Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbySeptember 16th, 2010
An email from a reader:
I look forward to reading Box Turtle each morning. But I am offended by the Meg Whitman advertizing on Box Turtle. She supports Prop 8 and has said she would support it as governor. As one of the 18,000 married couples, I find her presence offensive as I read your daily synopsis of news.
I understand that some folks are bound to be offended by some of the ads that show up on BTB from time to time. The ads are served by Google, which places ads according to text that their google-bots encounter as they crawl the web. So all it takes is mentioning a few key words that ad purchasers care about (i.e. California, Delaware), and voila! — their ad shows up. That’s also why you’ve probably seen some ads from Christine O’Donnell lately.
But here’s the deal that you should know. The people and companies placing the ads typically don’t pay anything until someone clicks on their ad. They are charged on a per-click basis. That also means that we don’t get any money from those ads unless someone clicks on their ads. That is how the system works. They don’t lose money unless you click, and we don’t make money unless you click.
While it’s unfortunate that we have to run ads at all, the price of success is that our expanded traffic raises the monthly cost of keeping this web site running on our host’s servers. Fortunately, the ads cover the monthly bill. Just. This is far from a profit making exercise.
Now there are tools for me to block some of those offensive ads, but I can only do that after the fact — after I already know the URL of the ad being served. By the time I discover the ad (I usually don’t see them myself) and after I chase down the ad’s URL (the reader didn’t provide it in his email, which means I might never find it since it may not be served to me when I visit BTB), the advertising campaign is typically over already. So chasing that tail often winds up being futile.
While I can explain how Google’s Ads work, Google’s terms of service prevents me from encouraging you to click on those ads. That is what’s called “click fraud,” which I have no desire to do. Frankly, I don’t know why anyone would want to leave such a wonderful site like BTB to see what’s behind those ads, but I’m grateful that a tiny fraction of people who come here do. They literally keep this web site running from one month to the next, and that’s all that we need.
So my advice to you if you see an ad you find offensive is to ignore it. Unlike other problems we deal with in life, if you ignore this problem it will probably go away soon.
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VaJeena
September 16th, 2010
“But here’s the deal that you should know. The people and companies placing the ads typically don’t pay anything until someone clicks on their ad. They are charged on a per-click basis. That also means that we don’t get any money from those ads unless someone clicks on their ads. That is how the system works. They don’t lose money unless you click, and we don’t make money unless you click.”
So basically, if everyone clicks the ad a hundred times, BTB will earn money and Meg Whitman will lose money?
occono
September 16th, 2010
Yes, until Google investigates why some person clicked an ad 100 times. Then BTB stops making money.
Andrew
September 16th, 2010
@Vageena: Theoretically yes. Which why when I see ads for things I don’t like, I click them. A lot.
Jim Burroway
September 16th, 2010
That is a real risk. The small token amount of money “wasted” by these campaigns on errant clickers (we’re talking just a few cents a click) won’t break their bank in any way. But having to pay BTB’s server costs without the modest ad revenue will break mine. I certainly hope people have better uses for their time than clicking on ads.
Jim Burroway
September 16th, 2010
Let me refine that: I hope people click on those ads they find interesting. That’s why they are there. I just pitty the individual who has the time to click on it hundreds of times.
Timothy (TRiG)
September 16th, 2010
However, Google likes to run “relevant” and “useful” ads. If no one clicks on your ads, Google will remove them. When my boss runs ads on Google, he clicks on them himself once or twice a day, just to keep them in the rankings.
You are caught on the horns of a dilemma.
TRiG.
Soren456
September 16th, 2010
Two things: Do clicks on an ad invite more like it? More of the same?
And, why can’t you see the ads? I don’t have a blog, but I assume that you sign in as an administrator (or something), and see the page differently. Don’t you ever come in from outside, like I do, and experience the site like the rest of us?
I’d recommend it.
Lindoro Almaviva
September 16th, 2010
Or you can click on that ad and in doing so you are costing HER money and putting money on the pockets of those who fight for YOUR equality. I have to say I never see the ads because I have pretty good ad blocking programs on firefox
tim
September 16th, 2010
“I find her presence offensive as I read your daily synopsis of news.”
