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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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/
How much did you pay slashdot for your link?
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.
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.
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.
Let's be realistic, who can spell "mesothelioma" and "pneumoconiosis"? He would be limiting his market.
What keeps me going is my inertia.
Piquepaille, though, at least handcrafts his Slashdot submissions and selects particular stories. In general, I don't understand why people bitch about him so much. He submits stories and the editors choose to accept them. I find them (almost all incremental engineering advances) uniformly uninteresting, but such complaints should be directed at the editors.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
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
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.
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.
I wondered about posting something similar, but wasn't sure that grandparent poster was taking as his thesis "Slashdot is about news for nerds and stuff that matters". Posting links to links to news (or links to unimportant non-news) rather than directly to the news does seem to be the antithesis of what /. should be.
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
What the hell are you talking about man? "show some restraint" to make for "happy advertisers"
I don't want happy advertisers. I want poor, miserable, broke, pissed off, starving advertisers. I want payback for each and every time an advertiser interrupted my favourite television program, nagged me with an intrusive web popup, or made me wait half an hour in a cinema for the film I paid to see. I want advertisers screwed over badly for each and every time a newspaper or magazine editor altered a story for the benefit of the advertisers rather than tell the truth to the poor bastards who payed money for what was sold to them as 'news'. I want advertisers kicked in the gonads for each and every scenic view that got spoiled with a billboard. I want junk snailmailers to have their nipples plugged into the electricity mains. I want email spammers tortured to death and hung from landmarks, as an example to others. I want telemarketers to have their jaws wired shut. I want the entire fucking advertising industry hurt, spat on, derided, kicked, punched, beaten and made to live as social outcasts. I want advertisers to die lonely, sad deaths in grotty bedsits, and to lie undiscovered for 2 years until the neighbours complain about the smell. I want their vast quantities of fucking mental pollution eradicated from every part of this planet, and them with it, if need be.
So if clicking on a weblink for no reason costs these bastards money, then good. Hope the costs add up, to the point of bankruptcy.
I'm thinking that what I need is a SETI-style screensaver thang that just pinged these ads silently while I sleep until these advertisers give the fuck up and fuck off out of my goddamn life.
Sorry, I tend to get carried away when the subject of advertising comes up.
um... OK. (moves away slowly from the scary person) Must resist the urge to comment on how advertising subsidizes the stuff it "interrupts". Most of us are willing to accept that bargain, but whatever floats your boat.
-Tut
Health-Hack.com