Comments on: Transparent Adsense posts

By: Alex Choo

Alex Choo — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 07:03:26 +0000

Thanks for reminding us on the need to be transparent and ethical towards people. It’s not just Adsense ads, even text ads and paid reviews should be clearly labelled as such.

By: Make You Go Hmm: » Hmmcast #19: Catching up

Make You Go Hmm: » Hmmcast #19: Catching up — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 20:53:25 +0000

[…] - Transparent Adsense posts (**7) [aug 8] “The Adsense code was put there as an experiment to see what kind of ads it would draw - nothing more sinister than that. You are correct though, it does look bad and was probably naive on my part so I have removed it. Thanks for pointing it out so quickly - if you hadn’t it would have remained there and I would have looked bad for longer.” – Comment by Tom Raftery — August 8, 2006 @ 7:14 pm […]

By: Kiltak

Kiltak — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 01:46:49 +0000

This kind of post (Sorry Tom), does not only sound ridiculous, it SCREAMS : “Go away!, I don’t want you on my blog” to your readers. A 5 lines long blog post will also be completely useless if you’re looking to have it indexed by Google, and will not influence the kind of ads adsense displays on your home page.

Generating a small income from adsense while being a good guy is VERY difficult. My blog generates over 100k page views per month and I’m still not ready to retire from my regular job

By: Tom Raftery

Tom Raftery — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 00:38:48 +0000

Stories? Hmmm!

How about this one then - http://www.flickr.com/photos/traftery/119758593/

Now it is well past my bedtime!

Talk to you soon,

Tom.

By: TDavid

TDavid — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 00:34:46 +0000

I’m more for commentary with photos, not just photos. Tell some stories, mon. Stories

By: Tom Raftery

Tom Raftery — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 00:27:12 +0000

“Mix in a few more pictures of your homeland, please.”

You are not subscribed to my Flickr stream (http://www.flickr.com/photos/traftery/)?

For shame!

By: TDavid

TDavid — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 00:19:41 +0000

Wow, that was fast, Tom. Thanks for demonstrating that you are one of the good guys out there. I have never been outside the United States, Canada or Mexico, but if I ever travelled to Ireland Cork sounds like a wonderful place to visit. Mix in a few more pictures of your homeland, please.

By: Tom Raftery

Tom Raftery — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 00:14:02 +0000

The Adsense code was put there as an experiment to see what kind of ads it would draw - nothing more sinister than that.

You are correct though, it does look bad and was probably naive on my part so I have removed it.

Thanks for pointing it out so quickly - if you hadn’t it would have remained there and I would have looked bad for longer.

Cheers,

Tom.

By: Sterling Camden

Sterling Camden — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 00:04:35 +0000

It sure is nice to have you back making us go hmm, TDavid.

I agree that it’s all about being up front with the readers. Don’t deceive or coerce them. That said, I don’t have a problem with leaving the ads on when you’re writing about a subject that draws the high revenues — provided you would choose that subject anyway. Actually, I even saw a post a while back from Chris Pirillo (I believe), where the whole humor of the post was about the Adsense keywords being used. That kind of meta-content can be entertaining, too.

I took Tom’s post to be just that he was amazed that anyone can make money off providing free ringtones as a business. But then I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt.

As with just about anything, I believe that execution outweighs theory: it’s not so much what you do as how you do it. If you’re entertaining or informing your readers instead of milking them for cash, it’s all good.