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.'"
If I can make money from the lawyers instead of them making money off of me, how is that a bad thing?
I'm just disappointed that I didn't think of it first. Good job Michael.
And they said zombies weren't real!
Everyone go and leave some nice friendly comments.
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"
1. I am blocking ad. --No profit.
2. Advertiserers set budgets The budget of today wil totally be used up. --small profit.
3. Google is vague about actual payouts, a lot of clicks on 1 days and no other days will set off all kind of red flags.. i doubt he will be paid out for this day. -- no profit.
4. hosting. Today his traffic costs will skyrocket. -- bye bye profit.
Why was this put up on /.? He even *admits* to being a fraud - "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" so what the hell is his "valid service?"
There's nothing interesting about spamming, nor is there anything interesting about setting up bogus websites that have no content on them. There is SO MUCH CRAP out there in google results that its hard to find real results - most are just filler pages exactly like this person is describing. A page with keywords and banner ads. Its been around for a while - nothing about this is "news" or "interesting." Its worthless pollution.
It's a "built for Adsense" site, which is against the rules. He will not be paid and probably end up banned from Adsense altogether.
If you take the assumption "absolutely everything revolves around money", your point may be valid. But then your life would suck.
Google can't just not pay him for traffic. Just because it's a slashdotting doesn't mean that that's not legitimate traffic. Do you see ads on other sites that get slashdotted? They get paid for those!
Let me ask you this: what are you smoking?
Just because he's playing the system doesn't mean google can just not pay him. The can cancel his account, but they have to pay him what he earned.
My other car is first.
using highly automated content aggregation tools
If you could write a couple of Perl scripts and automatically populate the blog, and have it generate (say) $100/day, wouldn't you? Heck, I know I would!
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.
I just paid a visit to Asbestos Blog. Quite a few slashdotters have been there and left their insightful comments.
For those who care, it was generated using typepad and has a single pixel gif to track visitors.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
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
Don't get me wrong, I think it's ingenious -- and it rides the line nicely. I just wonder if Google will try to squirm out of paying on the basis of their fairly vague TOS.
Personally, I think doing so would be at least somewhat evil, which runs against the Google credo, so I'm not saying he's doomed. He may well be rewarded handsomely for his efforts.
I am from a small, grease-loving country in the north called Ca-na-da.
Blogs, in general, are already way more suspect than TV news, the random writings of random people?
Allow me to clarify. At no point did I ever say that blogs were as "trustworthy" as say, the Encyclopedia Britannica(EB).
However, the television news once was considered on par, or even better than the old dusty information in the EB. Today, educated folk still use EB, and citing it still maintains the full respect that it once did. Those same people also make sure to get news from around the world, paying little attention to the blatherings on the major US news networks.
Blogs right now are in a similar position. Their authoritative quality is rather low; meaning that I wouldn't automatically cite someone's blog as the word of god on an issue. This is the point many people responded in sarcasm with. A blog does contain an air of "actual experience/opinion" on whatever the topic is. Much like the television news, if we suspect the opinion is bought and paid for by an invisible spook known as "THEM", it will lose its value in this context as well. About all blogs have going for them as information sources, I might add.
~Rebecca
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 --]