{"id":721,"date":"2010-12-20T00:16:43","date_gmt":"2010-12-20T05:16:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/yourLinuxGuy.com\/?p=721"},"modified":"2010-12-20T19:27:07","modified_gmt":"2010-12-21T00:27:07","slug":"light-hearted-holiday-season-post-1-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yourLinuxGuy.com\/?p=721","title":{"rendered":"Light-Hearted Holiday Season Post #1"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this time of chaos, tumult, and constant change, I’ve decided that a little light-hearted Holiday Season levity is in order.\u00a0 With that in mind, during this week of Christmas I’m posting a small series of somewhat strange and superfluous oddities for your enjoyment, until I come back to the regular posting schedule in 2011.\u00a0 Enjoy…\u00a0 And Happy Holidays…<\/em><\/p>\n

Sub-Title:\u00a0 Google Ad Cents<\/strong><\/p>\n

I started this blog in May of 2007.\u00a0 About a year or so later (Aug 2008), somebody asked me about integrating Google Ads (Adsense) into his blog; and I implemented Adsense ads in my own blog to quickly figure it out.\u00a0 Once it was set up, I thought, “…why not just leave it up and earn a little money…?”<\/p>\n

As the months went by, I implemented the Adsense code on a couple of my other hobby blogs.\u00a0 So by late in 2008, the ads were active on 2 highly-trafficked sites (this included), and two mostly un-used ones.<\/p>\n

One other important note:\u00a0 Google does not pay out the ad revenue until you reach $100 in earnings.<\/p>\n

And now the big news:\u00a0 Yesterday, on Sunday, December 19, 2010, I earned 22 cents on one click, finally reaching the magic $100 amount in Google ad revenue.\u00a0 You read that right, a little more than 2 years later.<\/p>\n

Historically, I would usually get like one or two clicks per week, even though I get hundreds of views per day, and thousands of views per week on average.\u00a0 I assure you, there is simply no correlation between views and clicks!\u00a0 In the early days, I earned less than a dollar a month, and sometimes nothing at all.\u00a0 My highest-earning month so far was September of 2010, coming in at a whopping $13.63.<\/p>\n

Each click would earn me like 2 to 20 cents apiece (the 22 cents for the final heave was a nice treat).\u00a0 I never clicked the ads myself (nor asked anyone to);\u00a0 since to me, it was an interesting experiment that I did not want to spoil.<\/p>\n

I’d love to go into all my theories about the differences in the advertising models between broadcast mediums and the ‘Net, or about the different view\/click ratios between this tech-related site (low) and my other motorcycle-related hobby site (high), but I won’t.\u00a0 It’s the holidays.\u00a0 Put simply, nerds don’t click ads…\u00a0 much…<\/p>\n

Heck, according to the site stats, a great many of you run FireFox, probably with AdBlockPlus.\u00a0 So you didn’t even notice them…<\/p>\n

And to be fair to Google, I did choose the option to leave charitable organizations and non-profits in the mix of ads, so of course there is not chance for revenue or paying clicks on those.\u00a0 I don’t know how much that affected the outcome, but I thought it was the right thing to do…<\/p>\n

So I want to thank all of you who *did* click the ads over those 2 years.\u00a0 I hope you were well-served by the links provided here, and not too bothered by them.\u00a0 And thanks to Google itself, for allowing me to participate in the grand experiment.<\/p>\n

Now, according to Google policy, I should be paid in January, the month after cresting $100.\u00a0\u00a0 So when that money arrives, I plan to put a part of it aside (it is taxable, and reported to the government!), and spend the rest on something decadent.\u00a0 Like a few gallons of gas.<\/p>\n

\ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

201012201343:\u00a0 Edited for factual correction.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this time of chaos, tumult, and constant change, I’ve decided that a little light-hearted Holiday Season levity is in order.\u00a0 With that in mind, during this week of Christmas I’m posting a small series of somewhat strange and superfluous…
Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-superfluous"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pnjn1-bD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yourLinuxGuy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yourLinuxGuy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yourLinuxGuy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yourLinuxGuy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yourLinuxGuy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=721"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/yourLinuxGuy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":723,"href":"https:\/\/yourLinuxGuy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721\/revisions\/723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yourLinuxGuy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yourLinuxGuy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yourLinuxGuy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}