Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Selling Out

Decided to do a little experiment. As soon as I'm verified, I will have Google ads on the side of my page. I never expect to see a dime from them (not enough traffic), but I just wanted to go through the process and see how difficult it really was. It's surprisingly easy to sign up, but you may be overwhelmed by what you can and cannot talk about once you sign up. In fact, this post may constitute a violation of the agreement I just signed into, but I figure since this document is public, I can talk about it. If I can't, I'll be banned from Google forever and I'll have to rely on Ask Jeeves instead. Not cool. But I think it's interesting, so a rundown of just a few of the terms and conditions you agree to by signing up:

1. Clicking your own ads is for any reason is prohibited. Makes sense, but I'd really like to do it once, just to know what it feels like. I wonder what would happen if I invite a friend over to click my ad from my computer. Jail time? Well, I ain't goin' back ta jail dogg, so this won't happen.

2. Do not encourage clicks on ads. I was actually surprised at this one at first, since I used to see the "support us by visiting sponsors" stuff everywhere, but I never realized that those ads weren't google ads.

3. You can not have the following content:

Racist / intolerant / violent speech. 'kay
Porn / "adult" content. My recent Celebrity Marriage proposal was pretty racy, but probably safe.
Hacking / cracking content. This is intentionally vague, but I'll keep posting links to stuff I consider innovative, like Miro, until such technology has been proven illegal or copyright/patent law changes.
Illicit drugs. Like what, Snow Crash?
Excessive profanity. Gollygosh drat!
Gambling or casino-related content. This means no discussion of point spreads or anything like that. I don't gamble, but I think point spreads are an interesting part of the game (especially in the wake of the NBA referee scandal, which I consider myself free to talk about at length).
Tinkering with keywords/metadata/PageRank to get better results. Gotcha
Sales or promotion of the following: weapons, ammunition, beer, hard alcohol, tobacco, prescription drugs, imitations of designer goods (?), term papers.

Anyway, that's mostly it. Not too restricting, right? Although that term paper I was going to offer for sale entitled "Viagra, Smirnoff and Skoal: The NRA's Guide to Women and Their Knockoff Prada Purses" will have to wait.

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