Website Owners click on Adsense

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As far as I remember, the majority of professional website users apparently hate to see free content being compared with advertisement banners. But in the end, we all have to pay the bills, and a little income from selling ads even on one’s blog can be worth every buck. Sadly, the MikeSchnoor.com doesn’t produce a profit worth to mention. Hardly noone ever clicks the Google Adsense links which are visible below each entry or on the category and main websites, and on the sidebar. But for testing purposes, I’m on the run with them.

However, Markus Klöschen explained in his recent article why he chooses to click ads. As a website owner, one may not violate against Google’s Policy of Adsense by clicking your own ads, but we can choose to click other people’s ads whenever we like it.

I’m bannerblind. I will in no case click on any colorfull, animated or blinking banner. Since I do visit pages which are using advertisements like that, I pimped my firefox and installed an ad-blocker. This works very good. But I don’t see the ads on my page any more, so I don’t see what some of my visitors see. Therefore I removed the adsense-expression from my adblocker to get the adsense again. From that time on I do see the adsense links and what shall I say, they are relevant.

Relevant… yes, I saw various ads coming from the Google Server and I felt obliged to click and read the advertiser’s website. I found a few things on Business Ethics and some other nice gadgets, added the URLs to the bookmarks and had a good day. One can argument that this does not help the advertiser and is just another cost factor if people click their own Google Ads or are motivated to click ads, but if it’s relevant? I don’t click „Sexy Voice Chat“ ads, but rather those that keep my curiousity engaged, those that keep me interested. If ads are being relevant for me, I will click them on other people’s blogs. That’s what I see as some sort of honorable mission in order to say „Thank you for all your free content.“

Update: Edited due to Markus‘ comment – that’s one for the morning and the lack of caffine. ;)

[via Light Within]

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Blogspot – The Spam Domain

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This morning I read a nice post by Google Blogoscoped: 60% of all Blogspot blogs are spammers. They tested 50 random blogs, of which 30 were spam blogs or had spam related content.

Marty Kay made an interesting comment in regard to Splots (spam blogs) on Google’s Blogspot.com:
„Funniest thing I saw was a bunch of comments on one spam/link site, that was totally irrelevant but pointed to ANOTHER spam site. The spammers are spamming each other.”

This is one of the most ridiculous ideas ever. You are a spammer and try to get money, but you’re being spammed because you’re too dumb to install counter-measures on your own spam blog. But here’s the deadly trigger for Google’s Blogspot domain. With approximately 7,500,000 individual blogs hosted on their domain, approximately 4 million spam blogs exist because of them. However, a second test of another 100 blogs changed the numbers, estimating 42% of the blogs are solely spammers. I wonder how the Blogspot users will react to this…

[via The Blog Herald]

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Commenter Police

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The recent SEO case is basically the reason for introducing the comment policy here on the MikeSchnoor.com. The question is – who creates comments that may disturb others resulting in a) a law suit and b) the installation of counter-measures for your own blog’s protection?

Spammers
Of course, none of the spammers will ever create scandalous or pesterized comments, instead they’re interested in increasing the pagerank for their sites and of course lure visitors to their grounds. That for sure, the only help against them is an automated process like BadBehavior for WordPress and the idea to put every incoming signal (comments, pingbacks, and trackbacks) into the moderation queue before auto-approving the sender. As example, the Angel Blog just wrote about their own attempt to fight the comment spam.

Real People vs. Trolls
This leaves us with comments that are usually written by real people with a brain to think. The vast majority of blog readers know how to behave properly, and most blog authors hate to censor their readers. I have censored two times in the last years for a good reason. But who knows what may happen if people are commenting about whatever is on their mind including their emotional break-thru of anger and hatred? Or their thoughts concerning something else which was mentioned in the blog? As example, I write about the XYZ-ABC company and review their website, but one commenter explicitly makes sure that he/she does hate the company for a reason. While loving the idea of free speech, does this mean I have to delete it in order to prevent myself from the XYZ-ABC company and their legal machine? And what about myself as blog author – what if someone has the urge to pull a plug and unleash their personal hatred towards the blog author for no real reason but the birds in blue sky?

A blog is not the place to read a comment filled with hatred, and the decision about deleting or leaving it untouched is even more difficult for the blog’s author. Leaving it untouched will disappoint other readers as they see the poor comment and wonder why such crap exists on their daily read. Deleting it will only anger the one who got deleted – resulting in even worse comments from that person.

Its a thin line to walk on, and by informing the reader about what to do (writing comments!) and what not to do (the stuff explained the comment policy), you minimize the problem – I think. Of course, things can turn out wrong and even worse, but isn’t this what makes life interesting?

For example, German law requires one to declare that the website owner / blog author is not liable for external links. This is done via the classic disclaimer, which has to be of course in German within the Impressum or contact area of a site. I even declared that authors of comments are liable for their writing. As result, by German law, I am apparently not liable for that what you, dear reader, write. Now there’s the idea of the Commenter Police: Wouldn’t it be best for a blog author to get the comments being rated by the commenters themselves in order to create a mini-social-network? Leaving it up to the commenters to fight among themselves, and not the blog author? But on the other hand, a comment policy is still the best to use to keep everybody informed.

