Anyone else having a hard time getting that ad for fiverr and logo creation on their My Home page to go away?
I have clicked the drop down to “Hide Forever” like 100 times and all that happens is that the spinny thing comes up and just spins and spins. The next time I go to the page, it’s still there and I try again.
It’s almost as if they don’t want you to be able to make it go away…
One of the many things you can do here on WordPress is earn money from your blog. There are (apparently) quite a few ways to do this. One of the more simple ways to earn money (at least I thought) was to show ads on your site, specifically on your posts. Seems simple enough, right? Write something. Post it. Ads show up on your page as people view it. You make money from them seeing the ads.
I did this a while back and I am starting to wonder if its a bit of a scam as there doesn’t really appear to be a rhyme or reason to how you earn money. Yes, I am aware that the more volume/traffic you have is supposed to get you more ads displayed, which I thought in turn would also create more money added to your account. It doesn’t, however, seem that this is actually the case.
I experimented a while back, August of 2022, to see if I could figure out how to earn more. What I found is that traffic doesn’t exactly mean you earn more. As such, I am beginning to wonder if using WordPress ads is a scam.
Here’s the thing: If an ad (any ad) is displayed anywhere on my blog, shouldn’t I get paid? They are allowed to insert an ad in my content – literally renting space on my site to display an ad that a company paid them to display. Forget the whole “bidding” thing. Volume shouldn’t matter. If an ad takes space on my site, I should get paid (at minimum) $0.01 per ad. But it looks like they get to rent space for any ad for free, even though they were paid for the advertising by the company purchasing space. If they are randomly generated and randomly displayed, there is nothing to really debate here. If this post has two ads displayed each time it is viewed, I should get paid for the two ads displayed during each view.
But, apparently it doesn’t work that way. Misleading, isn’t it?
A few shots to show a comparison. The first set of pics displays one of the best months I have seen while having ads on my site. As you can see, “Ads Served” doesn’t necessarily mean more income since September 2020 had more ads served but October 2020 had fewer ads but more income. Seems rather random, doesn’t it?
So, that sure makes one wonder when looking at how this whole thing works. Doesn’t it? Here are the test results from (basically) two year later.
August of 2022 saw 846 ads served – the most ever since I set this up – and yet was only paid $0.01. Notice the month prior (July 2022) only 206 ads were served but the earnings were the same as the following month. Yet, June of 2022 saw even fewer ads served but there was triple the earnings.
Got questions now? Yeah, me too. But I am leaning towards WordPress cheating the people they “rent” space from.
They need to pay for ALL ads served. Pure and simple.
Facebook, you are doing it to yourself. The revolt against you and your policies, oh and your very very underhanded and sneaky use of people’s data, are going to do you in. You still have an audience, but people are growing tired of being suspicious of everything you do in the background and they just want some safety and privacy from your all invasive practices.
No one wants to be bombarded by advertising. No one wants to be tracked everywhere they physically go and no one wants to be tracked where they go digitally either. So, this little deal you got going on here shouldn’t fool too many people…except that it likely will.
Perhaps Apple is actually trying to protect people and their data. Perhaps they are just making room for their own tracking and advertising. I haven’t a clue. But what I do know, is that I like the way Apple has shown that they are trying to protect people’s data. That goes a long way in trust, something Facebook doesn’t have and likely won’t have (for sure from me).
Facebook is scrambling to adjust over new alerts coming from Apple in the near future that will let people adjust how they get advertising from Facebook by opting out of tracking (or in, depending on how you view this approach). In essence, it will block tracking data so you don’t get “personalized” ads. I am all for that!
Actually, I don’t like ads at all. I’d rather not have my feed filled with ads that some company thinks I might be interested in. I could totally do without. I’d even consider paying a small fee to go ad free. But, at the same time, if I am going to pay a fee to not see ads I would also expect that I am not going to be censored for my views, thoughts, beliefs, etc.
Apple and Facebook have taken an adversarial approach to how they are going to work together and I like it. Big tech and other companies should have to fight over customers and the more people make them work for their dollars the better off we are as consumers. But we as consumers need to be smart about how we give our business to these companies in order to make them compete for it, otherwise we get all-encompassing monopolies who then dominate the marketplace and make up new rules and charge ridiculous fees because they have no one to oppose them.
I like what Apple is doing here. I hope they aren’t just trying to make space for their own scheme. But for now, I am glad to see Facebook about to take it in the nose for their privacy and data collection practices.
They actually deserve it.
Photo by Jason Appleton on Pexels.com
There are few things more irritating than playing whack-a-mole on news websites! I mean seriously, why does this have to be such an annoying thing?
OK, to be clear, I am talking about all of the pop-ups, over-sized headers, loud videos, video ads, etc. you get when you visit just about any sort of news site. Whether it is a tech website, an entertainment website, or something else, there are just about always two or three pop-ups that have to be closed to get a clear view of the page.
Annoying! I say. Annoying!
I use an ad blocker, but even that doesn’t get everything. Sometimes it isn’t a third party ad. Sometimes it is even the website sharing it’s own information about something else they would like you to look at. More annoyance.
Why is this necessary? Yes, of course, I know…they make money by clicks and crap like that. Some websites I have just stopped going to (they used to be good ones and I liked them) because I get tired of the same “dance of the pop-ups.” I like whack-a-mole, but not really that much.
All I can say to anyone who might be reading this – STOP IT! You are seriously damaging your name, brand, reputation, whatever by continuing this practice.
*This applies to blogs as well. If you have ads on your blog, make sure you aren’t turning off your readers by having stupid crap like described above.*
Piss and Moan 