Commercial-free Viking Pundit
When I first started this blog, I decided to avoid clogging up my page with banner ads and Blogads and other revenue-raising doo-dads. This isn’t a knock on other blogs that use them since I know that their production costs are higher than my free Blogspot page. But as somebody still using dial-up (I know, I know), I’m sensitive to extras that slow down loading times and detract from the political philosophy of my blog. (Side note: I always chuckle at the disclaimer at the top of Country Store: “If some of these ads are foolish, please bear in mind that they are autoselected by Google, not the proprietor.”)
However, since the election, Viking Pundit has been steadily gaining in popularity and I’ve been starting to wonder if I’m missing a golden opportunity by eschewing blog ads. But then the whole sorry spectacle of Andrew Sullivan’s “bloghucksterism” and abrupt retirement put it out of my mind again. See Michelle Malkin’s post on Sully titled “The Real Dish” that would have been better named “Take the Money and Run.”
As for me, I’m going to remain commercial-free, remove Sullivan from my blogroll, and head over to Gay Patriot for all my gay Republican commentary.
5 comments:
Woo hoooo!
I think ads are not a big deal, and you certainly have the traffic for them.
What is vile about Sully is that it is a begathon, not advertising, premised on hyping of bandwidth costs that the unwary might not know is a complete crock. It worked especially well a few years ago when bloggers were fewer and awareness lower, but even I questioned the bandwidth claim the first time I saw it, before I started my own blog.
As for dialup users... I always feel mildly guilty about that when I post my Sadie pictures and, especially, other pictures. But oh well. If my father hasn't complained, being on dialup and reading most days, it can't be that bad.
God bless you, but let me know if I should send you some money for broadband...
--Carl
Yer missing out on the big bucks fer sure!
Actually not with Google Ads in my experience, but they are a source of endless minor amusement. Aside from cheesy hustles, there are UN boosters who buy a full strip graphic, new bloggers with big egos who buy ads for their 3 post blogs, the political T-shirt vendors, and endless varieties of "Country Store" merchandise. The most fun is watching the ads change in response to my latest ranting. Of course, "fun" is highly personal, but things are generally slow around here.
I've been thinking that we need a VRWC project to visit each other's blogs and click the obviously leftoid Google ads, but frankly I seem to tune the ads out most of the time as do my readers.
While I am thinking about it - there is a whole industry related to writing about topics that have high keyword value for Google. I don't know what tools Google provides to their advertisers since I have never ventured over there, but their competitor, Overture, has http://www.pixelfast.com/overture/ which tells you the value of words you enter. (Too bad it's not a top 100 list!) In any case, forget the United Nations! From now on, I'm only writing about DVD's on Viagra and vacations for singles at Club Med or in Aspen.
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