Sashi’s Home
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BIG FREAKING MAJOR CLARIFICATION:This post is not an attack on Google Adsense, nor is it an attack on any blogger who does or doesn’t use Google ads. It’s not an attack on PPS and I’m not requesting anyone to remove their Google ads, boycott Google ads or stop pinging PPS. My meaning is extremely simple: I’m removing the ads because they were making me feel greedy and envious of other successful ad-driven blogs. I like all those blogs and more, and I don’t want to feel envious anymore - hence this decision. Thank you.
You see them everywhere nowadays.
Most blogs - especially many of the ones that ping PPS - have them somewhere in their pages. Some display them in a corner, out of the way of their content. Some display them prominently, right in your face.
All Most of them share the same dream - making money from blogging. (Edit: Alright. Some put them up because they can.)
Once thought to be an impossible dream, it has become a target within touching distance, thanks to money-making-bloggers like Darren, Jacob and our very own LCF.
Google Adsense ads have become such a fixture in blogs that it almost seems odd when you come across a blog that doesn’t have it.
And that’s ok. We all try to make the best of our resources, so there’s absolutely nothing wrong with placing ads in the hope of generating some pocket money.
But then, a few blogs have been really going at it aggressively - to the extent of perhaps committing fraud.
There have been an increasing number of bloggers - here and abroad - whose Adsense accounts have been suspended (meaning their ads got deactivated by Google) for reasons that mainly seem to be related to fraudulent clicks.
All of these bloggers cried foul, of course. Some deny any wrongdoing; some claim that there’s a conspiracy to frame them; some, incredibly enough, place the blame entirely on Google by saying that the Billion-dollar Internet Giant didn’t want to pay out the coupla hundred dollars the bloggers are owed. Yeah, right, that’s probably it.
(Edit: I should be more clear here. I’m not accusing anyone of fraud. I mean that’s what Google seems to be implying. I’m also aware of the possibility that there may be vindictive and just plain mean individuals who could be sabotaging honest bloggers’ Adsense performance by repeatedly clicking on the ads until it trips Google’s fraud alert.)
People seem to forget that Google is a business entity, and like any other business entity, are not in the business of getting screwed. Their clients - advertisers - don’t like getting screwed either. The advertisers pay good money to Google to help them market their products and services, and they pay out even more when people come to their sites via these ads. Google began sharing some of these revenues with website and blog owners and publishers who helped Google display these ads and reach out to a greater public.
Unfortunately, a few people seem to be forgetting who their paymasters are. It’s as if they should paid money just because they’re displaying Google ads. And then there’re those who claim to blog for blogging’s sake, but really, they’re in it for the money.
LCF’s blog is a good example of an ad-driven blog; plus, unlike certain bloggers, LCF doesn’t pretend to be anyone he isn’t - his aim is to be a pro-blogger. That’s ok. The important thing is that he DOES have good content.
Some ad-driven blogs don’t. There’s this one blog
that puzzles me. His content are just mostly duplications of stuff found elsewhere. No big deal, many bloggers (including me) do that. And yet, not only does he get tonnes of unique visits, he makes quite a healthy amount of dough from Google. And this for a Malaysian blogger who’s been blogging for just 6 months.
Does that sound like envy to you? It probably is. I’m not the only one who’s envious - judging by the recent furor over his alleged ’spamming’ on PPS, quite a substantial number of PPS bloggers have had their feathers ruffled by this upstart. I cannot speak for them, but I think I know why I’m annoyed: it’s because I had Google ads longer than he’s been blogging and I’ve only made about US$50 to date.
And before any Adsense expert starts lecturing why this is so, let me pre-empt you: I KNOW why this so. My content doesn’t really have any marketable worth. Most of what I write has no commercial appeal, and the ads reflect this, ergo readers are not compelled to click. (I’ve been wanting to add “ergo” somewhere in my posts, and now I have.)
As time went on, I got more envious and more greedy - I tried switching templates in order to maximize ad real-estate. I placed ads in prominent places so that readers cannot avoid it - which I’m sure annoyed quite a few readers out there. I’m sorry for that.
Sometimes, due to server connections, the loading of the Google ads end up slowing the entire blog loading time. This is not a big problem, but if it has inconvenienced anyone, I’m sorry for that too.
I’m not the only one whose greed and envy has been growing. This disease has been infecting many other bloggers, and these emotions have been joined by hate and anger.
Bloggers are slagging off other bloggers, lambasting them from every corner, creating a level of animosity within the “PPS blogiverse” not seen since the occasional Tim-Yang-bashing-sessions.
It’s even forced LCF to announce
he’ll stop pinging PPS anymore. (Not that it matters to me, since I subscribe to his RSS feed anyway…)
As Eyeris said in this PPS announcement/post: “going through PPS is just no fun anymore…”
I don’t know if all this is going to get nastier, but I certainly don’t want to be part of this hostility.
As such, I am withdrawing all Google ads from this blog. I don’t like feeling jealous, or envious of anyone (including the afore-mentioned new blogger - and I must say this - despite the fact that his contents are not original, they sometimes DO tend to be interesting: like the Flash game, which I find to be fun, in a juvenile, red-neck sorta way… ) and I hope that removing all these ads will help me get to grips with this simple truth: I did not start blogging for the money.
sashi-isms is not a vehicle for revenue-generation. It is not a means to exploit the commercial opportunities afforded by the web.
sashi-isms is me. And since I’m not the kind of person who’d walk around plastered in ads, neither should this blog.
Bye, Google ads. It’s been fun. Not.
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