How AdBlock Hurts The Creators You Love

Is there anything worse than Internet ads? They clutter up your search results, they get in your face when you're trying to check your mail, and they crowd in on the sides of the blogs you're trying to read. Worst of all, though, are the mini-commercials that play before the song you really want to listen to, or the tutorial you're trying to watch. Really, with so many businesses trying to jam their products in your face, it was a godsend when you got AdBlock installed on your computer, your tablet, your phone, and if you're old-school, on your desktop, too.

The problem is, what's good for you is actually terrible for the creators making the stuff you like.

After all, wouldn't you help us out if it didn't cost you anything?

Ads Are How Most Online Creators Get Paid

Most people never stop and ask how creative professionals on the Internet get paid. After all, if you buy an author's book, then that author gets a cut of the sale (which are called royalties). If you buy a painting, then the artist who painted it gets a piece of that (or all of it, if the painter is selling it him or herself). But what about people who create YouTube videos, who write blogs, or who design any of the dozens of other things you can get free access to on the Internet? How do they get paid?

Simple. They get part of the ad revenue generated from their pages.

Take this blog, for example. I don't charge any membership fees, and anyone can read it for free on any device. In fact, the more people who read my blog, the more money I make. Because, in addition to dispensing wisdom on the writing profession from my soapbox, this page has ads on it. The more traffic I get, and the more people who see those ads, the more money I make. That's the same for anyone who uses an ad-based platform, whether it's writers at InfoBarrel, or YouTube celebrities like Jim Sterling.

Speaking of Mr. Sterling, he did an episode of The Jimquisition last year for the Escapist covering this very topic. As such, I thought I'd share it to hammer the point home.

So, there you have it. No one likes Internet ads. However, if you have AdBlock on your devices, then you are, effectively, not counted when the end of the month rolls around and our paymasters figure out how much money our traffic earned us. And, to be honest, we need all of the numbers we can get, because it takes thousands of hits for us to earn as little as a few bucks.

That's why I'd like to ask a favor of my regular readers. If you have AdBlock installed on your devices, would you consider turning it off when you read either The Literary Mercenary or Improved Initiative?

If you'd rather keep blocking ads, but you still want me to keep creating content on a regular basis, you could visit my Patreon page to become a patron, instead. $1 an entry, or even a month, goes a long way toward helping me provide even more content for you, my readers.

Well, thanks for stopping by! If you'd like to make sure you don't miss any of my updates, then plug your email into the box on the right, or follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, or Twitter!

The Best Alternative to Google Adsense

Before we get started with this week's post, I wanted to let my readers know the Literary Mercenary has its first official shirt paying homage to one of the great rock stars of the written word.

Willy Shakes, telling it like it is.

This design, along with several others, is available in the Literary Mercenary's storefront right here. Tell your family, tell your friends, and let everyone know you don't work for free.

Speaking of not working for free, this week we're discussing Google AdSense and how unreliable it can be for those who want to make a serious living.

What Are You Talking About?

Anyone who's followed this blog for a while knows I have used Google AdSense for many years. I've outlined how the process works, and I've explained to many readers just how they too can enjoy the benefits of Google AdSense to monetize their blogs. Even when Yahoo! Voices shuttered its doors and the journalism market dried up, I knew that Google always had my back.

Or at least I thought it did.

That would be me. Way off in the background. Looking the other way. Minding my own business.

For those of you who want the nitty gritty details, I wrote a blog post about how Google kicked me out of their clubhouse and cut up my Google AdSense access card right here. I'd like to say it was an article about why it happened, but it seems when Google drums you out of the service you are not given a reason why you're being thrown out on your ear.

I told you that so you know, dear readers, that when I tell you there are alternatives to Google AdSense out there you can trust I know what I'm talking about.

The Best Google AdSense Alternative

Whether you couldn't get a Google AdSense account of your own, you had one and were thrown out, or you just don't trust Google and would prefer to use another company to monetize your blog, you've probably noticed there aren't many options out there. Google is one of the biggest companies in the world, and the amount of resources it controls online is intimidating to say the least. So when you go on a pilgrimage as an outcast from Google's lands, you are walking across the wasteland that was once Google's competition.

Here lies Squidoo, last of the line of trueborn content creators.

However, that doesn't mean there's no life after Google. In fact there are several Google AdSense alternatives that are robust, functional, and which will make certain that your blog or website has the capacity to earn you money as long as you keep your traffic up.

Rather than give you a list though, I'll just tell you which one I found to be the best value; Infolinks.

What Is Infolinks?

