Slashdot Mirror
Blog Content Based Solely on High Paying Keywords
Doug Nelson writes "Michael Buffington chose to build a weblog using highly automated content aggregation tools around a single keyword, asbestos, because of the high click through rate associated with the ad.
'The subject matter, while weighty and all that, is of little importance to me. It's not that I don't have opinions on asbestos and asbestos reform, because I do. The whole point of the site is to experiment with an idea. I built a tool that helps me aggregate topical news with the help of Google's Alert system. So far it works wonderfully. But there's a second motive as well. Right now asbestos reform and asbestos related litigation is on fire. Lawyers are paying anywhere from $15-100 per click through on Google ads. The second part of this big experiment is to see if I can capture some of that click through revenue while still providing a somewhat valid service to people who might arrive by search results.'"
I think the link to the blog should NOT have been included. It's just driving even more traffic there now that wouldn't be generated otherwise.
I sure hope "doug nelson" gets a cut of the clickthroughs for posting the story here and getting "michael bluffington" the traffic.
Providing a 'somewhat valid service'?? Come on, the only real reason he's doing this is the money, and now it's on Slashdot as well! More money!
What a sad state the US is in now.....
-haffi
Once again, another fine example of how anywhere there is a profit to be made, someone will try and do it.
Let's hope this doesn't become so commonplace that the entire medium of blogs becomes suspect in the same way modern television news has.
~Rebecca
Is Doug Nelson the poster's /real/ name?
Roland Piquepaille does that now with Slashdot. Aggregate content and redigest it and offer it up for viewers with advertisement banners readily available.
Not saying there's anything wrong with it, it's just a little antithetical, if you know what I mean.
And how is this news exactly? There are many sites out there that based solely on a particular topic. All sites selling commercial products make their sites according to the keywords related to their products. Porn sites do the same too.
When I just now typed "Asbestos" into Google and clicked on the eight ads that came up on the right, I just cost a bunch of lawyers over $100? W007! I think I'll try it again from work.
Why is this posted on Slashdot? This article doesn't fit the Slashdot slogan, "News for nerds .. _stuff that matters_" It's no wonder that this story is simply going to increase the revenue he's looking for, for providing his "somewhat valid service."
What a waste of space.
Come on, can we go back to the "news that matters"?
This site is becoming a long and boring infomercial.
I don't have a sig.
I wonderasbestos what Googleasbestos would think ofasbestos this.asbestos Against any sortasbestos of terms ofasbestos service?
hmmm..... that is basically how i generated banner hits for my linkexchange account 7 years ago. it was amazing what a useless "screensaver" site with links to other screensave pages could generate.
then consider that i generated the pages based on a database of keywords, and the links were to other generated pages using variations of content associated with the keywords.... a friday afternoon hack...
OK lets /. these ambulance chaser lawyers to bankrupcy.
MPAA Clickthrough anyone?
"Asbestos" is too generic. "Asbestosis" would be better, but the word the ambulance chasers pay a lot for is "mesothelioma", on the assumption the person typing that word already has that problem or is close to someone who has it. I would have thought "pneumoconiosis" would be high on the list, but no-one seems to be tagging it.
(1) set up revenue mechanism /. wrapped as a thought piece /. effect
(2) post link on
(3) wait for the
(4) put offspring through college on the proceeds
Backward%20compatibility%20is%20over-rated
Without actual content that is generated solely at the site, whether it be your personal opinions or the opinions of users, it is doubtful that you will generate significant traffic through banner ads. If someone is smart enough to find your site about asbestos, they are most likely able to find their way to the sites with real, original content from which you skimmed your information from.
By offering users nothing, you stand to make very little in the way of ad traffic revenue.
At $15-100 per click-through, /. might do quite a bit of damage to some lawyer's wallet. I assume the ads have limits on total numbers, but I'd bet that most of the click-happy people that follow these links won't be actual clients for asbestos litigation.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Seriously now, this is just an Asbestos-specialized news site. The only "special" thing about it is that it's ethereal - it will dissapear when Michael will decide he's had enough asbestos in his life. Hardly worthy of /. attention.
Just
I think you have to be careful plugging blogs on slashdot, in case somebody starts a googlebomb with the words Money-Grabbing Pseudo-scammer or something like that. That would be unfortunate.
