Blog Azeroth

Holy shit yes. I knew there was something wrong when my comments got shorter on average when he disappeared.

Hope you got another job on the side then, coz I surely can't see you making a living off 15$ a week.

A guy needs to eat ya know :p

Haha of course I have a real job, but it is nothing how I would I would want my work to be. I tend to have work be what I want it to be, instead of the terrible corporate work I am doomed to work in, so I chose to try to do something. Even though $15 a day from a blog would be fairly nice. Haha. Would pay for gas and a bite to eat everyonce in a while, but that is not really my goal.

I know what I am asking for does not happen over night, and that is fine and why I have my job in the real work place, but for once I want to make something that in the end will make money as well, to be a creative yet valuable asset to myself, call it silly, but it is a great dream to have =]

[edit: I forgot that you said $15 a week, but however $15 a day would not be bad haha]

Matticus, I haven't disappeared, just been stuck raiding from dinner till bed , then disbanding and trying to reform guilds .

Will try and write more posts, but I can't help but feel everytime I write a long post its more of a rebuttal than anything else, and I know Lar is fine with me doing so, but not sure if you want that kind of thing scattered in your comments.

Still, don't you think it'd be better to start off without ads, build a steady reader base first? Or at least ditch the goldseller junk so you get more respect from your readers?

Unless you're aiming for the low clueless casuals.. Profitable surely, but you'd still be wrecking the game by supporting goldsellers, and thus indirectly account hacking, botting and trojans. Which is one of the ways goldsellers get their wares.

Finally, my $.02. I blog for me, and am the only one. I am happy that there are people out there who read what I write; some appear to even like it. In the end it's an outlet. I don't care if I ever make a dime off it.



Human beings are superficial creatures. We do not by nature read between the lines. Instead this is something that has to be taught. Expecting your readers to read between the lines at a first glance is un-realistic at best.



In my opinion there is a large difference between being smart while you write and writing purely for profit. To me, one is creative, and one is business. Anyone that writes purely for business will quickly run out of things to say.

Take A. O. Scott for instance. They are a movie reviewer for the New York Times. I am going to assume that they make quite a profit from their writing, but they do it for pure pleasure. How do I know this? There are some things that just can not be faked. When asked in an interview how they got started, it was fun. They never expected to make any money from it. Wrote a guest piece for a school newspaper in high school and that was she wrote.

If profit is your goal, there are much better ways to make money. I am not trashing your site as it is your site to do with as you please; it's just not my cup of tea. Then again, I am not here for fame, fortune, or profit.

This is my “web diary” as you put it.

Cheers.

I hate everything about gold sellers as I have tried to work with them before only to get screwed out of business, but I don't think of it as that, I think of I am supporting Google, because lets face it, they get a huge cut of it.

Who reads my content is normally a 60% chance they come back as Google Analytics say, which right now 300-400 Unique visitors come in a day, so I do say that some are reading what I write and they are coming back.

Gold farmers are nothing to be scared or hated for. They do their business how they want, and I do not care how it is. I would hope that my readers will already have knowledge on how they work anyways, as my reading shouldn't touch on the elderly lmao.

I do not specifically endorse gold buying, anywhere on my blog at all. You may say I do endorse them by ads, but that is purely by chance.

Sorry to say, but in my opinion you support the gold sellers. You could easily get rid of the ads but you value the income higher than having a gold selling ad free blog. The choice is yours. You can't just blame chance.

Reading your posts here I'm afraid you haven't earned my respect, on the contrary. On the other hand I suppose that doesn't bother you the slightest. You care about number.

So be happy about all those readers you get (and yes, you outnumber at least my blog by far, I guess it makes you happy to know.)

I'll stick to the way I blog and look upon blogging in a non comercial environment which makes me happy. And it's very different but we've both got the right to exist and express ourselves.

If you ever change your mind, please let us know for instance by this forum. Then I may come back to your blog and give it a new chance.

So it is because I wish to do more with my blog I am looked down upon? That I do not care that 12 year old children click adsense ads? That IS naive. I filter ads out of my mind no matter what website/blog I go to, and I do click them just for kicks so I can help out.

