OH. MY. GOD. It’s been only two days and I just made 13 CENTS!!!
That was my first thought on seeing that AdSense statement. My 2nd was:
Okay, who’s the joker who actually CLICKED on an ad?
But alas, my sense of pleasant surprise, I must confess, was almost immediately replaced with the bitterness of the unrealized potential inherent in those numbers. I mean, let’s face it people, 13 cents isn’t exactly going to make my house payment, let alone make me rich, Rich, RICH!!! And soooo…
WE NEED TO DO BETTER!!
If I’m going to abandon my principles and be Google’s bitch, then you’re going to have to be MY BITCHES!!! Sure, making me filthy rich is not going to be easy for any of us, but in the end I believe it will be worthwhile.
….HEY YOU!!! Yeah, you with your finger on the mouse button about to click away from this page! STOP…in the name of all that is good and decent, hear me out!
Okay, that’s better…now, to make this easy on all of us I’ve done the math. In order for me to live in the style to which I’d like to become accustomed, I’m going to need $10 million dollars… and that’s going to require about 77 MILLION page views. Now wait…DON’T BE DISCOURAGED…the longest journey begins with a single step – or click in this case, and I’ve got some ideas to get us started:
First, there’s going to be a lot of clicking involved (I mean, let’s face it – most people are slackers so it will fall upon a small minority of us to do the heavy lifting involved in realizing my our dream), so for starters let’s do this little exercise in “manual dexterity” to loosen up our fingers:
Using your mouse, click on Tools – Internet Options – Use Current – OK
(if using Firefox, it’s Tools – Options – Use Current Page – OK)
Next, forward the URL for this page to EVERYONE on your contact list! … Now!!! (I’ll wait…)
And in case some of you are not on board with this yet, here’s a little thought exercise to put things in perspective…
Close your eyes (no, not yet! Finish reading this exercise first!) and imagine the happy, angelic faces of two little girls, 10 and 12 years of age. Make these faces archetypes, embodying the innocent hopes and dreams of everything that is pure and good about childhood. Now, imagine these girls being told that they will not, on their 16th birthdays, be receiving candy-apple red Ferraris!
Not a pretty picture. Do you want part of the bad Karma associated with crushing the dreams of innocent little girls!?? I thought not. Proceed.
Okay – properly motivated? Head in the ball game? Ready to throw off your egocentricity , look beyond the end of your own nose and stand shoulder to shoulder with your brothers and sisters of OS in the noble cause of making me filthy, stinking RICH?
Good, because I’m getting tired. I’d write more, but frankly I’ve never been much of a motivational speaker or a micro manager. So get creative with this thing…add links to my blog to your corporate web site… click on my blog on the hour every hour and compel others to do the same…and if you haven’t done it already RATE THIS POST IMMEDIATELY…tell your friends and neighbors…spray paint this URL on overpasses and get it tattooed on your arse if that will help spread the word!! In short, use your imaginations and don’t stop until driving my AdSense numbers into the stratosphere becomes a NATIONAL OBSESSION!!! I REPEAT: DO NOT REST UNTIL I AM AN INTERNET MEME BIGGER THAN JOE THE PLUMBER HIMSELF…
…heh, heh…or not…um sorry, I kind of got lost in the moment when I saw those numbers. Won’t happen again. Kindly disregard this post.
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Lainey
mishima666
Julie Tarp
Toby Beth Jarman
Fairly Sure
micalpeace
Salon.com
Comments
My own revenues are up to 55 cents in the last two days!
Oprah, Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Sex, Sex, and more Sex, Lick this! Lick That! Mark Sanford, Obama, Freaky, marriage, divorce, single, lonely, kids, children, puppies!
Those ad clicks must be worth a lot. Maybe the kids WILL get those Ferraris!
But seriously, how can an ad click be worth that much to anyone? I'm going to start clicking on other peoples' ads out here!
The strangest thing - when I viewed your blog I was overcome with a sudden interest in plastic surgeon's in Illinois and building my own solar panels!
When I clicked on Blackflon's site I had a sudden interest in getting an MBA online, and finding relief for the chronic back pain that I didn't even know I had!
On Stim's blog I found myself overwhelmed with a desire for Uncle somebody's chips and an intense curiosity to find out what Acrylamides are.
Verbal's cat picture was so scary that I found myself interested in anti-anxiety medication plus a free Tarot reading.
And when I went to AtHomePilgrim's page I just had to see what Eckert Tolle's new book was about, and check into HP's latest imagine technology.
...quite strange.
Also, I find it interesting that I mentioned in the post having to get 77 million page views, and then one of the ads is entitled "How i made $77 million in 2 years" - yeah, right!