This is against their terms of service
"No Google ad may be placed on pages published specifically for the purpose of showing ads, whether or not the page content is relevant"
This type of thing makes me a little sick. If you follow the money trail, you'll see that this type of thing only serves to hurt people and society and enrich lawyers at the same time.
1. Companies buy insurance from insurance companies
2. Regular people buy products from company
3. Some people get hurt by company's product
4. Lawyers sue company on behalf of hurt plaintiffs
5. Lawyers win case for plaintiff, Company's insurance company pays $10 gazillion
6. Lawyers for plaintiff take 60% of $10 gazillion
7. Company's insurance rates are raised
8. Company raises prices
9. Regular people pay higher prices to company
So, who pays for such litigation and $100-per-click AdWords? You do.
I'm a big tall mofo.
This isn't that much different from a search engine - it's just more specialised and more news-focussed. Think of it like this - the service provides information that it didn't create and gets revenue from advertisers who like the amount of people it can get to view their adverts on the site. Google have created a very successful business model this way. Why should this suddenly become unethical just because it's in blog format?
One good turn - gets all the covers.
First, let me point to a favorite link of mine about "blogs":
o gs.html
http://mama.indstate.edu/users/bones/WhyIHateWebL
Thanks. Now - what leads anyone to believe that blogs are somehow not suspect? A blog is just some random persons blatherings... why should they be any more trustworthy than the TV? I guess if you have all day, you could read hundreds of blatherings and get an idea of the aggregate opinion. Or maybe just the opinions of people with even more time to waste than you do:-)
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
The Vioxx Recall Blog
This is nothing new, Slashdot. C'mon...
If I was interested in asbestos and couldn't be bothered to set up an aggregator it'd be somewhat useful.
If he makes money from it, fine.
Is it just me or have I heard *every single* \. story before it's posted here?
Maybe someone could wake me up when the next piece of actual news is posted.
I'm not wrong. You haven't thought about it hard enough.
I have done something very similar plenty of times except with the goal of raising website's search rank. Appropiate topic-related keywords and links is a good way to raise the search rank. Usually I try to do at least part of the site by hand though to insure it's got real, original, content on it. Using feeds to supplement user supplied content. Hrm - sounds familiar.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
How much did you pay slashdot for your link?
Google does not usually like sites built specifically for adsense (as well as being against the adsense terms & conditions ). I wonder how long his adsense account will last before google terminates it.
Wanting frontpage coverage on slashdot is great for revenue, but admitting to building the site for adsense, well thats priceless.
the only real reason he's doing this is the money
These two things aren't incompatible.
The only reason my super-market provides groceries is to make money, and the result is a valid service.
The only reason the movie theater down the road plays movies is to make money, and the result is a valid service.
Just because this blogger is motivated by money does not mean that the service he provides is a scam. He's aggregating information, and will likely eventually - after he's been covering the topic long enough - provide knowledgeable commentary on it. I wouldn't be suprised if, in a few years, he's doing original research on the issue, iterviewing people, and digging up articles in libraries.
What he's doing is indistinguishable from someone starting up a new magazine because they see a demographic that would read it and an advertising base that would purchase ads (see, for example Make). The end result is that all three parties are better off: the readers get something that they choose to read, the advertisers get eyeballs, and the guy who puts it all together gets a slice.
What you're seeing is actually history in the making - the decoupling of demand-driven journalism from media companies.
Sadly there is a whole world of these types of sites springing up. Alot of them come from clickbank.com; an affiliate service where affiliates set up mini sites (often filled with no useful information just links and/or bits and pieces of stolen copyright material) with the sole purpose of climbing google & generating clicks to get a profit.
r http://dogtrainer.bigcoup.info/dir6/dog-training-s eattle.html
i.e www.carrpt.com/puppies/lhasa_apso_puppies.html
o
How much did he paypal you?
Or have you guaranteed a percentage?
Do we really have to advertise search engine spammers on the Slashdot front page? People like this who only want to exploit the search engine rating systems for their own advantage are the reason of high prices and low effectiveness of on-line advertising. I hope Google will ban this scam website from its results altogether and not waste a single penny on them. Do we really want an important searches to return thousands upon thousands of irrelevant results that are nothing more than a lists of links to other lists of links, ad nauseam? It's already nearly impossible to search for pornography, but at least no one searching for pornography needs help. People who search for asbestos are usually not the ones who want to buy some asbestos, but actually those who suffer from asbestosis. What next? Hijacking the search results of people who look for cancer treatment just to immorally squeeze few bucks from them and force greedy lawyer advertisements upon their throats? This is just disgusting. I am really disappointed that such a link has been posted on Slashdot.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Yes, heaven forbid that someone has an idea to legally make money, and can successfully execute it. That goes against everything this free nation stands for.
