Today, I took down the Google and Blogads code. I did this for several reasons, and I’ll just list a few here:
- distracting
- products / advertisers I abhor
- contractually cannot make fun of them
- not going to get rich from them
- distracting
I will continue to carry Dr. Drury’s ad as long as he continues to want it up, and I’m not against hosting other ads, but I won’t be hosting ads I have little say in.
The impetus to make this change was a joking post I put up yesterday that the plaintiff atty ads in the Google sidebar first made me mad, then I realized they should make me rich, and half-jokingly encouraged readers to click on them. That was wrong of me (but no harm, no foul: the ads had rotated off the plaintiff group by the time that post went up). A reader pointed out that was against the Google TOS, and since it was, I had a choice to make. Now I’ve made it.
Good decision
I’m going to miss FVO.
There are plenty of other bloggers trying like mad to make money through placing ads on their sites – go with your decision to only put up ads you can eventually make fun of!
FVO. Very funny!
BlogAds, at least, allows you to reject ads. I wrote some thoughts on a potential benefit of including Google ads here:
http://kidneynotes.blogspot.com/2005/05/thoughts-on-google-ads.html
Darn, would love to get more of you docs together and attract more medical ads. Anyway to be clear, I’m not aware that there’s any contractual limit on making fun of your advertisers. :) And you’d absolve yourself of ANY moral doubts if you highlighted your “fun at the advertiser’s expense” policy in your blog description.
nicely done. the irony of the plaintiff attorneys on the ads is too funny, and reaffirms my belief in a god with a sense of humor.