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see where this is going.
Good job folks!
Neurologists!? - I hadn't thought about it, but it shouldn't be a problem once the $$$ starts rolling in.
On the other hand, round about the $ million mark I'll probably have to hire lawyers who will most likely advise me to just throw people with worn-out fingers onto the scrap heap of history in order to continue my ascent!
and Jodi - such a strange world we live in - I'm sure it never even crossed Walt's mind that at some distant point in the future, some guy he never met would get an extra thumb just for invoking the idea of his cryogenically-preserved head!
Bad news: According to Edmunds, the cheapest Ferrari is $188,000.
Good news: Things are trending up!
Bad news: I think people have become distracted or bored with the prospect of making me rich.
Good news: There's always tomorrow!
Bad news: I don't think pandering is going to work again.
Good news: There's always threats and GOP-inspired fear-mongering!
Bad news: That probably violates the OS terms of service.
Good news: There's still a glimmer of hope that this will go viral.
Bad news: I think that glimmer is about the size of a quark.
Oh, well ... guess I'll have to break the bad news to the kids about those Ferrari's....but maybe I'll wait one more day, just in case.
Sounds like it could treat more than horses.
And that's hard to figure out how it could be worth that much to the person/company try to hawk products or services.
...and it seems like a page view is worth about less than a tenth of a cent.
Re: facebook - what kind of creeps me out about it is that even though I only have a hadful of friends there, they span all corners of my life - aunts, teenage nieces, college age nephew, wife, high school friend, gay college friend, evangelical sister-in-law, my kids' friends moms...
Is there ANYTHING I can say on there that isn't completely benign that's not going to creep somebody out or offend somebody else!?
Horse Wounds? that's a case in point - could your click have been worth 75 cents to horse wounds, inc.?
...ooooh, linking to it on a spam bog - that's both ironic AND subversive...I like it! : )
We want to have fun as well and discuss how our individual romances with AdSense are going. So far, to my infinite relief, Google is offering spam blockers, not guns, on our site.
This is also an experiment in group blogging, which is probably the most interesting thing about it. Blogger has always allowed team blogs, with up to 100 different contributors.Sharing the same log in is the only way we could figure out how to do this.
I read a few months ago how Microsoft was creating an option in their next version of IE that would allow you to more or less prevent ads from even showing up when you view web pages, by effectively blocking content from various large sites that serve up ads. Tons of companies screamed that such an option in IE would kill online advertising - and I wonder if Microsoft listened and eliminated that feature.
13 ratings is a personal best for me - and strangely my 2nd best was the previous day when I posted several ads in bastardized form (hotels.com -> brothels.com, etc.)
And, I am now up to $14 in earnings - true, a paltry sum in the grand scheme of things and yet I find I have an unhealthy curiosity at watching that number grow.
What's bad about the formula is that with so much paid for clicks, and so little for views, it bodes poorly for intelligent, well-written content since readers of such fare are not the sort (I'm guessing) to believe that they can make $87 per hour WORKING FROM HOME with no set schedule!
Also, while clicking happily away on ads on other posters' sites I felt a little guilty knowing that the $$ I was merrily dispersing were coming out of someone's pockets, but then I saw the Bill O'Reilly one and was reminded that that might be a good thing!
In fact, although we're not supposed to pander for clicks, i wonder if there's anything wrong with admonishing anyone and everyone to find the O'Reilley ad and click on it as often as possible!
Salon is in a tough spot. They got into social networks early, which was expensive to develop and now to maintain. Meantime, someone in the know (ex-pof) can put together something similar in no time with OS (open source!) free code.
And, they've made the awful decision to go with Google as opposed to something appropriate for the site. Not surprising as it will make them $$- for the most part fraud based click thrus, that which Google has made its mark with, at the expense of the advertisers, many small businesses with un-savvy owners who don't know any better. The most sophisticated advertisers using Google factor in fraud ... the poor lemmings pay for it through the nose.
Google, the new Microsoft- built on the backs of your hard work, through fraud. Fascinating.
I really enjoyed Salon's Table Talk years ago, but when they began charging for it I jumped ship (what can I say, I'm a cheap bastard).
But yes, it's easy to forget that sites like this cost something to create and maintain. i don't know a lot about AdSense v. other similar options out there and I can see both sides of the coin on this one. Salon needs money, but people are rightly wigged out at having that big, fat ad show up below everything they write.
I suspect that ultimately, tons of money-crazy bloggers aren't going to infiltrate Open Salon - I mean, really - there are more suitable places to blog for money. And, eventually people will get used to seeing the ads and just mentally block them out.
Must we relinquish every shred of our dignity in the process of selling out to them?