And I have more news for you: 'blogs' have ALWAYS been suspect. I don't suppose you can refer me to a time when blogs were an unimpeachable source of unbiased truth.
Socialism: A feeling of discontent and resentment caused by a desire for the possessions or qualities of another.
After looking up antithetical, I'm afraid I must say I don't know what you mean.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
"I don't think it means what you think it means." --Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride
Socialism: A feeling of discontent and resentment caused by a desire for the possessions or qualities of another.
The name is so popular, Google will provide a spelling correction if you search for it.
I considered helping, but... I realized that I would need to temporarily disable three layers of protection:
- Adblock (in Firefox)
- adzapper (a squid extension)
- a DNS fake zone for ".googlesyndication.com"
So, I'm afraid you won't get any ad clicks from meThe creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
lol, the achilles heel of this guys plan depends on slashdotters RTFAing before voicing their opinions. Goodbye Profit!
You're telling me that if I simply Google for "asbestos" - or better yet, "asbestos health problems" - and subsequently click five advertising links that I'm costing lawyers up to 500 dollars? I now have something to fill my lunch break.
was talk about what he was doing.
The first rule of adsense is you don't talk about adsense.
If you're making money, keep it to yourself or the next day, a million people will be doing the same thing.
It made me smile when I visited the Blog and the google advert read "Dedicated Asbestos Team Keep 100% of your compensation" At least they are being honest ;-)
Well this is an interesting turn-about. Instead of blogs getting spam comments, it's a spam blog getting comments.
Keeping in the spirit of slashdot, I haven't actually read the article yet. It's just what it made me think when I read the description.
...from many of the other blogs out there? This is why I hate blogs, especially those who validate pyramid free i-pod spamming, but not other forms of spam.
I really think blogging is a bad egg technology, it is a word that shouldn't exist. People keep web based logs, things that you wouldn't really read. If you want to write a review site, write a review site, if you want to use software that managed your posts, and makes comments available and stuff, use it, but don't call it a blog.
This guy gets no kudos for this.
I hope blogs are a fad, and people can stop using them soon. (seeing how google and ask have gone into the forray of blogging, I doubt it)
Why is bloggin good? It lets people author (in the wrong context!) small sites where they can put thier opinion etc.
Why is it bad? Well, the signal:noise suffers. I end up finding the same stories aggregated on 14 sites in one day, ripping content, each one probably has ads, but I adblock everything today.
Is adblocking wrong? I say no, I say if you want to twist and create your own broadcast medium, then fine, don't expect me to watch, I block ads to try and stop people doing exactly what this guy and the engadget guy are doing.
Hackaday and engadget and all his other 11.5 billion blog sites are so fucking gay it hurts more than a pineapple colonic. argh.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
One thing that made me wonder...
Enter "vioxx" or "malpractice", click the paid ads. What you get is about 2/3 of the pages are no real info, just more google ads, many of them directing the sites to each other.
They must pay for the adwords. They get paid for click through on their ad-worded "banner only" pages. But I find it hard to believe they get paid for clicks on Google ads on their pages, than they pay for their ads on Google and in others' ads. Or is the Google profit margin small enough to finance them from the remaining 1/3 clicks to actual pages without Google ads? Or is Google paying them with own loss?
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Incase you don't know: Don't follow parent's link!!!!
The word is Mesothelioma.. it pays $130 a click.
Why do you have to be a slave to the dictionary? Its meaning was obvious.
I have noticed this myself.... most blogs are turning in to spamblogs.
Engadget (where slashdot gets a lot of its stories) is a great site, but the ad content has risen significantly over the past few months.
Blogs were originally meant to be diaries and driven by either pseudo journalism for fun or just a way to rant about topics the owner loved to talk about. In some cases, they were meant to be ways to keep in contact with friends.
The mainstream, embracing blogs, has prompted many of the "original bloggers" to become greedy and place ads all over their sites - whoring different products.