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Expand the Blogstream

Its a small note, but one I’ve enjoyed reading this morning. All those who participate in the Weblog-phenomenon have perhaps understood that blogs are the alternative to the mainstream media. David Gibbons summarize his thoughts on why the blogstream beats the mainstream:

Mainstream media feeds up popular opinion – you learn nothing! The Blogstream randomly knocks ya sideways as you delve into the mind of the individual – jarring opinions make you think – by thinking you learn – give me the Blogstream!

If the definition per-se explains the term blogstream as a play on the term mainstream. But the authors of weblogs do not necessarily reference the overall beloved points of view created by the media. Instead they offer their own (sometimes most personal) alternative by presenting input coming from both professionals and hobbyists authors. With the blogstream as a network of news and information, it grows faster than the mainstream media. Can one set up a radio station within minutes? Are you allowed to send your broadcasting signal without interferring other signals? The mainstream media has regulated itself and is bound to a variety of laws, rules and of course their own corporate culture. Who wouldn’t want to keep all advertisers in line without flaming on one of their product – it’s the mainstream media. What can one do in the blogstream? You may investigate it deeper and strive for your personal expansion as a unique part among many others. As a Citizen Media journalist, you offer things which cannot be caught by the mainstream media, and by offering, you let others think and learn. And always remember, don’t just read the Stars of the blogosphere because they seem to be Dogs after a while – move on to the Cash Cows and Questionmarks, too.

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Push and Pull: The Blog Herald

This is amazing. Not that I haven’t expected it, but we’re mentioned on today’s pick for the 100 blogs in 100 days campaign by the Blog Herald. I already love the discussion in the comments on the post, because the commenters were mostly striked by yesterday’s article about introducing a comment policy for the MikeSchnoor.com. Usually, a comment policy is part of any major blog (just google along), and since Germanic law has some tight restrictions on provinding and maintaining a website (or blog) by applying the idea of „you must identify yourself“, the idea of informing your readers is much better than receiving a plaint from some commenter who has been removed or edited.

Now remember the discussion about the blogger who got sued because of the comments? Watch the discussion about this free-commenter idealism and you’ll notice that both sides have good points. But in the first set of comments, the comment-policy is an evilish concept, and in the others, the commenters cry for hunting down the real people who are responsible for their comments. Now where’s a solution for this paradoxon? So far, I have none. But a major thanks to Duncan for including us!

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Searching for German Blogs…

This afternoon was meant to become boring: I decided to search for preferably German blogs which weren’t on the cover of every other blogroll. I used Das Weblogverzeichnis to scan through blogs that interested me, and until I found 14 blogs after scanning approximately 560 blogs for content. I ended up at number 150 of the letter D after finishing A-C… about 1/5th is done, more later or tomorrow!

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Blog Day 2005

Blog Day 2005Perhaps there’s time to push yourself above the limit of reading blogs in these days. First, Duncan pulled the 100 Blogs in 100 Days out of nowhere, now Nir Ofir created the Blog Day 2005. The idea is to maximize the blogosphere on August 31st 2005: Every blogger from all over the world is supposed to post a recommendation of at least 5 new blogs (in the same time). As effect, the readers of the participating blogs will find new unknown blogs and authors. I’m with this useful idea which reminds me of somehow of a push-and-pull marketing campaign! This Blog Day will push the blogs that either don’t maintain their daily reads as a blogroll or don’t link other blogs for giving credit as sources, but will these others who are being linked by the participants of the Blog Day honor being pushed?

Many authors do not communicate with other authors, and various blogs do not even offer to discuss within comments or trackbacks. Instead of living from this inter-connectivity within the blogosphere, some quite good authors (and their blogs) won’t be recognized elsewhere but in the niche of unknownness.

[via Light Within]

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WordPress – Official COM

Logo WordPress Commercial Version
As reported by Darren and Duncan, Lorelle explained several issues about the upcoming commercialized version of WordPress. This includes screenshots and a lot text. Basically, the new version offers a WYSIWYG editor for your posts, an upload for images up to 15 MB per file, it is based as a multi-user version of the original WordPress, and is aimed for those who cannot afford their own webserver yet. But the question is, do we really need that unless we’re unable to finance a small webserver with a database? I’m not sure… so far I can handle everything quite well with this opensource WordPress.

[via The Blog Herald, Problogger]

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Hauptstadt-Blog

Logo Hauptstadt-Blog
Perhaps every capital city needs their own blog even if its not maintained by the governmental officials: The Hauptstadt-Blog offers a daily view upon various topics which keep the Berliner busy. This group-blog offers an interesting personality like its competitor among Germany’s major cities Minga.de (for Munich). It looks like some interesting magazine, and it surely got included in my daily reads at the feeds! I bet it will just take time until Nico Lumma will offer the „Hamburg Blog„…

[via Minga, Medienrauschen]

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Against Web-Censorship

For all those web users like Kevin in Shanghai and many others who cannot browse the web without facing the consequences of censorship by their governments, there’s the helpful guide HOWTO ByPass Internet Censorship.

Screenshot of zensur.freerk.com

A tutorial on how to bypass Internet Censorship using Proxies, Shells, JAP e.t.c. Different ways to beat the filtering in schools, countries or companies (blocked ports e.t.c).

[via Markus P. Zillman]

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