On being bought

After seeing ex machina" href="http://snowdeal.org/section/ex_machina/archives/2003_10_01_index.html#106579162010543063">this post (to answer that post directly, I would have been happy with $20 a month, since that's what I hoped for) and this other one about Google ads being the equivalent of a chilling effect bought and paid for, 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. Unless you're focusing on a specific thing, they're not going to pan out at all. If your blog is about anything and everything, you shouldn't run the ads and you won't have to worry about any terms of service agreements.

The ads only work on focused sites like my pvr blog, news about WiFi, news about gadgets, news about motorcycles, and the latest mac software news. Overall, those sites barely resemble a standard weblog, and don't have much in common aside from the formatting.

So on the subject of advertising money killing the independent free-form nature of blogging, I say it's much ado about nothing.