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Joe, Blogging for Cash  (View post)

Digital Inspiration [PersonRank 2]

Friday, September 23, 2005
18 years ago

I was looking at some of his web-statistics <em>[Comment removed. -Ed.]</em>

One of his blog is getting just 5-7 visitors per day.

Why did you chose to interview such a spam blogger ?

Andrea [PersonRank 0]

18 years ago #

"I will list most of them except those that are still a work-in-progress or are very personal."

...

"I do have two PR5 blogs now (not listed above)"

Porn? :-)

And also: "The easiest solution I see is for publishers to prevent people from copying their articles and images." Yay! Enforcing copyright by disabling the right-click! Welcome to the Web 2.0!

Joe H. [PersonRank 1]

18 years ago #

No, Not Porn

Yes, is that what Web 2.0 is? As you can tell I am a novice. I am all for people who don't want their content duplicated to disable the "right-click". I think it is the easiest solution.

Andrea [PersonRank 0]

18 years ago #

Reading my comment again, I guess you could miss the sarcasm if you were really, really new to the internet. Or naive or something.

Most internet users think there's absolutely nothing wrong with, say, the right-click menu and get rather upset if website owners take it away from them to "protect" their content, seeing as a) there'll always be ways to circumvent that "protection", essentially rendering it useless, and b) most people don't use the copy-paste function with copyright infringement in mind and, to put it mildly, see no point in having essential browsing tools taken away from them. In short, it's a pain in the ass and benefits exactly no-one.

I find your idea of copyright enforcement on the basis of "make it hard for *everyone* to access the content" rather appalling, I must say, especially taking your use of said content into account. So you're new to the web, but that doesn't mean you don't have to think ideas like "everyone who provides uncrippled access to their stuff doesn't care about copyright" all the way through, does it?

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

Digital Inspiration, Joe himself said that for some blogs he gets only a bunch of hits, but – he's making good money with AdSense.

Note: as always, I will remove name-calling from the forum. You can still criticize Joe's methods, of course, but no personal attacks please.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

Interesting side-effect to the interview: as it mentions so many "special" keywords, the article is being automatically cited from and linked to by a lot of spam blogs.

http://blogsearch.google.com/?q=blog.outer-court.com/archive/2005-09-23-n78.html

WebMasterWorld [PersonRank 0]

18 years ago #

So many words for so little money.

Joe H. [PersonRank 1]

18 years ago #

Andrea,

I certainly would not like that to happen as I love the usefullness and information that flows on the internet.

I guess my point was if someone has a website and they absolutely do not want anyone copying/pasting anything then I feel they should disable the "right click" or what ever.

Other people may not mind or only ask that people get permission first.

I do not agree with taking content from the internet, claiming it to be your own, then reselling it. I disapprove of that.

But I do not have a problem with anyone taking stuff from the internet as long as they give credit where credit is due and provide a link.

If someone asks me to remove something I do.

Contrary to what many of you might think I have written stuff my blogs that ends up else where but people generally put a link to the source. That does not bother me.

If someone wants to take a graphic I made and use it on their site I generally don't mind. If someone takes a graphic I have made, makes a T-Shirt, and makes a million dollars off it then sure I may go after a portion of the profits if they did not ask persmission first or if I did not grant permission.

"So you’re new to the web, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to think ideas like "everyone who provides uncrippled access to their stuff doesn’t care about copyright" all the way through, does it?"

I don't know? Does that sound so absurd to you?

I know for me if I have something and I don't want anyone esle to "streal" it or publish it somewhere else, the last place I would put it is the internet.

If I made graphics or wrote articles that I wanted people to buy or did not want them to copy then yes, I would do what ever I could to prevent that from happening.

I don't "assume" I can take what ever off the internet if I am capable of doing so.

What I mostly do is take news articles or articles from go articles.

If AP publishes a story and 1000 online newspapers are carrying the story, readers can print the story, and readers can email the story to whoever they want, then why can't it by published on a blog as well?

Is it just a matter of paying some sort of licensing fee? If so, then I will look into that to circumvent this issue.

I don't publish subscrition stuff on my blogs. It's all free news available to anyone. I just cull it from the internet.

Joe H. [PersonRank 1]

18 years ago #

Philipp,

How on earth did this story get crawled and out there so fast?

Mark Draughn [PersonRank 5]

18 years ago #

I hate sites that block right-clicking on images. Well, not all of them, just the ones I notice...by which I mean sites that block right-clicking on images that are also links. I right-click to open new windows all the time, and it drives me nuts when some shopping site pops up a copyright notice when I try to open their product description pages in another window.

Anti Spam Blogger [PersonRank 0]

18 years ago #

Gosh i don't really see the point of interviewing spam blogger and even if you want to interview one, find someone who earn more than him. Im also a blogger earning from AdSense and one of my blog is earning $30/day and i just started the blog 4 months. So what so big deal about him?? At least i don't blog about mesothelioma just to earn from AdSense.

Joe H. [PersonRank 1]

18 years ago #

I am really happy for you Anti Spam Blogger!

So what do you blog about?

There is no big deal about me. I am just an average person living an average life. I am not special by any means.

What is your $30/day blog about?

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

Anti-Spam Blogger: I found it interesting to learn about Joe’s approaches, his reasoning, his earnings etc. I’m not saying everyone shares the same interest, but I hope this was of interest to some.

