zerotomed.com

Since reading that article about digg firing Google, it dawned on me that the war for control over the market is beginning to take charge. Yahoo first started it when they started to pay their publishers considerable amounts of money per click, definitely a lot higher than Google was paying at the time. But, after a while, they began to grow lackadaisical and started to take away from the profits that the publishers were making because their advertiser’s were not making a profit. Microsoft decided one day that they were going to go to war against Google and they created Adcenter. Adcenter was their CPC program, but they were the tiniest of the three. No one heard from them, no one really did any business with them. And then DIGG hired them. Now, one must begin to wonder: who will reign supreme in the CPC world?

• Adsense: They have got a strong following as well as a lot of BIG time websites. If you look at CNN.com, they place adsense ads on their site which shows that such a highly trafficked site still uses their program. Although they have begun to become stingy with the money they give their publishers, people are still signing up and people still are making money with them. But, will their constant banning of members start to weaken them in the end?
• YPN: They started out strong with their high paying ads and then grew even stronger by offering to pay via paypal, something that these ad companies never did before. However, their ads were horribly targeted and they started to lose strength because of their undercutting the publishers with the excuse that, “our advertisers are not making a profit so we can’t give you as much money.” Can they increase their power and attempt to take control of a chunk of the market again or are they doomed?
• Adcenter: Microsoft’s attempt at taking a chunk of the market started off horribly with no one knowing who the hell they were and what exactly they had to offer. What will they bring to the table? With the recent acquiring of Digg.com’s advertising, could this be the break that they need to finally get out of the sandbox and start going to elementary school? Can they finally make it in the world of CPC or will they fail?

Who do you think will take it in the end? Who will reign supreme in the CPC world? Will Adcenter gain more big publishers like digg.com because they are ‘young and creative’ or will Adsense finally learn their lesson and stop banning their users so simply? Can Yahoo step up and target their ads better or will they just disappear? Who knows what the future holds? Who knows who will reign supreme? I can say one thing I do know, though. It’s going to be a very interesting next few years as these companies go head to head to try and control the millions and millions of dollars in online advertising. It’ll be very interesting to see who takes control.

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One of the big things that I find irritating is how Google is going on and on about how it is wrong for people to buy links. They say that anyone that buys links should be penalized in the search engines and that no one should buy links. Every time I hear this, I get so irritated. Why do they think that they can tell us what to do? Why is it Google thinks that they can tell us we can’t buy links.

I think that it is foolish that Google is telling us not to buy links. In real businesses, they buy advertising any way possible to try and increase sales. Why is it that a webmaster can’t buy a link? Why should I be penalized for using my money for advertising? They don’t get penalized for stealing most of the publisher’s money, but we get penalized for having links that are purchased leading to our site?

In my opinion, the purchasing of links should be allowed. Why is it that Google can sell links (for 10K a piece, I believe), but if we do that, we’re doing something wrong? And why is it that they can tell us what to do? We’re web masters…They’re our websites. And the truth is…There are a lot of other fish in the sea. If I had to go to Yahoo, I would, because I am a believer that purchasing links is alright. However, I may be wrong. Until proven wrong, though, I am going to continue buying links. That’s just my opinion.

Three days ago, I posted an opinion about spamming. I said that it was wrong to spam forums or blogs or any of that. I said this out of true feelings. I think that is wrong. I especially hate those people that come to my site and post about penis enlargement and all of this other rather annoying stuff. Now, the problem is, when I think of blog comments, I think of the blog owner coming to my site and posting. He’ll post something and I usually can tell when it is an obvious “come look at my site” type of post. It’s not that difficult. However, I tend to just say, “it’s alright.” Want to know why? Because then I go RIGHT back to their blog and bam, I post something with a link to one of my articles.

So…Anyways, I wrote that post out of a response to a new website where you buy blog comments. You buy them to do the exact same thing that you would do except now you’re not wasting your time doing it. Now, I had an uproar about this because my fear was that I would be getting a lot of spam. Now, not the type of spam where the site is looking to enlarge your penis. I was just worried that while it might be relevant comments, the comment might just say, “that’s so cool, click here to read another article.” Now, that’s just useless for my blog. I don’t like those comments. However, I have read a lot of the uproar and my opinion has changed slightly.

I still think it’s sort of shady and I don’t agree with Cody’s comment that the only way to make money is to use BlackHat methods. But, perhaps the term BlackHat is the wrong term to use. Do I think that a linkbait is BlackHat? Because if that’s the case, then I am a BlackHat person as well. I think the site’s only problem is that there is no guarantee. I don’t care if someone comes to my site and posts a comment that is bought. It’s the exact same thing as if someone came to my site and posted a comment. I won’t use the service personally until there has been some, “wow, this is awesome! This totally worked!” because I don’t want to take that risk.

Now…So long as the comments are NOT spam and they are NOT obviously purchased, I don’t mind it. However, I have no problem denying comments left and right if they appear too spam like. I do think that the prices are sort of out there; however, right now, he is the only provider and there are lazy people out there that will attempt to take some business from him. The only thing that Jon has to worry about is competing with overseas writers. For a few bucks an hour, I can get a lot of comments for a lot cheaper than from Jon. People might not care about perfection if it saves them some money. So, the only thing that I would change are the prices. Offer a deal for going for more comments. So, as long as it is not spam, I don’t care. However, if it is spam, then a lot of other bloggers will have something to say. Good luck, Jon.