I have a blog for my website that is used mainly as a comments forum. It has been very useful for me to get into keyword searches.
I refuse to whore ads from companies to take advantage of some system where I don't merit the money. I advertise on the main site with advertisers that I have contacted and told them the benefit of our synergy.
Another reason I don't use Ads by Google or a shared banner type ad placement is because Google and "Click Ad Companies" don't police spyware and ad ware banners and websites. I don't want anyone reading my website or visiting my commerce site to be associated with any of that.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
asbestos reform and asbestos related litigation is on fire
is this a joke? Given the origins of Asbestos..;
http://fp.arizona.edu/riskmgmt/asbestos_fire.htm
I bet Sergey and Co read slashdot.
Best Slashdot Co
Come on now CowboyNeal, Cmdrtaco - don't you guys have even a bit of integrity? This is just a shameless money-making plug for this guy's site. Bleh.
It seems you can't read slashdot without coming across at least one of these pseudo-advertisements everyday.
Why a link is included on what the owner of the link says is truly profit motivated and a sideline is it might be interesting to some folks? Sorry for hurting anyones feelings but this has to be one of the stupidest things I have ever seen linked to here.
Why not start posting banner ads as newsworthy stories? It might as a sideline be interesting to get my @!$% extended again but nevertheless I might make a few grand on clickthrus.
Then lets say you aren't sure what the blown-in insulation is...it looks like cellulose, but you know the exterior of the house is done in asbestos (which isn't a problem, since its hard and painted) so you're concerned that the blown-in insulation in your walls might be asbestos.
So, you want to go do a search at google. You find a few government sites that tell you to contact expensive labs, but...you just want a picture. You just want to know what the best course of action is.
To find that, you have to sift through a bazillion crap-pollution sites like the one this guy has made. Where the HELL is the "valid service" in that? I don't have cancer. I've been exposed for minutes, not years. I don't want to be part of a class-action lawsuit (which are, thankfully, going to be smaller now). I just want to know what the best course of action is.
What Buffington is doing is hardly new. Bloggers have been chasing high-paying keywords from the day AdSense was announced. The trend accelerated last year when the Wall Street Journal did a front-page feature about how much lawyers were paying for asbestos-related keywords. Tons of webmaster-related web sites offer tips on similar AdSense strategies, and there's even companies offering to sell databases of high-paying keywords for $199. This guy is actually way late in adopting a widely-used strategy. But by discussing his motivations so directly, he got linked on Boing-Boing and Slashdot. He's an accidental marketing genius. Go figure.
RichM
Data Center Knowledge
I certainly clicked that link.
No script to do this for me while I surf for Japanese Porn?!
I thought this was Slashdot....
Ouch. Bad choice of words...
The jokes are writing themselves today!
This guys genious. He deserves to get the revenue.
a little plug for the pot people
:)
:) or we will join alah and all the muslims and kill sanity
screw the govt, down with the retard baby boomers, go to hell, die with cancer, dont smoke pot when u get aids, suffer and die.
Now leave us alone.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Who does RTFA?
Right now asbestos reform and asbestos related litigation is on fire
anyone else see the humor in this phrase?
I am a sys admin and programmer. In my free time tend to write a lot of financial analysis code for equity movement forecasting. So I started a blog about it.
Inadvertently I stumbled onto the fact that the stock market and associated terms is a relatively high popularity AdWord in Google, so the rare clicks that I got were fairly high value.
Since I am a sys admin and have to deal with blocking spam both on a personal level and also for our office network, I was seeing that there was a clear trend in spam - I think we could all see it - it was going up and up and up.
So I started a blog in order to discuss spam and ways to stop it, since apparently many people weren't familiar with what was available (especially since so many people actually buy from spam).
But I have to admit, that was only part of the motive - part of it was the curiosity on AdWord revenue from something that was going to be growing so much in popularity (probably the wrong word there).
I have seen some ad clicks on the spam blog go for as much as $10, and on the stock market blog they tend to top out at about $1.50.
Unfortunately, due to starting up my own company on the side, and increasing pressures at work - combined with the fact that there is only so much you can say about a subject, I stopped posting as much to the spam blog.
