Recent Changes In This Blog

***I just need to write an addendum here. While I was writing this entry, Google Adsense was still working but right after I posted this, it suddenly disappeared. I don't know what happened or if Google suspended my account again for whatever reason.
If you have visited this blog lately, you may have noticed that I got advertisements from Google Adsense back. They suspended my previous account for clicking on my own ads which was a no-no with their terms of service. So I lost the $10.00 I earned on that account. However they allow you to use another account by using a different email address. Since I’m getting a few more hits on the blog in recent months (thanks to my Facebook friends), I hope the people who read it find some ads interesting and click on them. I’ve also been using Infolinks for advertising. They are the ones you see highlighted in green and ads pop open when you put your cursor on the word. I started using Infolinks after Google suspended my account.

I’ve also added some widgets. If you notice on the left column, there is an area to share the blog on Twitter and Facebook, a list of people I follow and people that follow me, plus something named Feedjit which tracks where someone came from when they visited my blog. It is interesting to see what part of the world the readers came from, how they found you, and if you click on the Feedjit website, you can also see what browser and operating system their computers have. You can see it for yourself here: http://live.feedjit.com/live/noeldlp.blogspot.com/ and you will probably see your city and country of origin on the topmost of the list.

What hasn’t changed are the archives and the useless knowledge widget. I’ve read some running blogs recently and their pages are all enviably much better dressed up than mine. Maybe if I can find nicer templates… For now, everything is all good because I don’t want to clutter the page too much that it distracts from what I’m writing about.

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Google Giveth and Google Taketh Away

Well they really haven’t given me anything so they have taken away what they haven’t given me, and that’s just fine. Google suspended (well, disabled is the word they used) the advertising account on my blog due to overclicking! After they notified me a few weeks ago that I’ve earned a few bucks, I began to look at the ads they were putting on my site more closely and I found out that they were things that interested me, so I started clicking away to see what they had to offer. Most were related to health, fitness, and road racing. Things that sometimes come up in what I wrote about. So I didn’t see any harm in my clicking on the ads. Well, Google Adsense begs to disagree and has suspended my account due to violation of their terms of service. Or maybe it was because of what I wrote in that blog a couple of weeks back where I mentioned autoclick programs and jokingly asked my friends to click on the ads too. Perhaps Google’s automatic scanner for key words found those and perceived that they constituted a violation of their TOS. I always knew that my clicks could be traced back to my IP address so there was no hiding that. Oh well, nothing gained and nothing lost on my part. I’ve removed the ads from my blog. Maybe just as well. Less clutter.

Public comments below, private comments may be emailed to: noelotp562@all2easy.net

Google is Giving Me Money!

After picking up the mail on Monday, I noticed a postcard that came from Google. What could it possibly be? I remember “monetizing” my blog a few months ago and by that I mean that I gave Google permission to place advertising on it. When someone clicks on any of the ads, Google keeps track of it and I’m supposed to earn some money that way. I didn’t think very much about it since I don’t get much traffic on my blog site, and it takes a few thousand ad clicks before someone can really make money. After allowing Google to insert ads, I noticed that whatever topic I wrote about, new ads relating to that topic would appear on the page. I think they call this targeted advertising. A few that interested me, I clicked on. However, the Terms of Service discourage the practice of the writer of the blog clicking numerous times on the ads just to potentially earn more money. I don’t have the time or the inclination to click on ads all day just to get some money, so rest assured, Google, I haven’t violated your Terms of Service. Besides, I don’t have the technical knowledge to install an autoclick program.
So anyway, back to the postcard. It contained information on how I can activate the payment process, which included a PIN number. I logged on to the Google Adsense website, filled in some verification information, plus my checking account number where they can send me part of their billions. From the info on the website, I gathered that Google is going to start sending the money as soon as it reaches $100.
Having satisfied all the requirements, I checked to see how much I’ve earned so far, if any. After about six months of targeted advertising on my blog site, I finally hit paydirt! All $8.30 of it! Fist bump, high five, chest bump!!!
Ok folks, help me out here. Whoever visits my site please click on more of the ads so Google can give me more money. At the rate it’s been going the last six months, I’ll finally reach $100 in about six years! Lesser if you help with the clicking.