Turns out, it was just a matter of getting caught up on chores. (Not believing that on my life!) But now I’ve got a few (chores) on deck, and I’d better do ’em. Take out that dessicated Christmas tree. Clean the kitchen thoroughly. Get the hell off of Facebook. Stop poking around in books. Leave that pile of papers alone. So, my scholar’s mistress (said pile of papers and books), I must say farewell. I’ll be back! Later.
In the meanwhile, as I listen to my marching orders and look over my next assignments, I’m looking at a widget I downloaded yesterday after consulting the oracles at adsense. I, myself, don’t want ads popping up on my blog. (At least, not this one.) I’d rather make money in the semi-old-fashioned ways: playing class for dancers, keeping the gear in the studios in shape, writing reports on this and that (tie string around finger to remember to do this), turning in that absurd and invasive time report that covers my life 24/7 – 365 cooked up by that kooky former governor who is now, or soon to be, in prison for his half-baked schemes, (pardon that outburst), digitizing the analog work of other people, and whipping up soufflés of didacticism that might guide the innocent on their way. As a sideline (not technically permitted by the above mentioned state government), I might want to incorporate and launch a site that brings outsiders into my home studio. We make wax records here, but also can cut a lacquer plate, or cut your tracks the usual way, on the infinite tracks of digital space. We’ll turn your records into files or your files into records. Both directions, ac/dc.
Ah. So there is a website necessary to the enterprise. It would be built under the auspices of ken-beck.com, and would entail a lot of lists and schedules of fees and eye-popping ads. That one might want (need) to be monetized. That is the 600 pound gorilla in the list of chores to do around here. And towards that end, looking over the adsense materials makes some horse sense. (Maybe even ‘whore sense.’) They strongly recommend Lynx as a way of looking at your site the way the crawler sees it. The aforementioned widget.
Looking at a website in the Lynx interface, which is a terminal window and thus command line operated with no gui and no viewable images (just the binary data manifesting as gibberish), is like looking at the ocean one teaspoon at a time. This is the way the crawler sees it, and it takes a Zuckerberg to enjoy it. Does Mark, in fact, enjoy it? If he does, he’s not hooked up right. But we knew that from the movie, which made the flesh and blood man both grin and wince, I’m sure. For the adsense docs to recommend this tool to the masses seeking money is a very mean joke. It’s starting to give me a bit of a headache, I’ll admit.
What they’re really saying: “turn back all ye who enter here!” Reminds me of the time I divorced my first wife pro se. I had blundered into that judge’s courtroom, looking for the place in the courthouse (the clerk’s office) where a motion could be filed. It was a motion of reinstatement, because I’d had my case dismissed by missing a deadline buried in the pleadings and summons. I had my language right, my ‘now comes the plaintiff,’ but I had the room number wrong. Anyhoo, the judge bleated from his high and mighty bench, “young man, you are out of order. Get out of my courtroom, and don’t return unless you are a properly attired attorney!”
So if you are an ordinary mortal checking your site for html loopholes, and you want to pass muster at adsense, you’d better be prepared to hit the books, ’cause this shit ain’t transparent, and it certainly ain’t my idea of a good time. (I did manage to wade through some cookies and see what the mighty Google itself looks like in Lynx. It’s like looking up the ass of the elephant with a proctoscope the size of a pipette. The assman cometh.
Besides which, the offsite FAQ on adsense offers this gem of advice:
Most people work backwards: they have a site and then think about monetizing it with AdSense and this is Google’s preferred route.
However, a more rational approach would be as follows:
- Find a series of related products or services that a multitude of companies advertise using AdWords and high value keywords.
- Create a website that supplies a range of information about subjects commercially related to those products and services i.e. that people who buy these products or services are likely to seek out on the internet.
- Submit the site to Google’s AdSense program.
- Promote the hell out of the site with ezines, viral marketing techniques (especially ebooks), AdWords, other pay per click systems, PR. In short, you name, you do it.
- Bank the checks.
I really like this forward approach. In my case, I could track down all the similar services and related sites that do what I do and serve the needs of those who do what I do (Apollo Masters to name just one such; Wyatt’s Musical Americana, another) and then let my site pull it all together for people wanting to do what I do. (Record audio, video, or preserve archives of such recordings.)
I think I’ll go clean the kitchen and take out the tree. I’m work averse when it comes to the monetization chore… even though I resolved to make more money.