I also haven't posted to the financial blog in far too long as well, but more because I accidentally (retarded I know) deleted my stock database one bleary-eyed morning and I have yet to rebuild it largely out of laziness. (I had incentive for awhile since I was trading for a friend and making him money, but then stopped doing that so that I could lock in the gains and now have less incentive to care until I can trade more with my own funds)
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
Please, mod me down more! That way people will see more of this advertising bullshit!
...'Ads by Goooooogle'
If memory serves, the AdSense TOS states that putting Google ads on pages that have been created specifically with the purpose of attracting advertising-linked traffic is vorboten.
Lemme see...yes, that's what it says.
Like many AdSense policies, it's a bit hard to enforce with zero tolerance given the fuzzy nature of the subject, but -- well, calling attention to it like this sort of solves that problem of judgement.
Wouldn't Google therefore be within their rights to withhold payment on the asbestos clicks?
I'm just sayin', is all.
I am from a small, grease-loving country in the north called Ca-na-da.
Thank God people have an incentive to produce content that is important to other people. Otherwise the internet would degenerate to people posting pictures of their cats doing cute things.
I'm not posting the links. I am in no way affiliated with this site, but I do find it interestinig and am curious to read his analysis.
In the comments, Bill, who professes to have an interest in "cash pumps", informs readers that "It looks like Mesothelioma is at about $51. Asbestos at $16 and Asbestosis at $4.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
Back when overture.com used to tell you how much a sponsored link was for they would run at about $5-$10 a piece.
:)
I had a script go do a search on an overture partner site every hour for a year and a half and click most of the links each time.
Assuming they paid up, it must have cost the spam industry $100k+
Some may feel this is "gaming the system", but this is just how commerce works. You create an information vehicle that advertiser want because it meets their target audience's needs (people searching for info on 'asbestos') and is likely to have repeat visits (he tracks evolving stories over time). This makes for happy advertisers.
If not for the "slashdot effect" the advertisers would have nothing to complain about. So how about this, WE all show some restraint and DON'T FRIVOLOUSLY CLICK on the ads on his site.
-Tut
Health-Hack.com
I've been recently investigating Google's Adwords but was concerned about Adwords fraud happening to ads for my own website, which, in the spirit of the parent, I'll shamelessly promote.
...'
I'm a bad person. *sigh*
Anyway, Google lets you configure your adwords account so the ads appear only on Google and not on the army of less-than-scrupulous click-my-site's-ads-for-profit Adsense associates.
From Google's Adwords Support:
To edit your ad distribution preferences:
1. Log in to your AdWords account.
2. In the 'Campaign Summary' table, click the appropriate ad campaign.
3. Click 'Edit Campaign Settings' above the Ad Groups table.
4. At the bottom of the 'Edit Campaign Settings' table, locate the
checkboxes below 'Show ads on Google and
5. Click the checkbox next to 'search network' to check this option. Your
ad will be included on additional search sites in the expanded network.
Please note that if you click again to remove the check, your ad will not
be included on these sites.
6. Click the checkbox next to 'content network' to check this option. Your
ad will be included on additional content sites in the expanded network.
Please note that if you click again to remove the check, your ad will not
be included on these sites.
7. Click 'Save All Changes' at the bottom of the page to finish. Your ads
will always show on Google's search site, but you can select additional
option(s) based on where you would like your ads to appear.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
The holy grail of Adsense / Adwords.
The idea is to pay low for Adwords (as low as about 5 c) and to earn high with Adsense.
This can work if a generic keyword ("widgets") pays very low on Adwords yet yields good traffic, while a more specific keyword combination ("blue widgets store") pays much higher with Adsense on the actual site.
Blogger provides a valid service strictly for the purpose of making money.
This article promotes Capitalism.
How could Slashdot possibly post this right wing insanity?!
Having grown up with someone who now runs a grocery store, I can tell you that the only reason his grocery store runs is not to make money. His grocery store runs becuase
a) He enjoys providing his community with a safe gathering place that meets a common need across all age, race, and gender groups
and
b) He needs to make a living and in exchange for his service, his community provides him with one
I can hear all of the Smithians screaming, "but (b) is just another way of saying 'to make money,' they're the same statement!"
No. The goal of "making money" is significantly different from the goal of "making a living," even if the two employ some of the same means and some of the same ends.
The former is greedy and unindividuated, it is the process of finding an exploitable point in the market economy and sucking wealth out of it for personal use, even if that wealth could help someone else or even if the removal of that wealth isn't good for other people-- see also lottery tickets, etc.