Joe: How did the story get out there so fast? My blog’s part of the sources in Google News, so certain articles I post get indexed every few minutes. After that, many people have Google Alerts subscribed to specific keywords. Obviously many spammers subscribe to keywords such as "m0rtgage" or "v1agra" and then automatically fill their splogs with such content.

As for preventing right-click: that would throw out the baby with the bathwater. After all, "fair use" is legal. It is my right to quote short passages of other articles even if I don’t own the copyright. Sites that do prevent sharing like this will have a decreased mindshare in the long run, and some of them will become irrelevant because they’re not being talked about enough.
Besides, of course, right-clicking doesn’t prevent anything but the most innocent web surfer...

Joe H. [PersonRank 1]

18 years ago #

Hi Philipp you said:

"It is my right to quote short passages of other articles even if I don’t own the copyright."

Can you give me an idea of what you mean by short passages? One or two paragrapsh? Three paragrapsh? Or just a couple of sentences?

The reason I ask is because many times I do not post the whole artilce on one of my sites but just half of it or a third of it. I may publish just a few paragraphs and comment on the article before and/or after.

So you have the right to quote "short passages".

Can you help me undertand when your right to publish quotes from articles ends and copyright infringement begins?

And no I am not being smart or sarcastic. I really want to know so that in the future perhaps I can just play within the rules that you are all playing in.

If I can publish a headline, a couple of paragraphs, and then give my own commentary on an article without violating copyright that would be great!

Is this the case?

Thanks.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

Joe, I saw some of your posts contained more or less full quotes without your own commentary. That would not be "fair use" to me – I'm talking about my understanding of what's fair, not the legal situation, but I strongly suppose a lawyer would tell you the same (you might want to ask one).

To me, it also depends on how much of the original article you take; if it's from a large book, several paragraphs of quotation are OK for me, because it's only a tiny percentage of the whole book. But if it's 7 paragraphs from an article which only contains 10 or so, then I would feel differently. It all depends on the context, really. But ask yourself the simple question: how much value do you add? Is *other people's* work the clear majority of what you publish, or is it *your own* work?

Joe H. [PersonRank 1]

18 years ago #

Thanks for your answer. I am going to make an effort in the future to publish either from GoArticles or just a few paragraphs from articles and comment before and/or after.

How much value do I add?

I think that is hard to measure. I am sure to most people think I add no value what so ever.

But to other people who perhaps are not as internet savvy as your group of readers appear to be, perhaps going to a blog on computer viruses and having all the resources they need right there with having to go through search engines would be helpful.

I don't know. At least that has been my hope. I cull the news and find relevant articles. My hope is that when people want the latest news on a particular topic rather than perform news searches they may just check one of my sites.

Am I adding value to the internet? That was never really my goal.

Initially my goal was just to do it for fun. Now my goal has shifted to on some of my blogs doing it for personal/political reasons, some blogs for humor, and the rest of them to make money.

For the ones I want to make money with I guess I don't care if they "add value" to the internet at all as long as a few people check them out from time to time and generate revenue through adsense that is what I care about.

People are not stupid and I know people want decent content etc. So that is what I try to do but I have a lot of work to do on my existing sites to make them better.

It has only been two months since I started focusing on making money and in that time my revenue has grown significantly.

My desire is the have a revenue generating base so that I can take that money and put it into things I want to do like making websites, buying a better computer, better software, etc.

As far as value on the internet. The internet has tons of value. But I would say at least half of what is on the internet has no value.

I realize that many people will lump me right in with the no value catagory.

Between all the porn, pop-ups, cloaks, scams, redirects, ads, and autogenerated sites the internet has become full of trash.

That is why we are at the mercy of the search engines to pull up only relevant content with value related to our search.

Unfortunately there are a lot of smart people who know how to pull up on the top 10 of a search with a site that has no relevance to your search.

What is worse to me is when I search google for example Satelie TV and I see an ad in the sidebar for "Satelite TV Free Installation"; then I click on the ad and end up at a site that has nothing to do with Satelite TV...even worse I end up at a porn site or gambling site from clicking on a Satelite TV ad! I hate that...

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

Joe you're right – your sites do not deceive, that much is for sure, and you don't do any automated blogging, and you always cite your sources. And, as can be seen here, you react to feedback and you are very sincere about what you.

By the way: there are a lot of public domain sources where you can draw content from (and fully quote!). Like the Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/ . Or the Yahoo Creative Commons search http://search.yahoo.com/cc . The Wikipedia also has a good overview on PD stuff http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain_image_resources . For free images, GIMP is also a decent resource http://gimp-savvy.com/PHOTO-ARCHIVE/ .

Joe H. [PersonRank 1]

18 years ago #

Philipp,

Thanks for the links!

I will definately check them out!

Pat [PersonRank 0]

18 years ago #

You can use "channels" on Adsense to track which blogs are making you money. Set up a channel for each blog. Then when you set up the Adsense, select the channel for that blog.

Fact Masters [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

I see nothing wrong with using blogs to earn cash as long as you are giving the surfer useful information and not just targeting the highest paying key words. I do think that the search engines now are "content crazy". Content is great if I desire to read an article or catch up on the news but when I'm looking for a part for an old car I really don't need the complete history of the car company or news on the car, just the part please!

[Signature removed – Tony]

Roger Browne [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

I know this is an old interview, but I hadn't seen it before. I just want to mention that I found it a really good read. Philipp asks good questions, and Joe answers them frankly, without being evasive or manipulative.

A year later, only a few of Joe's blogs survive. Perhaps a follow-up interview would be interesting?

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