Half-Elf on Tech

Thoughts From a Professional Lesbian

Tag: monetization

  • The Monetization of Edge Sites

    The Monetization of Edge Sites

    When you’re starting out, the idea of making some passive income on your website is pretty appealing. So you look at services like Google Adsense or Project Wonderful, and you think that’s it. Sign up, toss some ads up, and you’ll make $.50 a month (yes, that’s fifty cents). For most people, that works quite well. But what happens when you’re not ‘most’ people?

    What Is an “Edge” Site?

    An edge site is a site that has a very niche audience. For example, 10 years ago, WordPress would have been a very niche subject and thus an ‘edge’ site if you were trying to get advertising. But if you said “It’s a technology blog” then you’d have a broader set of possible advertisers.

    Paradoxically, niche sites do better in Google search results, which makes them better traffic but harder to target. However, that’s not what an edge site really is. An edge site is a site that has content on the edge of what the various ad hosts would be comfortable allowing. And if they’re not comfortable, then they’ll close your account even if it’s just one of your domains that they don’t like.

    What Makes It Questionable Content?

    Have you ever read those terms of service? The ones you agree to when you sign up for ad companies? Of course not. But you kind of get the gist of what they’re on about. Basically they don’t want anything offensive on their networks, like promoting racism or bigotry. And there’s always a clause in there about “pornographic or sexually explicit material” — to whit, don’t have it.

    But what you may not realize is that sexually explicit also covers talking about sex. No, I don’t mean the erotica kind of content, I mean if I use Google Ads, I can’t have a website that gives you advice on sexual dysphoria, or even sexual health issues.

    How Do You Know if You’re Edge?

    You don’t.

    I found out because Google AdSense decided that a picture of two women in a bubble bath (which was a promo picture for a TV show) was too much. They cited it as being ‘adult’ and there was no further information as to if it was actually the image or if it was the post content. Yes, you read that correctly. They just said “This page is naughty!” and didn’t give me a chance to figure out what or why or how, except to experiment.

    Oh and if you experiment and get it wrong, you run the risk of losing the whole AdSense account, not just that one domain. Have a nice day.

    Google effectively doesn’t care about you. There’s no way to email someone and say “Hey, is the problem this one image or the subject matter of my site, which you approved 2 years ago?”

    What Are The Options?

    Now that I’ve scared you a bit, your choices boil down to:

    1. Find a lenient service
    2. Host ads yourself
    3. Rely on affiliate links

    They do really suck.

    Services

    The biggest issue with the services is that unless there’s a human-contact available, there’s very little you can do if you ‘break’ guidelines by being on that edge. I mentioned Google as the worst (if you have less than 500k page views a month, you’re outta luck), but Amazon’s not really much better unless you like auto-replies and stock answers. In my experience, the best people behind ads are Project Wonderful, but the quality of ads can be a bit low.

    Self-Host

    Even though I run my own, self-hosted, WordPress site, I loathe the idea of a self-hosted ad service. You can do it via WordPress plugins, but if you’re thinking they all look a bit janky, you’re right. They do. They’re all clunky in my eyes. Revive (formerly OpenX Source) is the nicest, but they’re not very fast and you have to maintain them. Which is an extra burden. And then it’s the damn hustle to get ads and manage them.

    Affiliates

    Lastly you have affiliates. Now they’re a curious mix of the most lenient, whereby I mean some like ShareASale will let you do anything but ‘adult’ and hate sites, and others like Amazon are super super picky. In both cases, though, they let affiliates approve you as an individual, so there’s that.

    Conclusion?

    If you want ‘easy’ money and you’re an edge or niche site that is possibly on that inane ‘family friendly’ bubble, you’re going to need to go with Project Wonderful. At least until you get big enough for BuySellAds to pick you up. Otherwise it’s a hustle to get the attention.

    Or you could try selling things…

  • Balancing Information and Monetization

    Balancing Information and Monetization

    One of the many ways in which newspapers are failing online is in monetization. We have very few options, when you get down to it.

    1. Ads
    2. Subscriptions
    3. Donations

    No company can really survive off donations, so the question really becomes how do we balance ads and subscriptions? Many newspapers have tried the simple tracking method of allowing people to read X number of articles before informing the reader they have to pay. Others throw up splash ads before the article is posted. And another one shows only some of the article before requiring registration.

    They’re all problematic.

    Users ignore the ads, they don’t register, and they walk away instead of reading. The issue for the user is that they want as few barriers as possible between themselves and the news. They want to pick an article, click the link, and read. To be inundated with ads and signup popups is annoying, and I suspect the attrition rate is abysmal.

    This only gets worse when ads get ‘clever’ and make it hard to find the X to click out and get away from them. They trick users into clicking the wrong thing, which only annoys them more. Plus ads can slow things down on mobile, which is increasingly the way for things to go.

    Recently I caught myself thinking that one way to encourage registrations in WordPress would be to have the post content ‘disappear’ after X days, unless the user was a member. Of course, that wouldn’t work for all sites, as not everyone wants to register on People.com. Also the old, archival news on The New York Times are things that really only the deep diving researchers (and weird net denizens) are after. Considering we can all go to the library and look everything old up on Microfiche, why do we have to pay for everything old?

    So what should be limited?

    How about we start with that cesspool of the internet: Comments. This is a double edged sword. If you allow open comments on a news site, consider requiring registration for them. This will allow you to more easily track and ban assholes. Sure, they can make new accounts, but in doing so you can follow them and block them. A win for everyone. Also you can track people who false-report bad people. Spam catchers will stop most bots from signing up at all.

    In addition, you can turn off comments for older posts to non-paying users. After 45 days, only paid up members can comment. And make sure you don’t offer refunds if the guidelines are violated. If haters are gonna hate, make ’em pay for it.

    Aaron Jorbin - Haters Gonna Hate
    Aaron Jorbin – Haters Gonna Hate (by Helen)

    As for what content to restrict, it has to be more granular than just time. Take an election year. All articles about Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump should be readable. But read-only. No comments on any of them. Be realistic. Someone famous dies? Unlock all their posts so everyone can read all about them. The Olympics should have historical, important, events unlocked, but at the same time you don’t need every little detail.

    This would be a tremendous amount of work, don’t get me wrong, but the days of assuming the internet is free money are long over. If we want people to pay us for content, we have to make it worthwhile.