Tuesday, January 6, 2009

YIFY Sells Out

Hi Friends,

If you're a longtime supporter of Yourself in Five Years, you've probably noticed something different about the blog. If you look to your right, you'll see that we've sold out and added advertising to the blog. It's that stuff to the right. You know...probably something about teeth whitening or laser hair surgery or something else you probably aren't interested in. From now on, you'll see those Google ads when you log on to YIFY. I know, adding advertising to a blog probably isn't as shocking as Dylan going electric, or Metallica cutting their hair, or The Jonas Brothers doing...well...I don't really know what the Jonas Brothers do. I really need to brush up on my pop culture references. But anyway, I decided to give in to the Man and sell out. Here's what I was thinking:

It isn't (all) about the money. Really, it isn't. I'll let you in on a little secret. YIFY averages between 35 - 903 visits per day. Well, most days we're right around 35 visitors. If my friend Kath decides to give me a mid-post shout out, we get around 900 visitors. Yeah, so I guess you could say her blog is a little bit more popular than mine. Oh, did you see what I did right there? I put in a link back to Kath's blog...now we're getting fancy. Give me a couple years and I might start putting pictures on this thing. But who knows, I just heard that my cousins in Ohio are reading the blog, so I could be up to 40 visitors per day in no time. So I'm pretty sure that with 40 visitors per day, the ads probably aren't going to make me rich, especially since I know most of you, and you don't need teeth whitening or laser hair surgery.

The Ads are sort of funny. Google is usually pretty smart when it comes to these things. They're scanning content and trying to pick out commonly used words and phrases and trying to match the ads to the content of this blog. Yeah, good luck with that. Perhaps if I stayed true to the blog's initial value proposition (something about life five years after college) then maybe all of the ads would be about paying back student loans, or online gambling, or maybe even life insurance. But as you can tell, my thoughts haven't really had any consistent theme lately. My guess is that the Google Spyders scan the content of this blog, they probably make it through five lines of rambling text about bananas and just say 'screw it, let's just throw up the teeth whitening ads, I'm going on break.' So part of my rationale was that I wanted to see what kinds of ads they put on the blog. I saw one for Jimmy Johns last night. I don't think I've written anything about sandwiches or speedy delivery, but whatever.

It is sort of work related. I sort of work in online marketing, so it makes sense to have some first hand knowledge of online advertising. Oh, and if Google somehow looks at the complete lack of clicks on my ads and comes knocking on my door saying that I actually owe them money, then perhaps this could be considered a business expense. I'm not really sure if you can lose money doing this, but we'll find out. At last count I've had a total of 2 clicks on the links. One was my friend Ben. I told him to click on one of the links. I wanted to make sure that the clicks were being tracked. The other one was me. I just really thought Jimmy Johns sounded good.

So that's the story of the ads on the blog. Good story, huh? Oh, and I guess it's not okay to instruct y'all to click on the ads. Google says that's not okay. I don't know how they'd know, but they would. Maybe they'd come to your door instead of mine. I don't want to find out. But if you're interested in teeth whitening or laser hair surgery or anything else that the ads are promoting, feel free to click away. 

And if you scroll through the ads (I think there's a scroll arrow) and see a funny one, leave a comment and tell me what it was.  That's why I put them there, remember?

15 comments:

Robin said...

I don't see any ads! I was really hoping for a funny one. I get your blog through my RSS feed (where there are no ads, anyway), so I clicked to your real site to see some ads! But there weren't any. Perhaps I have some weird ad blocker enabled on my FireFox.

Ah well.

Nate said...

Boo on that! How dare they block my ads. Where are you supposed to learn about teeth whitening and professional dog walking services?

Anonymous said...

I'm one of the 900. Your blog is hilarious, especially re: bananas - I totally agree. I laughed out loud at least three times in the last five minutes of reading. Glad I came back.

I see ads on dog food and tvs...two of my favorite things!

Nate said...

Thanks Becky. Laughing three times in five minutes? If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were probably watching something funny on TV while reading this blog. That usually makes me laugh.

Anonymous said...

I clicked on the ad for you - a link about creating a blog! But only because you linked over to me, hopefully contributing 3-5 of your readers ;)

Nate said...

Thanks Kath! I'm up to $0.79 now. Maybe I should have looked in the cushions of my couch instead.

Amanda said...

One of my ads is "Make Money By Doing Nothing".

Appropriate, no?

Anonymous said...

One of mine was about eating a healthy breakfast. I clicked on it, and it brought me to Kerf, which sent me back to you.
:)

Liz Farrelly said...

One of my ads was about how dog parks can be deadly. Probably because people like you sit there and make up stories about everyone's dogs. I'm sure the regulars are on to you....

It's a Law and Order waiting to happen.

BTW - I clicked a few more, including Jimmy Johns, just because I love you.

Nate said...

Bobanda - Yes, that seems appropriate. Would be even more so if it was "make money while blogging about nothing."

Mary - It's a vicious circle. Escape if you can.

Liz - I saw that one too! Gilbert will wear a helmet when we go to the bark park this afternoon.

Amy said...

I clicked on "Why Dogs Need Exercise?" which isn't really that funny, it's for a dog-walking place, but why is it a question? The dog walker might be a tween? Like, who talks like this?

Nate said...

Amy, that ad was absolutely written by a tween. Your dog will come back smelling like bubble gum lip gloss, wearing a hanna montana/miley cyrus best of both worlds concert tee, and will somehow have the ability to text other dogs. I'd stay away. Tweens are scary.

hilarmy said...

if youre ever bored, come over to my blog and click mine! haha

hilarmy.blogspot.com

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