot, I signed up for the “free” promotion. First off, I had to pay a $10 “setup fee”, which is about as classy as “shipping and handling” on eBay. Ah well, what is sacrificing $10 to buy new friends. My old ones were all complainers anyway. I created a small ad, with “Halifax Web Developer” as the keyword. I dismissed the idea of “Girl-on-girl Website Design” and “Brittney Spears Flash Animation” and picked ones that would potentially further the goals of my blog. In setting up my account I had to set a maximum monthly amount I was willing to spend to buy my new friends (reminds me of the bullies in junior high…but I digress). I chose the lowest maximum at $30 and chose the option to pay them at the end of the month, because likely no one will find my blog via this method and I am not really selling anything. In fact, you should be paying me, you bunch of savages… 

All kidding aside: if I had a legit business, this would be a huge way for me to drive traffic because most people can’t get on the elusive “first search page” on Google and must buy impressions however they can. The optimizations for AdWords are actually very interesting: you ‘buy’ keywords by bidding on them. Essentially this means more common terms like “books” and “computers” are extremely expensive per impression, but something like “Halifax Bookshop” would be quite reasonable. Spending time thinking about what users might search for to specifically target you is a good investment in time. Regionalizing, or being specific as to your product, are good ways to find the balance from targeted search terms and cost effectiveness.

On a more speculative level, I think that in actually giving Google money in this way, it is like paying tribute to a volcano god in hopes that he won’t take your virgin…wait, where was I…my point is that Google’s search rankings algorithm are a secret black box. I hope by forming as many relationships with them and jumping through as many hoops for them I can, they will release the cure for cancer that they have been hoarding for years, or at least up my ranking.

So here are some of the first steps in this endeavour:
- I bought a hosting package. Through 1and1.com. I know alot of people who like dealing with small companies and saving some cash…I am not that person. I want a reliable server capable of doing what I need with a good administration panel. No BS.
- I chose a domain. I didn’t think hard. One of my co-workers suggested it. I am still mad that the guy won’t sell me glenmore.ca. When next in BC I will fight them…physically.
- I chose a blog. I looked at a comparison chart of features of the major ones. My only condition was that it be PHP. WordPress is one of the most popular, so I went with that.
- I installed WordPress and the following plugins: Google Analytics and SEO Optimization and a Twitter widget. To go with this I had to sign up for a google account and had to check the Google developer tools to verify that I was creating a Google optimized site map.
- Then I played Fallout 3. That really doesn’t further my goals but this can get tedious after a while

As I first post I should enter a little about myself and the goals of this blog. If anything it will give me something to laugh at later when I fail at everything. I am a web developer in Halifax, Nova Scotia. I have an eclectic resume as a web designer, developer, application programmer, CRM specialist, and accounting software developer. Most of my history is in VB/SQL in it’s various iterations but I have learned PHP and mySQL along the way.

I have lofty goals for this blog, both personal and intrinsic:
1) I want to create an SEO friendly site
2) BUT I want to make the majority of it in Flash. To make it harder I want to use Flash CS4
3) Hack up one of the most popular blogs to represent a personal homepage that includes a resume and frequently updated information
4) Learn to use Google APIs (Analytics etc.) and Socal Networking tools like Twitter to enhance the content. I talk about it all day, but I secretly know nothing about SEO.
5) Present an attractive, usable interface limited to the esentials in an effective way.

Success will be measured by a few things:
1) Readership (yeah right, well I can dream that people are interested in what I do)
2) SEO ranking.
3) Ablity to sell a blog centric site to a legitmate business interested in promotion.