Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Basicly I think a lot of the users on here are looking at this whole adsense scheme the wrong way, and that their greed, lack of imagination, and haste simply halves their chances of success, and adds yet more trash to an already saturated internet. Less greed = more success imo. Does anyone else agree with my little rant or am I all alone with these thoughts heh?
Carl.
If adsense had been closely monitored then the only sites using it now would be quality approved sites, and the payouts would be much higher for those publishers - there wouldnt be any need for smartpricing for one thing. Adsense has messed up all the search engines, not just google.
But things are too far gone now, google cant drag it back now they have shareholders.
People will always jump on something they think will make them easy money, I wouldnt blame the people doing it, I blame google who should never have allowed a position where its so easy to throw up adsense spam.
forget about the real purpose of the internet and websites
Just playing the devil's advocate here - what exactly is the real purpose of the Internet and websites? Last time I saw it, the Internet was more or less a loose connection of servers all communicating using the HTTP protocol (or similar stuff).
But I agree with you - the amount of useless spam has shot into new heights. That's why I see a big market for quality content and services in the future, spam-free, useful and relevant to users, coming from authority publishers.
My prediction: The one who can free users from the burden of all the spam and useless stuff will be king. The goal has to be to provide a spam-free user experience to consumers, using whatever technology is around/necessary.
This does not mean that there will be no advertising, but that the ads are relevant for the user experience.
(In a strictly non-denominational, non-gender-specific, pro-/mono-/multi-/a- theistic way, of course.)
Some of us cared about "quality" and our sites LONG before AS even existed.
But also remember that AS was created in part to support the monetisation of small sites created by small publishers for the greater good... So adding more (good) content in the hope of a bit more money is not evil of itself!
Rgds
Damon
An then ofcourse there are others who use it as a pure money vehicle but I think their days are numbered.
I know a person who has a website about his favorit hobby. He's basically a poor writer, but there is tons of good information on his website. Is that quality? What if, contrary to your own opinion, someone dubs your site as being of poor quality. What if that someone had the power to judge and determine that your site wasn't worthy of being on the internet...
As for sites that are just links, or copy copied from somewhere else...Even though I do not do that, I wouldn't want someone to take that right to publish away from me. Freedom is a great thing.
In addition to my main site that took me years to build the content(graphics), I have a "B" site that has 50 free articles(backlinks included) that would be of real interest to my users. No I didn't write the articles but I went through scores of reprint article sites and read thousands of articles in my niche and only used the most well done and relevant works. It was more of a expansion for me and a service for my visitors.
[edited by: Khensu at 1:18 pm (utc) on Aug. 25, 2006]
Say you spent a month writing a very useful, important site with tons of unique information. The someone comes along and copies your content *almost* word for word and gains the spot above you in Google for a very popular term thus taking 75% of your traffic and Adsense $, you wouldnt mind that?
I think a lot of the users on here are looking at this whole AdSense scheme the wrong way, and that their greed, lack of imagination, and haste simply halves their chances of success, and adds yet more trash to an already saturated Internet.
You're right. But after all, most people are followers, not leaders.
As Buddy Rich said in the early '70s, "I would say that about 75% of the world is mediocrity, whether it's food, or style, or music."
I suspect my experience was not all that unique.
Say you spent a month writing a very useful, important site with tons of unique information. The someone comes along and copies your content *almost* word for word and gains the spot above you in Google for a very popular term thus taking 75% of your traffic and Adsense $, you wouldnt mind that?
Of course we'd mind. I think you'll find most posters on this forum take a very dim view of plagiarism, and of scrapers.
That doesn't detract from the fact that a great many of us take pride in what we put on our sites and have had them since long before Adsense came into being. I think we all like the $$s our sites make for us, but not everyone is greedy or has the "MFA" mentality.
Of course we'd mind. I think you'll find most posters on this forum take a very dim view of plagiarism, and of scrapers.
I mind and I've told google that if it wants my advertising money, they need to clean house.