The latter is a matter of personal survival and good intentions-- it is asking a different question: "I have to live, so what can I do that will justify my community's support of me and help me to support them as well?"
I have a lot of respect for living-earners, but not a lot of respect for money-makers. I also don't think that Smith is god; there are centuries' worth of economists (including some very big names) that have basically diluted smith to the point of being to the operation of modern economics what Edison is to the operation of modern technology.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Who the fuck moderated this Insightful? His post has nothing to do with this story nor does it address anything in the post he replied to.
....or some people are really quick
http://adsense-scammers.blogspot.com/
Right now asbestos reform and asbestos related litigation is on fire.
Wait, I thought the whole point of asbestos was for it not to be on fire.
Use Ctrl-C instead of ESC in Vim!
Personal Use Only The Google Services are made available for your personal, non-commercial use only. You may not use the Google Services to sell a product or service, or to increase traffic to your Web site for commercial reasons, such as advertising sales. You may not take the results from a Google search and reformat and display them, or mirror the Google home page or results pages on your Web site. You may not "meta-search" Google. If you want to make commercial use of the Google Services, you must enter into an agreement with Google to do so in advance. Please contact us for more information.
The Slashdot reaction is interesting, as we tend to hate lawyers, corporations, and especially anyone who dares to try to make something as vulgar as profit off the InterNet. We see all of them as offensive scum-sucking machines feeding on our souls.
I see two ways this can evolve forward from this point:
Personally, I've recently come to see the necessity of good government as a strong counterweight to the nature of unchecked greed that is the marketplace. While it may offend our liberitarian sensiblities, the only effective means of limiting the abuses of corporatism is good government. That is, a government of, by and for, the people.
We need to kick the bastards out, and put in good representative goverment, accountable to US. Yes, we need to get political, and organize.
If we fail to do this, the resulting will be even more lawyers and more stupid laws like software patents, DRM, etc. A world in which any random lawyer can take out a company or person on a whim, or as part of a larger campaign to monopolize an industry.
The choice is yours, be a whiny liberitarian and hope the marketplace works it out, or do the dirty work of cleaning up the mess that is the current political system.
--Mike--
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut asbestos enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo bodybuilding supplements asbestos consequat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nullamortgages facilisis at vero eros et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum zzril term life insurance delenit augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi. Nam asbestos liber tempor cum soluta nobis eleifend option congue nihil imperdiet doming id quod mazim placerat fac
Life Insurance in Canada
I think you need some help.
...because "hacker" sounds way sexier than "code drone."
It's good to see you've made it. Don't you love that Ms. Jackson song? Yeah, I know, it roolz.
Seriously, if you want a heads-up on web marketing, check out the porn industry today to see what you'll be doing in 2007.
I visited the weblog about 3 and 1/2 hours after this story was posted. There was only one ad showing in the AdSense box and it had the word "mesothelioma" in the title...
Sig cancelled due to lack of interest
I had performed a similiar expiriment with my blog http://spaces.msn.com/members/eswanson/Blog/cns!1p dVO89fmNKwqmwfervd6IGg!238.entry with great success. Utilizing the word "beta" that appeared on EVERY page of MSN Spaces, I was able to get one of the top placements for "Beta Fish". My expiriment quickly generated further ideas for targeted-Blog comments on other's Blogs with links back to the targeted-Blog entries.
The key was to simply make regular targeted-entries in the Blog and comments that did not "abuse" the target keywords. Search engines already do a "decent" job of preventing keyword abuse, but the Blog may be a current loophole.
Now, my expiriment was "not-for-profit" and I sincerely worry about the future abuse of this great technology, the Blog. Google, MSN, and other search engines already have a lot of work controlling the many factors for proper search-engine placement/ranking. It will be interesting to see what the future holds.
This isn't a new idea, but it still holds great potential.
--I smoked my sig.
Having worked in this space for the past few years, I can provide some insight. There are two parts to this issue, the person paying for clicks and the person generating the clicks.