For the fact that I have gold ad's on my blog and I am already "lower" than you is very disrespectful. Being civilized and wanting to do more with my blog than a diary is no way to act like that. Sure I could take adsense off my blog, what would that solve? 5 more readers? That is nothing to me, as every one is entitled to their opinion and I prefer the people who can not see through that, to not read anyways as they would be too simple minded to even care.

So yes, it is about numbers to me, and each number is a reader. The more readers is the more I am known and the more I am known is what I expect in blogging. Diaries exist for a reason, and 2ndNin is a GREAT writer and I wish that he would take it to the next step up so he will be known even more, as I personally read his blogs.

Think what you will, but a promotional mindset is more important than anything to me, I love to write, I love to game, and I love numbers. This entitles me to be a writer than wants to promote his blogging and take it to the next level.

-Visin

Which is clearly evidenced by the lack of their ads on your site.

Oh, wait...



And that is precisely what most visitors that could potentially have become a part of your blog's community will think. Yes, there will be those who will click through for the shortcut to in-game riches. But there are many more who know where those pilfered funds come from, and remember with startling clarity just how they felt when their accounts were hacked to acquire that gold. Or their friend's account... or their guild bank.

Not a good start to building a solid community and an atmosphere of trust and credibility, imo. A solid community surrounding your blog is what will bring you revenue. Don't believe me? See how Darren Rowse interacts with his community. I'm guessing he's not advertising ways to hack WordPress, for example.

Bah! Fail imo! ^^. And don't worry, I'm cool with what you write. I usually start reading it, stop and take a break, do a lap around the house and grab water, then come back and finish it off. Whenever I see a large wall of text in my comments, the first thing I think is "oh crap, I'm in deep shit".

Okay, back to the topic at hand. To be blunt, I don't like the way this thread is going. Some of you have expressed your disagreement with Gold selling ads and are of the opinion that should be lit on fire. That's fair enough.

Second, everyone's entitled to their own opinion and their ability to express and defend it. With that being said, I no longer like the vibe that this thread is giving off so I'm about to flex some mod muscle here if it doesn't change.

The purpose of this thread here is to discuss what, if any, monetizing techniques anyone have used and to discuss their experiences with them. Yes gold selling ads are bad, yes I disagree with them, yes I could make a killing from google adsense stuff but I intentionally choose not to as to not piss off my entire fanbase. If a blogger so chooses to strategically place ads on their blog, that is theirs to do.

And as a blogger who has been hacked before in the past, I know I personally will not accept any thing of that sort on my blog. I'd rather pick out services that would benefit my readers like hardware, discounts, voice servers, or webspace, etc.

Now to summarize, we've expressed views on good ways to establish relations with other readers. Obviously there are more ways than one and some will work and some won't. How any blogger plans to achieve that is entirely up to them. Blog Azeroth is here to help foster discussion for blogging in general. I think the best way to go about doing that is to relate our own personal experiences and answer any questions about them that others may have.

I'm going to leave it at that.

So play nice.

Or else.

Canadians turn super saiyan.

Common techniques for ad or item placements within web content?
- in panel (sidebar)
- in headers or footers (typically very small)
- as visual breaks in the site (mostly horizontal between sections)
- pop-up from link (small link that pops more info)
- pop-up on entry (auto-opening on page load)
- in content (where content flows around it)

These are all widely done, and the company I work for has implemented most of these at one time or another, although much more sparingly in recently. I would attribute the slow down in requests to an increased understanding that scatter-gun ads donot work, and the ad material really needs to be targeted to a receptive audience to be affective.

eg.
Put insurance ads in a retail car site = win
Put viagra ad in a kids tv site = loss

A recent example was a property website that used AdSense type boxes in both content and twice in the sidebar (http://www.propertyoz.com.au). Over saturation of ad placement was thought about heavily during the design phase of the website, and we tried to keep as much visual distance between the ads as we could.

A common trick for an in-panel ad is to actually have a grid of 4 boxes which represents one ad area. This gives the marketer more "messages" exposed on the page, but damages the cohesive look of the page. The relationship between the owner, ad company, and designer should be very strong to avoid "misunderstandings" about how and where items are placed.