On the other hand, I think you'd be surprised at the number of people on these forums that cheat deliberately, OR think that there sites are both clean and high quality, when they aren't even close.
Due to the restrictions here, we don't get to see people's sites, but I'll tell you that when I do track some of them down, it's pretty appalling, particularly when looking at sites of people who are the most vehement ant-google (or anti-everybody).
(you should see some of the stuff on other forums, though. Man, it's bad)
I am an Adsense publisher.
I write a detailed article, 2,000+ words, references, foot-notes, and such. It is good enough that two magazines in the industy call to publish it.
So I look at the Adsense ads on my site (same page as the article), and track down the advertisers.
The landing pages are nothing but links to other sites... through Adsense, or similar content based advertisers. No real content. Just ads, and links.
I check an other, and an other. I checked 102 ads.
Out of the 102 - 100 (one hundred) went to such MFA single-page sites.
Now let me ask you - why will I spend hours to develop a comprehensive article, so these Adword advertisers pay me $0.05, then make $1.00?
Why don't I just do the same? Why don't I just puke up 100 single page sites and make them MFAs, and make $100 a day instead of $1.00? Because of ethics, dang it...
Unfortunatelly, I do not see any reasonable alternative.
Google is NOT going to fix it. It is not in their best interest.
As Karol Wojtyla said "when in hell, you make deals with the devil."
[edited by: Tapolyai at 3:21 pm (utc) on Aug. 25, 2006]
Want someone to blame for filling the interent with spammy pages? Look no further than google and their inability or lack of will to vet publisher pages from the start.
That's like blaming lousy store security for shoplifting. It may be a contributing factor, but that doesn't mean the shoplifters aren't responsible for what they do.
If adsense had been closely monitored then the only sites using it now would be quality approved sites,
Do you really think the scrapers and MFAs submitted their scraper and MFA sites for approval? Of course not. They put the AdSense code on their scraper and MFA sites after they'd been approved for legitimate sites.
If the entrance standard had been higher, some of the more impoverished and illiterate scraper/MFA applicants might have been kept out, but the serious or (or even semi-serious) players would have simply paid college studnts and other cheap writers to create enough "useful content" to pass the entrance exam.
and the payouts would be much higher for those publishers - there wouldnt be any need for smartpricing for one thing.
Smart pricing still would have been necessary, because all types of content (and all sites) don't convert at the same rate that others do. Clicks from a legitimate site that don't convert are worth no more to advertisers than clicks from an MFA or scraper site that don't convert.
Adsense has messed up all the search engines, not just google.
Sure, in the same way that affiliate sites messed up all the search engines. And today, the real problem isn't AdSense so much as it is computer-generated sites that spew out milions of keyword-based pages containing little or no useful content. Even if AdSense disappeared tomorrow, you'd have billions of computer-generated pages with banner ads, affiliate links, price-comparison links, etc.
But things are too far gone now, google cant drag it back now they have shareholders.
On the contrary: Google has to keep AdSense from deteriorating into an ad network of last resort if it wants to maintain revenue growth. On the AdWords side, Google has already sacrificed short-term revenues for long-term economic health by introducing "landing-page Quality Scores" that have knocked a lot of traditional PPC advertisers out of the running. Google's CEO recently spoke disparagingly of "click arbitrageurs" and said (of MFA pages) that "We don't believe it is healthy."
I think it's only a matter of time until the loudest screams on the AdSense forum will be from publishers who have been whacked by a tightening of quality standards.
Looks like you struck a nerve but with the wrong people. A lot of us on this board have good, useful sites which are informative and user friendly; not geared just for making money.
I, personally, do not feel the need to defend my sites from such as you.
Ann
[edited by: martinibuster at 5:49 pm (utc) on Aug. 25, 2006]
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That's like blaming lousy store security for shoplifting. It may be a contributing factor, but that doesn't mean the shoplifters aren't responsible for what they do.
Shoplifters are breaking the law. Someone who churns out MFA is just creating a web page, no laws broken, nothing to be blamed for. The internet isn't googles, you and I can create any pages we want, and if theres an easy way to do something people will do it, so I dont really blame the MFA site builders.
