Blogosphereans
Mindful that not everybody in the world is celebrating the anniversary of American Independence this weekend, I persevere, with two links of particular interest to Blogosphereans.
¶ The short and stormy life of Suck, a rogue Web site set up at Wired Magazine in 1995 by engineers who were sure that the suits didn't understand how to exploit the Web at all. I remember reading about the site at the time, but the name was off-putting (genug schon) and I was not looking for ways to spend more time at the computer. Ha. So I never even tried to figure out how to access it. But Matt Sharkey's detailed account of developments and personalities, "The Big Fish," is well worth the (long) read. Ten years ago, in WWW history, takes in everything but the big bang.
¶ Want compensation for the things that you shill from your blog? Tickets, goodies, just plain cash? But you don't want the clutter of ads? Well, invisible advertising can be arranged, right in your entries! An icky business.
I daresay it's healthy to suspect everyone of doing this. I don't do it. I've never been asked to do it, and I won't do it when and if I am. I haven't even hooked up with Amazon's associate program, even though I often link straight to their sales pages. I'm fully devoted to visitor support. Not that that has yielded anything, either.
Comments
What a coincidence. I just posted an entry on my blog about whether or not I should venture into an online business, using CafePress. I hadn't heard of this 'icky business' you speak of. I wonder if CafePress is considered 'icky'.
Hope you have a great long weekend!
Posted by: patricia | July 2, 2005 09:48 AM
CaféPress is most certainly not an "icky business." It's overt, for one thing. I think that it's an admirable way for bloggers to support their sites, and I will definitely buy a Tart much or a Chabon & Lethem T as soon as they become available!
Posted by: R J Keefe![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.portifex.com/DailyBlague/nav-commenters.gif)
|
July 2, 2005 10:10 AM
Well, you're going telepathic on me again as you'll see from my email just moments ago written before today's DB moment.
I put some of the Alexa/Amazon Associates features on my blogs last night. Not too tough, not too technical, but time consuming for someone who still does everything in NotePad.
For a crude implementation of what I would term monetized links try my blogs Quality of the Light", or Fwd:Fwd:Fwd:. On my sites I believe some incredible number of clicks, a thousand or so, will earn me something like a dime in Amazon gift credit, and purchases that can be traced back to one of my links provide some small Amazon gift credit.
Is it icky? Well, fairly, you could say that of my sites with or without the monetized links, they are little more than public doodling done on the fly with the barest of tools and perhaps intellect. The monetized link business is an experiment to get a handle on site traffic.
Monetized links are comparable to the referral credits offered by cell phone services, newspapers and other service vendors. Now, of course, the issue is did you ask me for a referral? Anyone who is constantly pushing referrals on you is a pain whether it's on the web or on the street, it is simply rude.
So to my mind the questions are: do I want to be associated with monetized links and should I disclose that my links are monetized? On a blog tasteless comes to mind more than rude, lot's of ad's and links to mercantile sites is probably more tasteless than rude, viewing is after all voluntary. Disclosure for Alexa/Amazon links is almost implicit in the link, but I suppose a statment that links are monetized should appear in the sidebar.
Posted by: George | July 2, 2005 01:34 PM
Thanks for Matt Sharkey. Twenty seven pages that brings back memories of 19.2bps and sometimes slower connections. How far we have come so quickly.
Posted by: George | July 3, 2005 02:45 PM