I suppose that you have noticed that there is one advert at the bottom of all the pages of this weblog. The adverts are supplied by Google AdSense which (I quote) “is a fast and easy way for website publishers of all sizes to display relevant Google ads on their website’s content pages and earn money. Because the ads are related to what your visitors are looking for on your site  or matched to the characteristics and interests of the visitors your content attracts  you’ll finally have a way to both monetize and enhance your content pages.”
In addition to AdSense, my personal bookshelf also features Amazon Associates links. As an associate, (I quote) “[I] drive internet traffic to Amazon.com through specially formatted links that allow [them] to track sales and other activity. [I] earn up to 10% in referral fees on all qualifying revenue made through [my] links.”
To sum up:
- I earn a little money when someone clicks on a Google AdSense advert.
- I earn a little money when someone buys a book on Amazon.com by clicking on a link found in my personal bookshelf page.
Am I ashamed of this?
No because I think I deserve a small reward from time to time to compensate for the amount of energy I put everyday to keep this website alive :-)
It is in moments like these that I bless my Firefox Adblock plugin.
Funny you say that because when I activated AdSense on this weblog, I didn’t see any advert and I obviously thought I had done something wrong.
But I quickly realised that it was because I had previously blocked adverts from Google using Adblock :-)
By the way, today is a fantastic day for me : I’ve just earnt my first $0.14 from Google!!!
Hurray ;-)
Muahaha. I will be quoting you on this soon. :p
Ces choses arrivent même aux meilleurs :-)
:p
A post randomly found and randomly commented:
I do not use adsense myself. It’s the dark side of google. The place where all the evil they don’t do is done.
But I was wondering… last time I checked the minimum payout for adsense was $100.00 and payment was made only by cheque (it may have changed since then). Have you ever reached that minimum and if so have you recieved a cheque within a reasonable time limit.
from my experience with ad networks, all the cheques I was issued from a company the US never reached Mauritius. I’ve verified with the ad networks themselves; the lost cheques were never cleared. so lost in the mail is the only explanation.
It would seem that the US post does not acknowledge the existence of mauritius (same thing happened with postcards I was sent…). so if you have not reached the minimum payout, you should be worried that even if you do, you’ll never see that money…. (these days I only trust bank transfers, paypal being the scum of the internet)
Interesting info, Yaasir.
As a matter of fact, I’ve not (yet) reached $100 so I can’t comment. I’ll let you know.
@Yassir
As a matter of fact, I’ve indeed got my adsense cheque & I didn’t get any problems with the post until now. (Got a 2nd cheque last week) :P
(posted about it here)
There’s an option about a secured fast cheque transfer, but you need to pay for that. But the normal mail comes fast enough – around 2 weeks.
With all ad networks I’ve tried Google is obviously still the best, even if they don’t reveal what percentage they take off each click (75-25?)
& I had to put my payment on hold coz the banks in Mauritius levy a flat rate of Rs. 100 per cheque! :|
Paypal sucks… you can’t send payments into your Mauritian account coz Mauritius is still not “safe” for them to process transactions. & if you open a US account, you’ll need to activate it using a US credit card. :(
google must use a better postal service. and you got your cheque from sweden. so that counts. for any other US based ad network, you should watch out.
me, my cheques had to go the hard way, through the US postal service. and these guys Do Not Believe In Foreign Countries. It Simply Does Not Occur To Them That There Could Be People Outside The United States. Read this for some enlightenment. I eventually convinced the ad network that 2 months after they had send the cheque, I really couldn’t have received them. I had to mount a small scale paypal scam to get my money back.
It’s really annoying that with all that talk of cyberisland, one of the major hurdles in the path of an exciting e business is that they get your address right or not….
and I don’t think google’s adsense is the best though. It may be what pays for most of the free stuff from google. but its operation is highly dodgy (and the advertiser side, adwords, is plain scary). People really do get kicked out of adsense. often on claims that some magical algorithm they use decided that the publishers were doing click fraud coincidentally when their revenue had just hit the $100.00 mark.
Hey Avinash how much dollars have you reached with your adsense till now?
Still less than $100 I think (I can’t access Adsense right now… it seems that there is a small technical problem)