Google Whacked!
Posted on November 13, 2007 in the Ranting, Technology category
I thought I had escaped without injury during Google’s most recent round of Page Rank Updates. With so many big name bloggers enduring a drop in their page rank a couple of weeks ago, I was counting my lucky stars that Google’s attacks had missed me. But then reality struck . . .
I have been dropped from a 3 to a 2 - apparently for selling links on my site that pass Page Rank from my site to the linked site. What I didn’t realize was that this was against Big Brother’s . . I mean Google’s rules. What is ridiculous is that in the last 4 months since the last page rank update, my incoming links (all non-paid, natural links) have increased over 1000%. Yes, I now have 10 times more links than I did 4 months ago. In addition, my Alexa traffic has increased 400%. Even still, Google felt the need to punish me for making a few bucks from my blog. The way I see it is that they are mad at many bloggers for the simple fact that we are going through other advertising outlets to make our money. Instead of getting paid (at best) $0.15 per click from Google AdSense, I prefer making anywhere from $5 to $50+ for a single blog post.
Lets do the math here - I get an average of $15 for a paid post on this blog. If I were to try to make that same money using AdSense, it would take no less than 100 clicks on those annoying context ads that you see on most websites. So lets hear it from some of you that use AdSense. . . how many visitors do you need to actually get 100 clicks? 1000? 2000? Try about 10,000 visitors. To get a 1% click through rate (CTR) on your AdSense context ads, you will need 10,000 visitors. Even if you got 2% CTR, you would still need 5000 visitors and that is assuming you get $0.15 per click. I think its much more common to get under $0.10 per click.
Oh, and what about all that traffic? Well, if you are good enough to get 10,000 or more visitors, would you want to send them all away to some other site? Thats what I would be doing if I put AdSense on my blog - every click brings the visitor to another site. I don’t know about you, but I worked hard on this blog and I want every visitor to spend as much time as possible right here - why would I want them to go to some other site? You might ask why I sell blog posts that include a link to another site . . . isn’t that the same thing? Well, No. First, I get to approve every offer I take from an advertiser before I post about it on my blog. I also get to dictate the context in which the product or service being advertised is portrayed to my readers. I don’t take on blatant advertising in blog posts - I work them into some story to make them more genuine and provide value to both the advertiser and the reader. What do you get with Google AdSense? A bunch of ad blocks strewn across the page that both detracts from the aesthetics and, in some cases, the validity of the site.
Like many bloggers, I go through Pay Per Post (PPP) to find advertisers that will pay me to write about their product or service. Currently, PPP uses both Alexa score and Page Rank as the primary metrics by which advertisers can find the appropriate bloggers to write about their company and how much to pay the blogger for a post. With the recent slap from Google, many bloggers that use PPP have had their PR reduced to a point where advertising revenue (i.e. how much you get paid for a blog post) has dropped 50% or more. I think Izea/PPP CEO Ted Murphy may have seen this move from Google coming a mile away with their upcoming release of Argus which is to be their in house metrics tool. The way I understand it, Argus will provide all of the site information that a potential advertiser will need - taking the place of Alexa and Google. This seems like a great way to provide tremendous value to the advertiser by providing solid and reliable site data on which to establish a blog advertising campaign. In addition, this would be a way to protect bloggers from the wrath of Google. Its kind of a big FU to Google. We will see . . .
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Wow! Your blog has given me a whole new outlook on Adsense. I am so glad to find someone who feels so strongly about getting paid what we bloggers are really worth.
When I saw the PPP in your blog I thought that I had found my fellow PPP member. But it turns out that your PPP is Pay Per Post and my PPP is Pay-Per-Play. http://www.uscommunities.ws/ppp
I feel like I am in financial heaven now because both of these can help me pay bills and take care of my two sons as well. Thanks a lot.