This site was designed much like many other news portals, which is similar to many blogs. Articles flow through the site as they are written, the site navigation is very shallow (meaning no deep nested pages) and generally you need to allow for rapid navigation for a very wide range of users. This is reflective of how often the content will change, and in very rapidly changing sites the searching and indexing of content is paramount to success.

An issue we came across in the design was how to differentiate the additional special features and quick-navigation from the Ad areas. In essence we needed to make sure that it was visually obvious what parts of the site are value add-ons from the site itself and what were paid ads.

Now that the site is live and working I have also realised that nothing disappears as quickly as the initial design, and we are seeing far more variety in the images and headlines used that I expected. Oh well, it is getting traffic, and the client is generally pleased with the response from the audience.

For blogging I think the similarities between news sites and blogs are staggering. User visits is what drives the facility for ads to be present (obviously), and the click throughs from those ads are analysed very carefully to see what return can be created, or be best tweaked.

However it goes further too. Blog content and news content are very timely. Both are sensitive to changes and at their most valuable when the are current without the community. A wiki conversely is far better for information that is going to be referenced far into the future.

Goldsellers get the majority of their gold from game exploits, abusing bots, hacking other players' accounts with trojans, and chinese slaves who work for less than minimum wage.

Anyone supporting the sale of ingame gold, thus, indirectly supports those activities. This is not limited to purchasing gold, or giving gold sellers advert space. It's rather naive to think otherwise imho.


If you love the game, and love your readers, surely it's only prudent to look for alternatives? e.g. jinx T-shirts with warcraft logos and the like, or gold making guides instead of selling? It should be worth giving a try at the least. Or even project wonderful. If you receive good traffic and high clicks you'll attract plenty of advertisers willing to pay good money for ad space. I've found PW generates double if not more the value that adsense does on a good day.

In reply to the original post, I would just like to offer my own words. I started my blog with no intentions of making money or even aquiring very many readers. I still don't think I have that many... no idea how to tell.

I still have the same philosophy towards my blog. I write about my adventures in World of Warcraft. I write about my characters, my friends, and anything else I can think of about the community. I try to add content as I can and generally try to make it a comfortable place.

I do it because I love the game and the friends I have made. I do it because I love to write. And I ask for nothing in return. It's my hobby, and that's all it'll ever be.

Good luck to your on your path to where ever you are going!

Had about 3k visitors and made about $120 in the 4 weeks or so that my fledgeling blog has been going. This will hopefully increase quite rapidly as word spreads... or at least thats the plan

That is really good for your blog I suppose. Of course I do not know your statistics but my Alexa finally is below the 1mil ranking, and my Technorati is going down daily, which is really good.

Money right now is not my main issue but it is a main focus. I know I am not suppose to be making good money right now but it is the focus so I push myself to do better. If you need help with any rankings or anything of the such I will do my best to help in some form of SEO.

-Visin

I do not want my blogging about wow to be a commercial venture. This I feel strongly about.
But I don't see a problem with people choosing to cover costs and if that includes the cost of time & effort putting in it so be it,

However people who do use ads report the difficulty in keeping the gold selling ad's off their sites no matter what they do, I find it ironic that for a 'hobby' we have the passion to want to write about advertises a service that undermines playing fair, and advertises people who are are quite probably caught up in the hacking and stealing of people's accounts who share our passion for the love of a game, and that is enough reason to not want any ads.

I've been paid and published as a creative writer, and I know I have a long way to go before I could consider making a living from it so I understand your point as to why shouldn't you be paid for your efforts, but the thing about commercialism is that we are being constantly Inundated with advertisements on the street, on the radio, on tv - buy buy buy buy and ad's pay for the real content I know. So I don't watch TV, nor listen to radio, or magazines I buy content. DVD shows's - Cd's - Books . The moment they put coke machines in stormwind becomes the day I think about still wanting to play

Maybe you are a good marketer, congratulations on your sites sucess and your post on this forum could have only increased interest - hence your add revenue. But I think there is a big line between self promotion and commercialism - Hence why I will sign this with my blog web addy

Http://pugnaciouspriest.wordpress.com

The one thing I would like to add to Visin's topic is a statement on priorities.