Seems pretty straightforward, doesn't it? Infolinks puts ads on your website or blog which are geared toward what your viewers want. All you have to do is keep creating good content, and as long as you bring in traffic you can leave the advertising part of things up to Infolinks.

Best of all, you don't have to worry about Google deciding to cut you off for reasons they won't divulge.

Sounds Good To Me!

I thought it might. Though there's a special added bonus as well; even if you have Google AdSense on your page, you can still incorporate Infolinks. So at the end of the day there is really no reason not to go check it out right here.

Just tell them the Literary Mercenary sent you, and don't forget to follow me on Facebook and Tumblr to get all of my latest and greatest.

The Literary Mercenary Needs Your Help!

I regret to interrupt your regularly-scheduled serving of snark and biting wit, but unfortunately there's a rather serious issue I need to let you know about.

The Literary Mercenary is in Some Serious Shit!

I do hope that got your attention.

What's Going On?

I'm glad you asked. Let me break it down for you.

Chapter One: How I Got Fucked

Many of you have heard of Yahoo! Voices, but if you haven't it's a user-content creation website where people write articles and Yahoo! pays them a fee based on how popular those articles are. Yahoo! paid authors between $1.50 and $2 for every 1k page views their content received, and for those of you who don't work on the Internet let me testify that getting 1k page views isn't easy. That said, after half a dozen years of working on this platform off and on I had finally managed to earn a triple-digit royalty check. I was ecstatic, because my views seemed to have nowhere to go but up.

Until a week after this event, where I got an email from Yahoo! informing me that they are shutting the Yahoo! Voices network down completely at the end of July.

What This Means For Me

This puts me in a bit of a tight spot. I've gotten used to having a $40 or $50 royalty check from Yahoo! over the past year and change, and as I mentioned it seemed that I'd finally managed to get into the $100 range. In addition to royalties though, the website also offered up front payments to authors whose work was likely to earn lots of page views. So all told I'm not only out an employer, but the roughly $200 a month that employer represented.

Not enough to kill me, but much like my left leg I'm going to notice when it's cut off.

The rights to my content revert to me, and I'll be finding new homes for a lot of it. However there are no websites that pay for just getting traffic with the closing of Yahoo! Voices; they only pay on ad clicks. That means that no matter how useful, intriguing, entertaining, or helpful my articles are I don't get paid if viewers don't click ads.

How many ads have you clicked during your web browsing today? That's about what I thought.

How You Can Help

No, I am not asking you for money. That said if you have it and are offering it I'll gladly carry that burden for you.

Seriously, I am that kind of friend.

For those of you who do want to help me, and of course my blog, there are a couple of different ways you can do so.

#1: Tell Your Family, Tell Your Friends

This sounds obvious, but I'm going to say it again; if you want to help out then please tell everyone you know about the blog entries you like best. Like and share them on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, and whatever other social media you've got. Bring up my blog in conversation, tell that cousin of yours who wants to be a novelist to check me out. If you have a blog, a website, a Live Journal (people still have those, right?), use it as a platform and give me a second or two in the spotlight. Put your email address in the box on the upper right, and make sure that you get my updates as soon as they happen.

The more people who come and read what I've written, the more popular my blog will get. That will make it a popular destination, increase my ad revenue, and generally keep my bills paid while I keep providing all of my readers with more content.

#2: Make a One-Time Donation

If you were walking down the street and saw a street performer you liked you'd toss a buck in his cap. If you want to do the same for me click the "Shakespeare Gotta Get Paid, Son" button on the right hand side of the screen just below the email-followers box. This will let you toss some cash right into my PayPal account as a one-time "hope this gets you through the change over" sort of donation.

It's not tax deductible, sadly. I work cheap, but I'm not a charity.

#3: Become a Patron

Patronage has been around since the first artists wanted to quit hunting in order to put murals on the cave walls. For those of you who don't know, I have a Patreon page you can visit by clicking right here. If you choose to become a patron what that means is that for every blog entry I put up you are willing to give me a certain amount of money. This is a reward for me doing good work, and an incentive for me to keep it up. Generally all I ask is $1 per entry, but if a single Washington is all you're comfortable parting with then that's fine too. Just put your monthly cap at $1, and no matter how many times I post you're only spending a buck to keep me going.

Patronage is a big step, and I know that. All my patrons have my most sincere thanks, but since those aren't worth the dregs in a pot of government-employee coffee, I'm giving all my patrons their choice of ebook for free once they sign up.

The cost of the ebook is worth at least three months of support. I'm just saying.

Thanks for stopping by! I should return you to your regularly scheduled blog post as of this coming week.