The horrors of trying to make money in a decent way
Posted 09-25-2008 at 03:03 AM by Tormod
Hypography just got kicked out of Google Adsense - probably the most famous web advertisement program in the world right now.
We've been in it since the early days, and it has helped me finance the running of Hypography since it has covered the costs for our server, software licenses etc.
Adsense ads has some cool properties: They are easy on the eye (at least the text versions), they adapt to your page's content, and the money earned comes straight into my bank account.
But relying on Adsense is a bit like playing blind bingo. The income fluctuates a lot and you have very little control over the type of ads shown (I did manage to weed out some scientology ads that were running for a while).
But then Adsense simply shut us out - without warning. I can run it on my other sites but apparently hypography.com is now out of the fellowship, and even our search engine was blocked.
That's their way of saying "you have violated our terms. We won't let you know how, why, or what you need to do to fix it, but goodbye. Don't call us." I have no clue what I have done wrong (and frankly, when you look at all the sites that *obviously* violate at least half of Google's terms for Adsense, why do their automatic site weeder go for Hypography??? Makes no sense to me).
Thanks for letting me know, Google! At least you can boast to have one less science forum with a dedicated and intelligent membership in your portfolio...
So I am back to square one as far as advertisements are concerned. Hypography needs to make some money and since I am hesitant to ask people to pay (unless they want to become sponsors, in which case they become my friends forever), well, I need to come up with a good advertisement scheme.
Plastering banners all over the site is ugly, boring, and unappealing to both me and all our users.
Product placement is an option, but I have very little experience with these things and frankly I have no idea what Hypography visitors want.
I just want to be able to make sure that the amount of traffic that Hypography gets, becomes a stream of revenue that will ensure the growth of our forums.
What to do? I just want to have fun. Can I have fun *and* make money at the same time? I do it at work. How can I do it here???
We've been in it since the early days, and it has helped me finance the running of Hypography since it has covered the costs for our server, software licenses etc.
Adsense ads has some cool properties: They are easy on the eye (at least the text versions), they adapt to your page's content, and the money earned comes straight into my bank account.
But relying on Adsense is a bit like playing blind bingo. The income fluctuates a lot and you have very little control over the type of ads shown (I did manage to weed out some scientology ads that were running for a while).
But then Adsense simply shut us out - without warning. I can run it on my other sites but apparently hypography.com is now out of the fellowship, and even our search engine was blocked.
That's their way of saying "you have violated our terms. We won't let you know how, why, or what you need to do to fix it, but goodbye. Don't call us." I have no clue what I have done wrong (and frankly, when you look at all the sites that *obviously* violate at least half of Google's terms for Adsense, why do their automatic site weeder go for Hypography??? Makes no sense to me).
Thanks for letting me know, Google! At least you can boast to have one less science forum with a dedicated and intelligent membership in your portfolio...
So I am back to square one as far as advertisements are concerned. Hypography needs to make some money and since I am hesitant to ask people to pay (unless they want to become sponsors, in which case they become my friends forever), well, I need to come up with a good advertisement scheme.
Plastering banners all over the site is ugly, boring, and unappealing to both me and all our users.
Product placement is an option, but I have very little experience with these things and frankly I have no idea what Hypography visitors want.
I just want to be able to make sure that the amount of traffic that Hypography gets, becomes a stream of revenue that will ensure the growth of our forums.
What to do? I just want to have fun. Can I have fun *and* make money at the same time? I do it at work. How can I do it here???
Total Comments 6
Comments
 |  sure, get some other ad's, contact people directly like putting "if ya wanna advertise here pls contact Tormod" type. that's how the banner's work thats a temp soln we have to think of a permanent one thougj ... TBA |
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| |  Yeah we need to start selling directly I think. It's frustrating to rely on networks you can't control. |
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| |  [quote=Tormod]But relying on Adsense is a bit like playing blind bingo. The income fluctuates a lot and you have very little control over the type of ads shown (I did manage to weed out some scientology ads that were running for a while). But then Adsense simply shut us out - without warning. I can run it on my other sites but apparently hypography.com is now out of the fellowship, and even our search engine was blocked. That's their way of saying "you have violated our terms. We won't let you know how, why, or what you need to do to fix it, but goodbye. Don't call us." I have no clue what I have done wrong (and frankly, when you look at all the sites that *obviously* violate at least half of Google's terms for Adsense, why do their automatic site weeder go for Hypography??? Makes no sense to me). Thanks for letting me know, Google![/quote] You may wish to look into your recent upgrade whereby you get a "snap shot" of the urls posted in the fora. As I understand it, the Snap Shot technology is put out by a Google competitor. This is just a speculation, but may warrant further research if it becomes a bigger issue for you and the site. Enjoy. :cup: |
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| | The Snap Shots are not revenue making for us - they are only a service for our members and I'm just testing it. I will however see if I can find out if they are considered a thread to Adsense. Anyway I implemented those after we got kicked out. |
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| | I have discovered that I *did* in fact get a fair warning from Google Adsense - a few weeks back. Somehow it slipped by my radar. Further investigation has shown that my mistake was accidental - our Google Custom search (now not accessible from the forum) didn't show the Google logo. I had mistakenly applied a CSS style to *all* textarea fields in forms, and thus made invisible the Google logo which is inside the search form. Since I had not corrected this after receiving the warning e-mail, I was shut out of Adsense. I have fixed it and received a reply from Adsense that Hypography will be allowed to show Google Adsense ads again within 48 hours. Yay! But if anything, it shows that we need to rely on more than one network if I want to make sure I cover the costs of running Hypo.  |
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| | And now the Google Adsense ads are back. *Phew* |
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Recent Blog Entries by Tormod
- I suck at Browser Compliance Testing (09-29-2008)
- The horrors of trying to make money in a decent way (09-25-2008)
- Some issues when contemplating Hypography design changes (09-18-2008)
- Maintaining Hypography (09-16-2008)