I'm not a "real" blogger yet, but you can check out some of my work in Matticus's contest for new bloggers. I am, however, a very real idealist. I think that the content, the writing, the posts, should be first and foremost. Visin's site seemed a little thin on the content front to me--the ads were numerous and very eye-catching, but the articles didn't stand out much. I'm neutral on the issue of making money from a blog, and I see both sides of the question, but the whole point really is the writing. Don't ever lose sight of that!

Yeah you are. Don't be kiddin' yourself now.

Sorry for my prolonged absence from the BA forums; I really need to fix that.

To the OP: In the serious WoW blogging community (of which Blog Azeroth is a large part), gold-selling ads and private servers do not garner credibility. Universally, we're a pro-ToS, pro-Eula group. If you're making money that way, so be it. I think most of us would consider it "dirty money."

For example: I visited your site, once. I won't be going back, for the reasons I cited above. And to be honest, I've no idea what kind of content you have.

How much advertisement you put on your web site affects how you're viewed by visitors. An excess of advertisement, especially when coupled with an absence of content, makes the author appear greedy. If the opinions of others don't matter to the author, I suppose it doesn't matter. But I find that I much prefer visiting blogs written by people who DO care about what I think! (Yes, I am a beautiful and unique snowflake.)

As for people who run gold ads, ads for in-game "hacks", etc. I wouldn't even trust the site owner to protect me from malicious software (or not to include it himself). There's no feasible reason to subject myself to such risks with the number of great blogs that don't promote this type of behavior or help facilitate these activities.

Content before context before ads. Did I get that right?

My turn.

I'll lay this out at the start. I enjoy blogging but I don't blog for me. In my little world, I know the stuff I blog about, I know how mechanics work, or how to do a boss fight. But I want to share with people, so I blog about it. I am not doing it to preserve my memories. And my blog is doing quite well in my opinion. I am lucky enough to have a dedicated reader base hovering around 1300 unique visits a day.

I am completely ad-free still. I don't even use Entrecard and my thoughts about it and other things caused a small fiasco between myself and some other folks around here a while ago. Some still are even holding the grudge. So before I get off-topic . . . .

Glad you like your numbers but Bbr and Matt said it great. By turning a blind eye to gold selling ads you inadvertently support them whether you believe you do or not so you obviously don't hate them too much. Edmund Burke said "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." While we are not talking about some terrible humanitarian issue (although you could if you consider the things Bbr said regarding underpaid children) the principle remains.

"I hate gold sellers as much as you do but not enough to stop taking money from them" is like saying someone hates people who sell drugs but is willing to take money from them since it helps them out. Who do you think you are supporting in that situation?

Not talking about in-game? That's my favorite part! The other day somebody said "Aspect of the Hare ftw" in Trade Chat after I'd hawked something I just put on the AH, that had me giddy for the rest of the night.

As for ads, I don't do 'em. I have received quite a few e-mails from people who want to team up with me to do various advertising-related things, I have turned them all down. I will never have Google ads on my blog. If I ever get a self-hosted setup it will be from money out of my own pocket (and possibly off of custom art, or something). The closest I came to making money through blogging was making $50 for writing a hunter guide for that Project Lore thing, I have since decided I will also never do that again because my creative freedom was too limited... I had to write, essentially, what somebody else wanted me to write, and it sucked.

You gotta understand where I'm coming from though. I'm a free software/Open Source nut. I use Linux, an OS that is all about sharing and freedom. Everything on my blog reflects that philosophy too; according to my Creative Commons notice you are free to take what you want on my blog and post it elsewhere, even modify it, so long as you don't sell it.

Making money through something like that would be counter-productive to my own personal values so... I'm not gonna do it!

The real success, for me, comes in those e-mails from people who tell me they successfully got WoW working on Linux thanks to my guides, and the people who joyfully tell me that I have inspired them to rediscover the hunter class and now they're in love all over again... that is success. Knowing I have helped others to experience the joy I have-- that's what I'm aiming for.

My readers visit my site because they care about me, and I care about them. That's the beauty of the whole thing. What more could you ask for?

I like food. Hehe, seriously though... I agree and I think my blog will remain ad-free as well. What I feel isn't really ads is having links to other blogs on there, since that's kind of related to why I'm writing and hopefully in some cases even related to what I'm writing.