However google has created the frenzy by allowing ads on any old page, yes they vet the FIRST site only, but it was obvious the way things were going as soon as TE came on the market a few years ago.
Actually I take it back, TE and adsense are equally to blame. TE was created for affiliate programs originally, if there had been no adsense then possibly affiliate site would have taken their place. But I'm not so sure about that, not to the extent adsense pages clog the internet currently.
Cheap domains and web hosting, do-it-yourself automated web page generators, easy to use and practically uncontrolled Adsense system open the door to any kind of extremes.
There are no editors on the Internet. People with no formal training in writing or web development can do a web page. As long as it is displayed on the browser - it is a web page.
We have no clear standards on web page quality. I may like or dislike the web site I am visiting, but I cannot make a judgment about the quality of it – it is subjective.
posts like this really make me sick. Ive observed these forums for quite a while on and off and i still dream of making $25-$50 a day.
The development of content is too time consuming for myself. We have in place a system where our regular users submit news stories to us (in return for user points on our site which allows them to 'buy' their avatars, sigs etc on the forums etc). This system allows us to rapidly gain news content, as we get so many articles submitted a day, for which the moderators then check over, tweak, add images etc and make live. Voila. 5-15 article/content pages per day and i dont lift a finger. The initial setting up takes longer but imo it works well.
[webmasterworld.com...]
but ehh.. enough time spent on this thread, gonna start a thread on how to make $800,000 in 2 months...
There are a lot of greedy people out there, and crappy sites, but I think there are more quality ones than you realize (because all the crap you have to sort through to find them).
My site was around for years without running ads, as a hobby site with quality articles. I have had college professors and students ask to borrow thing for lectures/papers, magazines ask if they can publish articles I've written, so I know it's quality.
But even so, I can discuss ways to optimize my site or write articles faster and not diminish the quality. I read these tips to help me think of new ideas or new ways to present them, or make my writing better, not just churn out crap fast (who will honestly stay to read crappy articles?).
On my widget site I'm a webmaster and widget enthusiast first, and adsenser second.
However google has created the frenzy by allowing ads on any old page....
Spam and greed on the Internet were problems even before the Net was officially commercialized. Here's an article from October, 1995 that discusses (among other things) spam ads on Usenet newsgroups more than 12 years ago:
[www-swiss.ai.mit.edu...]
Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose (the more things change, the more they remain the same).
mfa's exist because google is paying people to create 'em, and google drives traffic to mfa's by giving them favorable rankings in google search properties, and on google publisher websites.
mfa's exist because google lowered it's keyword minimum bid, while it's competitors were raising their minimum bids.
you don't like mfa's? put the blame where it belongs, on the company that both created and sustains the mfa system.
I agree that the Internet is mainly a big collection of cr@p produced in order to satisfy greedy needs. But so is the rest of the world. The industries of music, art, movies, fashion, design, food, whatever, mainly produce crap that is only there to make quick money. But the Internet is a completely open, free and global information market. And in every free market only one category survives, the ones that produce something really good. That could be extremely valuable information, a brilliant work of art, but also the most cleverly presented cr@p you have ever seen. All the rest of them are digging their own artistic and commercial graves. Please let it be. The more greedy cr@p there is, the more easy it will be for quality content providers to be recognized as the real thing. Don't you see how difficult it would be for us to be succesful if everyone out their was capable of doing someting creative? Don't you see all these cr@p sites aren't your competitors but instead great allies that make you look really good? Stop complaining and take matters into your own hands! Be the best in what you do and all the rest is of no significance.
A-MEN! If you're ever in Antwerp i'll buy you a beer for this one.
Guys, low quality sites WILL NOT LAST. Their revenue is short-term, and believe me, their traffic will NOT stay. Why? Even the average mother of two can see the difference between quality content and pages of keyword packed crap... Believe me, I let my 50-year old mother take a look at some MFA's and she was like: if I see a site like that i just click my "back" button... (which we tried, it didn't work due to a redirect lol, but oh well...)