One wonders how this individual survives the day if they are so easily offended by an ad on a website. Really – grow up.
Jim Burroway
September 16th, 2010
Every time you re-load the page, the ads sometimes change. They aren’t static. And not everyone sees the same ad necessarily. They can be targeted according to geography or according to your web browsing habits via cookies on your hard drive.
For example, when I go to Ugandan newspaper web sites, I see American ads. If I were to visit those same web sites from Uganda, I would much more likely see ads from Ugandan or East African companies and services.
Chris McCoy
September 16th, 2010
Jim Burroway wrote:
Have you considered using PayPal to allow visitors to make donations?
It doesn’t have to be obtrusive, just a “Donate” icon for those of us who consider BTB an invaluable resource.
I know many people believe that everything on the Internet should be free, but I am aware of the costs of running websites such as these, and would consider donating in the same vein as donations to my local public radio station.
I am not sure of any of the legalities involved, whether you’d have to get tax EID number in order to do that – I’m sure that would only make it more complicated than it’s worth.
Timothy Kincaid
September 16th, 2010
Odd. For days now I’ve seen nothing but Charlie Crist adds on BTB.
Jim Burroway
September 16th, 2010
A couple of years ago we had a donation button to Paypal. It was up for about six months and exactly one person clicked on it. It wasn’t so bad then because running the site was much cheaper than it is today. But as we grew, I took it down and replaced it with ads when it became clear that the donation button wasn’t going to cut it.
Also, the donation button had the potential of causing confusion. Some might think their donation would be tax-deductible (it wouldn’t be), and as you say, filing the paperwork and setting up the governance structure to establish an official IRS nonprofit is overkill. Increase our readership by another 10-20x, and maybe then I’d have to consider other options, but right now we’re cool.
Jim Burroway
September 16th, 2010
I haven’t. But right now I see one for a eDiet. Are they trying to tell me something?
Also I see ads for translation software, probably because I’ve been hitting Google Translate lately for our Russian pieces.
Richard Rush
September 16th, 2010
Chris McCoy said,
I’d bet that many of us would donate something if you added a little “donate” button. I’m not suggesting it replace the ads, but just supplement them. You guys deserve to do a little better than just cover your expenses for what you do here.
I’ve often thought, “I don’t know how Jim and Timothy manage to do this while maintaining day-jobs.” (I’ve never been good at multi-tasking)
————
PS: I wrote the above before I saw Jim’s two additional comments. Jim said, “A couple of years ago we had a donation button to Paypal. It was up for about six months and exactly one person clicked on it.”
Maybe you should have just made the button larger.
A new improved button could have a note under it about donations being non-deductible. And for those cynical readers who might then think BTB is just a money-making gig, you could point them to comments by people such as Chris and I who encouraged you to reinvent the button. It seems to me you would have something to gain, but nothing to lose (unless the button would use space that would be more productive with an ad).
Richard W. Fitch
September 16th, 2010
Don’t know if the headache of govt red tape would out weigh the possible flow of additional income, but my vote is to reinstall the PayPal option. There are a handful of non-profit websites I visit on a regular basis that provide that option. I won’t try to claim status as an underwriter, but I do make small donation/payments to the stellar groups which deserve my support. And I definitely consider BTB to be a shining star.
Andrew Brogan
September 16th, 2010
There was this COMPLETE moron commenting over at IGF that gays were so terrible ’cause they had pornography ads on their websites. She just kept saying we should be ashamed of our selves, no one would ever take us seriously. I never saw the ads she was mentioning. I guess she and I had completly different browsing histories.
TJ
September 16th, 2010
I use Privoxy which blocks ads and I love it.
It is very easy to set up a 501c3 nonprofit. A weekend of paperwork and about $300 which, from the likes of these comments, would probably be recouped pretty quick. Just get the NOLO book “How To Form A Nonprofit Corporation in California” which has all the cut-and-paste, fill-in-the-blanks documents needed.
How much is the monthly cost for this website anyway?
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