My Faustian pact with the devil
After some soul-searching I just signed up with Google AdSense.
Henceforth [Nils’s] life was filled with comfort and luxury, but marked by excess and perversion. Everything was within his grasp: elegant clothing, fine wines, sumptuous food, beautiful women—even Helen of Troy and the concubines from the Turkish sultan’s harem. He became the most famous astrologer in the land, for his horoscopes never failed. No longer limited by earthly constraints, he traveled from the depths of hell to the most distant stars. He amazed his students and fellow scholars with his knowledge of heaven and earth. [from Faust Legends]
Google sure knows how to close a deal, let me tell you. (knowing French laugh) Well, okay, maybe I’m exaggerating for dramatic effect, but let me assure you that I did agonize over this decision before trading my immortal soul for the promise of a small amount of filthy lucre. I’d be the last one to vote for turning Casa Jonsson into yet another garish Houston-area billboard. But we could really use a little something to offset our budget web hosting costs.
I’ve settled for relegating the ads to our most popular past entries, pages that are already responsible for the lion’s share of our ongoing traffic. Regular Casa Jonsson readers won’t even notice that the place has lost its ambience and has become a dreary exercise in boorish, capitalistic opportunism.
In fact, I don’t even notice. Do these horns make my face look pudgy? 
Criminy, dude! Whence all this hand-wringing? I intentionally tried to find pages with ads on them, and I couldn’t, giving up after several minutes. If that’s your idea of some kind of e-Mattress-Mackian obtrusion, um, … oh, I don’t know what my point was, I just wanted to type “e-Mattress-Mackian”.
Anyhow, I’d be really interested to see how it goes for you, less in terms of the hoi polloi decrying your “selling out” and more in terms of “who clicks on those things?” Maybe it’s just me, but I filtered out anything from Google’s ad syndication server (using Firefox’s AdBlock) months ago. That said, my company dabbles a bit in AdSense advertising, and I’m always surprised that as many people click on ads served up on non-Google pages as click on ads served with Google search results.
That said, it’s clear that you’re trying to soak the occasional passer-by coming in from Google in order to support the rest of us who never even visit the archives, and I appreciate your sticking it to the other guy.
Apropos of little besides your opening metaphor, have you ever seen the Czech surrealist film Faust, directed by Jan Svenkmajer? I know that, statistically speaking, there is never any good reason to ask anyone in America if they’ve ever enjoyed anything described as “Czech surrealist”, but you’re a with-it guy, right? Anyhow, I was introduced to this film by way of two independent recommendations, and given my superficial love of anything Czech (Prague was the first overseas city I ever visited, and I do so long to go back there some day), I saw it. And rented it several more times to show to other people. I don’t know why I love it so, but I do. Surrealism, giant puppets, witty taunting, and the Golem myth — what more could you want? Besides battling droids, I mean.
This comment is increasingly off-topic, but I wanted to brag that Faust comprises 50% of my DVD collection. The other DVD being Leprechaun 5: Leprechaun in the Hood. It’s an erratic collection. I’m very proud of what I presume is its uniqueness.
By the way, when previewing that last comment (and, it turns out, this one as well), I kept seeing the following error message at the end of the comments-adding page:
MT::App::Comments=HASH(0×813242c) Use of uninitialized value in sprintf at lib/MT/Template/Context.pm line 1187.
Just so you know.
Sorry to make you look so hard. Apparently I failed to say that the ads aren’t in place yet. I’m still waiting on Google to process my application: check to make sure the numbered Swiss bank account I gave them accepts deposits in increments of £1m—that sort of thing.
In case anyone’s interested or concerned, the first page to get slimed will be this one. It’s the most popular thing I’ve ever written.
A few erratic comments:
1. Yes, I do belive that one’s CD or DVD or mp3 shuffle DOES indeed reflect a personality (check out my blog and look for the link called “the mp3 roul*****”, the safety features on this comment post would NOT let me have the ‘roul****’.). As for your collection, perhaps it’s “a tension between the here-and-now and the there-and-far, culminating in a blurred line between the world you know and the hidden world you wish not to fully know”.
3. In your most favorite post (the 1st to “go Google” (hey, I think I just created a new phrase — “He went Google”), there are TWO links Latin Personals. Any way to “test” out the results?
4. How do you actually make money on this? (Is there anything we can do to *help*?)
5. I am in Prague now. Not in spirit, or in mind. But my physical body is in a hotel room 50 meters from the Vltava River. Or at least I think it’s Prague… I woke up today dazed and unable to remember anything… in this hotel room, and there’s this aweful ache in my back and side, and a some dressing over a fresh scar across my abs to the side… Having trouble going to the bathroom…
Yes, I’ve had some misgivings about the ad content, too. I suppose it’s my own fault for making a pun about using “vulgar Latin phrases” south of the border.
My earnings in the few days the ads have been in place have been astounding. I’m already making plans to quit my day job and acquire naming rights to a Caribbean archipelago. When it’s all settled I’ll invite you to winter with us on Isla Jonsson.
Date
Page impressions
Clicks
Page CTR
Page eCPM
Your earnings
Totals
93
1
1.1%
$0.32
$0.03
Friday, May 20, 2005
49
0
0.0%
$0.00
$0.00
Saturday, May 21, 2005
22
1
4.5%
$1.36
$0.03
Sunday, May 22, 2005
15
0
0.0%
$0.00
$0.00
Monday, May 23, 2005
7
0
0.0%
$0.00
$0.00
I just want to say for the record that it was NOT me who clicked the Latin personals link. I promise. Seriously.