both
matt haughey
and
elwyn jenkins
noticed my entry
on being bought
and their responses lead me to believe that i probably hit the
publish button a little too soon. in my defense, i was getting
ready to get head out of town for marathon, slapped together a
brief post and hit publish.
to clarify, in
my original post
, when i wrote, “…it’s not hard to draw conclusion that the
difference that could make the difference is rooted in the fact
that one author is making enough money to buy a loaded aeron chair
every month and one is making “$85…” – the specific “difference” i
was contemplating was related to each author’s emphasis on the
importance [ or lack thereof ] of the
unsavory adsense
terms and conditions
. my chain of reasoning went something like this – matt doesn’t
appear to think the terms of service issues are a big deal, but
elwyn does.
matt
makes more adsense money on
pvrblog
than
elwyn
does on
microdoc news
. therefore – and i’ll rephrase and slightly moderate my original
comments; from my perspective, it’s disconcerting to think that the
difference in attitudes towards the terms of service issues could
be partially explained by the fact that one author is making enough
money to buy a loaded aeron chair every month and one is making
“$85”.
if elwyn was making 10 times more money and matt 10 times less,
would their respective stances on the adsense terms of service be
exactly the same? what about 20 times more money? 50 times? 100?
i find
matt’s response
even more confusing. he thinks i’ve missed the point entirely:
“…I think both authors are missing a vital point in
what I wrote last week.The bottom line for all this discussion is simple:
google ads aren’t designed for typical blogs.
Maybe I made the mistake of calling my article “blogging for
dollars” since it’s not exactly blogging in the classic sense. I
don’t post about the cheese sandwich I ate earlier, I don’t post
about politics, and the site isn’t a mirror reflection of me. I’m
not the least bit worried about Google’s terms of service because
I’m not blogging my thoughts on advertising systems at the site.
It’s totally focused on gadget freakdom and not at all a personal
site.People worried about carrying Google ads on their personal site and
wondering if they would be silenced over it should worry more about
how pointless of an endeavor the ads will be.”
the appropriateness and effectiveness of adsense
ads is a completely separate issue from that raised by the terms
and conditions under which you are willing to dispay the ads.
whether or not the ads are displayed on a “personal” or a “topical”
blog is irrelevant and matt’s rationale that he’s, “…not the
least bit worried about Google’s terms of service because I’m not
blogging my thoughts on advertising systems at the site…” is the
most perplexing to me. oddly, it’s almost as if he’s saying that it’s
o.k. to accept the terms of service since he can always blog his
thoughts somewhere else without suffering the [monetary]
repurcussions.
to be clear, i don’t think the problem is that advertising
per se
will “kill blogging”. indeed, i
applied for and was accepted to the adsense program
. i
recognized
that the adsense ads didn’t make sense on
ex machina
which is a “personal blog”, but it could work well on the
{bio,medical}
informatics
section. you can’t get more “topical” than a blog that’s devoted to
the bioinformatics. interestingly, since i have a “topical” blog
and a “personal” blog under one roof, what would happen if i only
put the ads on the informatics site and criticize to my heart’s
content on the personal site? again, the issue is not with
advertising or making a buck, but rather the terms and conditions under which
we accept to that buck, regardless of the “topic specificness” of
the blog that is generating the buck.
when i wrote the original post, i was wondering on a very personal
level whether my decisions would be influenced by money. i’ve
already
stated my intentions
to not run adsense ads until the terms are changed. but this is
easy because i haven’t made a dime on
{bio,medical}
informatics
. would my answer be different if i could pay my hosting fees?
definately not. would it be different if i could buy a new aeron
chair every month? probably not. would it be different if i could
pay my mortgage every month with adsense benjamins? i’d like to
think not. would it be different if i could pay for an office and
employees and a private jet? i’d like to think not, but it’s gets a
little more difficult to say it without pausing for long,
reflective thoughts.
i can hear many of you groaning and telling me to get off my damn
soapbox. it’s only a few bucks and they’re only saying that i can’t
talk about terms and conditions, right? but what if
google
decided to impose a few more conditions on particularly popular
sites? what if they decided that
pvrblog
could only stay in the adsense program if we refrained from posting
negative posts of products from their most lucrative advertisers?
what if they tried to prevent you or i from stating that they had
put us under the new conditions? ridiculous? a few weeks ago, i
would have said it was preposterous to say that
google
would impose any restrictions on what you can and can’t publish on
your blog, topical or not.
as i said before the issue is not with making a buck, but rather
the terms and conditions under which we accept the buck. as
elwyn
points out in his
response
“Newspapers have long had this problem to solve . . .
and the newspapers who have solved it best are the prestigious
papers that people really listen to and take notice. Those that are
frequently bought by their advertisers are not taken seriously for
very long.”