Most Honest Blogger...

Golf tournaments often award a prize to the 'Most Honest' golfer.  It's not something you keep on the mantlepiece.   I may have earned a prize for the 'Most Honest Blogger'.




I use Google PPC advertising for my dyslexia site.  It's expensive - about 60 cents a click.  I have a $5/day budget, so I only get 8-9 clicks per day.

I only advertise on Google.com, not on any affiliates.  Of course, a click is a click, but I'm a terrible skeptic - I believe that site operators who depend on affiliate fees regularly click through the ads on their sites.

It's pretty easy to script a simple click-fraud program, although I suspect that they have to be pretty sophisticated to succeed for long.   But the rate of click fraud is running around 30%.

There are even businesses that allow site owners to outsource the task of clicking on affiliate ads, for example ClixSense.com.   Create a free account, log in, click “Browse Ads”, and get paid.

I don't know whether Google really cares.   A click is a click for them too.





Even on the Google.com site, many of my clicks that take one quick peek and vanish.   Some of them don't even stay long enough to download the full page.  

That's true at Facebook too, where I also buy advertising.   My ad is only visible to a small focused group (homeschoolers), and it clearly states what the site offers.  But I still get tourists popping in just for a peek.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm being triggered by 'browser accelerators' - browsers that provide higher speed by pre-fetching links while you are still reading the page, for example Netsonic.   That's an awfully efficient way to burn an advertising budget.

(There are anti-virus sites that offer to remove Netsonic, so I suggest you don't try it). 




Well, in two weeks as Most Honest Blogger, I have earned $0.00.

I liked having this dashboard, because it gave me an idea of how many people were visiting the blog (not many).

It was also fun to see what advertisers Google selected for me - they were amazingly well suited.



But I'm turning off the advertising.   It should be gone by the time you read this.