The asbestos mesothelioma bandwagon started a few years ago when the government set aside a multi billion dollar trust fund for victims. In order to dip into the trust fund, a lawyer needs a valid victim of asbestos. The name of the common disease for those that suffer from asbestos exposure is mesothelioma. The average payout is $1M and the attorney commissions are 40%. This explains why attorneys are willing to pay high prices for clicks. Clicks go for as much as $100 on Overture however in practice you never see those high CPC rates. A year ago, $30 clicks were normal; today it's more like $0.25-$5. Even at $100/click, attorneys are taking in huge profits. Paying $10k for a case or 100 clicks at $100/click can be a good investment if you can generate $400k in attorney fees for that case.
Setting up a website to capture these pricey clicks is simple but doing it well can be nearly impossible. The asbestos/meso space is as competitive as it gets. Setting up a blog, creating doorway pages, links and content will only generate a little traffic. Doing well in meso requires aggressive SEO, solid optimization, links and content. Having a lot of traffic makes it easier to monetize. With enough traffic you can lease your site to law firms. AdSense is generally very inefficient so it makes sense to cut out the middle man. Kicking publishers out of Adsense will not stop these sites.
It is an interesting space. The huge settlements that lawyers have been able to generate has fueled a frenzy of SEO activity in the past year. The same activity is seen on TV and print media in Vioxx ads. The most surprising thing here is people are acknowledging online advertising and its ability to sell almost anything.
i sat there for 10 minutes looking for an ad and looking at the page source until i realized that i had ad block on. that sucker works great
... I wish I had thought of it!
Smoking is an expensive, slow, and unreliable method of suicide.
...since his page isn't showing up in the first, second, or even third page of a search for asbestos anyways.
What witty sig? I can't be witty, I'm a Methodist.
I only heard this secondhand, but, i heard that the more clicks the lesser the clicks are valued at? (to prevent exploitation), so he'll still make a fair amount of money, just not anything too crazy
(well you did...) :P
I'm somewhat sceptic about the adsense future. People who pay a visit to blogs are not really potential buyers/customers, at least if compared to people who search something on the web. So the quality of traffic to ads going from blogs may be questionable.
I suspect that Adsense future is not bright.
I've never charged for listings, or for use of the site. But over the years, I've gradually found ways to make it less of a financial drain on me. Banner ads are passe now, but donations, obviously - I take PayPal, and it covered a few months of bandwidth last year. Affiliate programs - that takes care of a couple more months. But AdSense has definitely been a boon.
The point I'm getting to, though, is that I can take my existing code (which I wrote myself) and within a day, set up a site with similar functionality about any other subject. It'd take me a little bit of time to populate it with data, but not too long, and no one's ever described my site as only "somewhat" valid. :)
Now my wife (again, trivially determined, no points for figuring out) wants to apply the technology to a site about one of her interest areas . I figure it can't hurt.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
It's amazing how Slashdotters regularly jump to the conclusion that sites seek or even want a Slashdotting. This guy posted an idea to his blog, and tried the idea out on another. Whole Lotta Nothing blogged the blogger, and then Cory Doctorow noticed the post and mentioned it on boingboing Doug Nelson noticed this someplace and posted the story to Slashdot, where Cowboy Neal thought it was interesting and shared it with the rest of us. Now Buffington will enjoy a surprise visit by hordes of razorbacked monkeys clicking links and eeeeking their outrage at the crass comercialism of people who do not live in their parent's basement.
When Google and the advertisers notice the flood of dry clicks-throughs, Buffington will probably loose his account and get to pay a nice bandwidth charge besides. Where does anyone see the motivation to "pay for the Slashdot link" as one poster implied?
[-- Trust the Monkey --]
He knew that unregulated markets will be captured by suppliers, for example. Most of his self-styled followers can't seem to get that point. Maybe they're too distracted waiting for the Invisible Handjob.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
Assuming every /.'er isn't clicking the ads on his site, I would guess all the top "asbestos" advertisters are now husting because their CTR is getting killed by all the impressions and no clicks.
So the top laywers either had to spend a ton to keep their position, or we've helped the crappy lawyer on page 3 get to the top after the others ran out of their daily budget. awesome!
Why cut IT when your office space costs $3/sf? gibso
I started a blog like this about a year ago... http://www.mesotheliomareporter.org . I even started one about mold remediation, but gave up on that one.
Now how in the hell are people saying his idea is original?
By the way, the reason that he isn't getting a high EPC (Earnings per click) is because of Google's smart pricing - they use certain metrics (such as user behavior and converion rate data) to automatically discount the price advertisers pay on contextual ads vs. search ads.