Or another title: When readers see through the motives of a post.

I’m trucking along through the massive pile of virtual posts in my reading list today and come across this one, see if you can figure out what’s happening with the above pictured post, before continuing on.

Do you see it? Click over the post and then compare to the screenshot above.

See it now?

Tom seems like a good chap and should just come out and tell his readers he’s making the post and inserting the Adsense code to invite the higher paying keyword ads. Maybe he is thinking it’s obvious those are his goals and doesn’t need to say it or maybe he doesn’t realize that others might perceive it that way? I’m not attributing guilt or wrongdoing here, just throwing this out as an example of one of those “who knows” situations.

I’m not going to mention the keywords here because if I did then I’d be doing the same thing it appears like Tom might be doing. It’s a very old transparent Adsense blogging technique and is actually quite effective for making money using Adsense, but less effective for reinforcing trust with readers. It’s one of those damned if you do (readers/trust), damned if you don’t ($$) techniques.

You’ll note that in my reader (reblog) I don’t actually see the Adsense code, only the comment tag for it, so I never saw the Adsense ad until clicking over to Tom’s blog. I see this stuff all the time and will never click any of these ads. As for transparent Adsense posts? I try hard not to chase high paying adwords with posts on this blog but I’m not going to say I never have — sure I have — and never would. Fortunately, if/when it does happen, it should be rare.

Perhaps a worse sin is embedding related advertising links inside posts which some bloggers think is terrible (I mark them as “affiliate” here), but 99.999% of the time that’s done after the topic is selected and written. It’s not like I’m intentionally surfing the high paying keywords and then choosing stories to write about. This can be a great way to boost revenues on the website/blog. I’m positive if I did things this way I’d find the same amount of content and make more money with Adsense so maybe I’m being foolish for not doing it that way? From a webmaster perspective I think what Tom did in that post is smart but as a reader?

Hmm is right.

In fairness to Tom, he might not be doing what I’m describing in his post. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him do this so it’s probably unintentional. He might legitimately be excited by the fact that certain keywords are more lucrative when used in posts and want to share that with us. The problem is as a reader/subscriber we don’t know how he feels unless he tells us. If he had added something like: BTW, I’m not trying to make money from this post by writing it and at the same time stripped the embedded Adsense ad he would have made it more reader-focused instead of Tom-focused. The two exclamation posts certainly don’t help.

If! I! Use! A! Lot! of! Exclamation! Points! It! Screams! Red! Alert!

If he didn’t intend for there to be Adsense code embedded in that post, it’s an unfortunate side effect of having ads appear by default inside the body of every post. I would strongly encourage bloggers to create a category that if exists will not show any ads or conditions where the “show ads” can be turned off when it’s inappropriate. This way you can just check a category box and be ad-free.

In this blog the category I’ve done that with is current events [example of airplane story here]. I didn’t like the idea of writing about Hurricane Katrina and making any money from context ads on those pages and created an ad switch for that category. I need to go further though and do that for the outside category page which does still show ads.

Some might read this and say who cares. I think readers do care. Show them respect and they will help you. Deceive them in any way — or leave seeds of doubt about your intentions — and they will be more compelled to read somebody else. From a reader perspective I become very suspicious when posts are too money focused — make $$$ here by doing A! B! C! — and there isn’t any disclaimer about the writer’s motives in the same text. It’s fine to be money focused, just say that’s the deal and readers will understand.

But don’t say anything and …. well, you will decide.

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