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.
Not helpful. Not helpful at all.
Why is that when I click on the “Search” tab on the Reader page that 90% of the stuff that comes up is related to one of the dumbest sports on the planet – basketball? Why is it that I get a lot of results to basketball, hockey, soccer (football), and other things I have never, EVER, searched for? I don’t click on them either so why do the results continue to return things I am not interested in?
Anyone else notice this?
How are the search results determined? They certainly aren’t related to any tags or categories I use in my own blog, so where or how does it work?
I have tried searching for things I am interested on to change the results and it hasn’t helped at all.
So, I get a sucky search. Completely useless for finding new blogs I might be interested in.
Way to go WordPress. So helpful.
Anyone else kinda feel like when they talk about certain topics that they are getting shadow banned? I am starting to get a bit suspicious of WordPress.
For those who don’t know what a “shadow ban” is, you can read more about it in lots of different places. You hear about this taking place on lots of different social media platforms & accounts these days – mostly in regards to topics related to events, facts, data, and personalities of significance over the last 2+ years.
I don’t know if there is a way to really tell on the WP service, but I have noticed that certain topics definitely get fewer clicks/views than other topics. Maybe it’s because people are bored with the topics. Maybe people aren’t stimulated by certain subjects any longer. Maybe people are just to overly apathetic so the disinterest wins out. I don’t know.
Could it be the Categories I am using, or the tags? Is it the actual subject matter? I haven’t a clue. I guess I could try reposting a blog with different tags and categories and see if there is any different response.
Anyone else feel like they don’t get as much interest when it comes to certain “controversial” issues?
Over the weekend Piss and Moan reached a milestone! This is kinda significant but not at the same time. I am having a hard time deciding.
Should I just be excited because of the number? I mean, 500 is kind of a milestone and in the last couple months the site has been “growing.”
But on the other hand, as I have mentioned before, most of the 500 are likely not even real people. They are most likely BOT sites that are generated for “likes” and “follows,” an issue I am sure you all have seen too.
So, I am going to have to choose to view it with some satisfaction I suppose.
The issues to Piss and Moan about this last year has been overwhelming, to say the least. Rest assured, I’m not going anywhere and there will me more to get off my chest. Keep on following and spread the word!
of spam.
No, not the meaty and gooey pork product, though I do love me some of that stuff fried and then put into a grilled cheese sammich! But, I digress. Distracted by food. That’s easy to do…
Anyway, I have had an increase in followers the last week or two. While it is nice to see that number go up, it’s kind of irritating to know that a large number of those are just really spam accounts. They aren’t real followers. Just garbage producers of crappy, repetitive, and unhelpful marketing advice and products. Oh, and throw in the motivational and weird stuff too. You would think that WordPress would have a way of detecting and eliminating this garbage.
Someone once said there was a way to limit this (I think it was something about requiring an email address, but I can’t remember for sure), but at the time I didn’t want to do it because I wanted to give the best, most wide-open access possible. Maybe that is a bad idea, maybe not.
Anyway, rather than going that direct, I thought I would try an experiment. Wanna help with the social media test, an unofficial survey of sorts? It’s gonna require that you do something…
If you are a real follower and actually read the blog, leave a comment – a very specific comment – “Not spam.”
Seriously, I wanna see if this works. I may use this to weed out the followers who aren’t really following. So, if you wanna stay in the know, DO IT!
Did you see that post from yesterday? The one where I asked people not to vote if…
I am guessing probably not.
Wonder why I ask? Because I believe WordPress is suppressing it.
I can’t think of any other reason why it wouldn’t have gotten at least five times as many views (I don’t ask for much, really). Honestly, wouldn’t people be interested just to see what it is about? I click on stuff to read all the time just because I wanna know what point of view the author is coming from, even if I don’t agree. Am I the only person who does this now? Do you only read the headline and move on without giving it even another thought or shred of curiousity?
As of this morning, it only had TWO views. Of those two views, none of them were from the Reader – those people (roughly, there is a lot of spam) who actually have followed the blog. There are no views on it today yet either.
I can only come to one conclusion…it’s being suppressed because it is telling people not to vote. Well, not exactly, but essentially that is the suggestion if you can’t meet certain qualifications, most of which are pretty straight-forward and common sense.
I guess asking for people who are educated, well informed, and have common sense to vote is wrong.
Interesting. How the politics of free speech play out on social media and other platforms, right?
Blogging and all this stuff. I realize this is gonna be a first world problem, but it seems like a pretty easy fix and it’s hard to believe WordPress hasn’t already done it.
There is a process you go through to help drive traffic to your by using Categories and Tags. Then people who look for those specific topics are alerted, to some degree, that there is a blog post related to it. In the “old” version of getting ready to publish your blog out to the interwebs and make it public, you could select these things and it would tell you how many of each you were using on your blog.
As far as I can tell, this “new block editor” version of WordPress doesn’t do that. I have no quick way of telling how many Categories or Tags I’ve used unless I constantly scroll back and forth to count them.
This seems like a basic and easy fix to implement. Like seriously.
The picture above shows the Categories and Tags tabs. As of right now, I have Categories attached to this very blog I am writing, but you won’t know it until it is expanded.
So, why hasn’t it been set up that when the Categories or Tags is collapsed that it shows how many are under each tab without having to expand it? It could show up, right on the tab next to the tab title (like the image below – highlight added for emphasis).
So, when both the Categories and Tags tabs are collapsed, there is an easy way to see how many of each are being used.
Simple!
Too much to ask? Am I knit-picking? Am I easily irritated? (wait, don’t answer that…)
Or is this a function that they just didn’t think about? I find that hard to believe. I can’t believe they haven’t had feedback on this yet.
What do you all think? Did WordPress miss the boat on this feature?
Good grief. Have you taken a look at your comment spam folder?
It’s kind of ridiculous how much comment spam gets generated! How do you even spam comments in the first place? There’s got to be a better way for WordPress to keep this from happening than just throwing them in a folder.
I guess I am glad they catch all this stuff instead of me having to wade through it every day; however, if there was a legitimate comment that actually gets caught in there, how would I ever find it? I know I have had it happen and luckily I caught it early enough before the folder exploded.
Why do people do this in the first place? How do companies combat this crap?
Photo by Oleg Magni on Pexels.com
No, I am not talking about doing that childhood favorite of skipping down the road obnoxiously swinging your arms, smiling, and just generally being carefree.
I am talking when someone purposely and obviously skips (avoids?) you but manages to respond to everyone else.
I don’t make it habit of leaving comments on other people’s blogs just so to leave a comment. I am selective and I try to put thought into it so that it can generate a conversations. I also make every effort to respond to comments left on my blog as I believe engagement is a good thing (at least when the comment isn’t purposely malicious).
Anyway, I have noticed that certain bloggers out there are really good at leaving a comment, a thank you, a thumbs up, etc. for the people who take time to comment on their blog. I think that is great, especially if there are a lot of comments, because it takes time. Returning the love is a good thing.
However, it also becomes a rather conspicuous omission when they fail to respond as well. As an example, a blog I made a comment to yesterday had 48 comments as of this morning. Now, we know that WordPress (for some reason) counts all comments, including the ones from the author, so really there were fewer than 48 comments from people who read the blog. As I scrolled through this morning to see if I received a comment (maybe I had missed a notification?), I noticed that every single comment the blog received go a response except mine. In some cases, there were multiple responses from the author.
Hmmm, weird.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not butthurt here. I just think it is rather interesting because it is SO OBVIOUS.
What habits of bloggers to you find annoying? Do you have any that you really appreciate?
Piss and Moan 