Why is do folk, even highly ediccated intelligent folk like www users feel the need to defend themselves when they're accused of having a profit motive?
It a matter off considerable amusement to me,,
Off course there a numerous benefits to presenting a quality product, but might i suggest that both the
Talented an not so talented
Are born with the need to survive, to thrive, the pursuit off happiness,
I find that folk who percieve themselves to be at the top of the Food chain often begrudge those they pecieve to be beneath them, any participation in the
division of the goodies of this great world we have been gifted with
Okay, I'll get off my high horse, competition also scares me, but i generally cannot prevent, so heh have fun,
each one to their own
cheers all
Guys, low quality sites WILL NOT LAST
Strange that the google adwords are happy for MFA's to stay as advertisers, but the googles natural serps people remove them constantly.
Why is do folk, even highly ediccated intelligent folk like www users feel the need to defend themselves when they're accused of having a profit motive?
Is there anyone here who objects to the profit motive, or who's embarrassed by wanting to earn money from AdSense? I don't think so. There have been objections to naked, unrestrained greed, but that's a different matter.
you don't like mfa's? put the blame where it belongs, on the company that both created and sustains the mfa system.
Sure, and while you're at it, blame speeding on the traffic engineers who design highways that don't kill drivers who exceed the speed limit.
Fact is, MFA sites wouldn't exist if people didn't create them. Certainly AdSense and other PPC programs deserve criticism for not being more aggressive in policing the problem, but they aren't the perpetrators: they're merely providing the infrastructure that the MFA types exploit.
A-MEN! If you're ever in Antwerp i'll buy you a beer for this one.
Many thanks. To be honest, I had one at the Groenplaats a few months ago! Right next to the Hilton I believe.
Why is do folk, even highly ediccated intelligent folk like www users feel the need to defend themselves when they're accused of having a profit motive?
Well, even rather not so very extremely extraordinary highly ediccated intelligent folk shouldn't be ashamed to make a living.
The commercialized production and use of about any product or service in the world somehow correlates with physical or virtual waste and damage. That's the price we appear to be prepared to pay for having an economy. The use of cars correlates with pollution, the use of tobacco with serious diseases and the use of guns with people being shot. We tolerate that kind of damage to a certain degree but in general we try to control it.
The commercialized production and use of an information network like the Internet correlates with spam like MFA's. They are the waste of the Internet. It's an issue that can't and won't be resolved. It will be controlled to certain degree but it will never go away. I think you better get used to folks trying to make a living with lousy products because the world's full of them.
In adwords, they seem to be doing fine.
I have to disagree. Their kind is continiously within our range but individual cr@p sites come and go in the online advertisement world.
Whenever they have been burning too much cash they leave. The ones that stay are the creative minds that make more clever cr@p than others. Who cares.
Again, I use their presence to put myself in a position where the public can see the difference between my products and theirs.
What more can my businees wish for than millions of cr@ppy competitors that make me look like a genius? They even spend large amounts of money that partly end up in my pockets. Do you know any other business in the world where your competitors bring you loads of cash before they end their business?
not relevant, because people don't get paid to speed.
but google does pay people to create mfa sites... and doesn't some of the profit from those mfa websites go into your bank account every month?
The more greedy cr@p there is, the more easy it will be for quality content providers to be recognized as the real thing. Don't you see how difficult it would be for us to be succesful if everyone out their was capable of doing someting creative? Don't you see all these cr@p sites aren't your competitors but instead great allies that make you look really good?
I wouldn't go quite that far. That's a little too much positive thinking for my skeptical tastes. :-)
Still, an executive for an advertising-sales firm did tell me that "there's very little good content on the Web," and his firm is prospering (as are the sites that it represents) by providing a one-stop shopping resource for major display advertisers in its industry. Why? Because it's simply too much trouble for major advertisers to find gold nuggets in a landscape of fool's gold on their own.
