100th BlogAid Pledge | January 3, 2005

BlogAid. Support the Asia Relief Efforts.

Since launching BlogAid on New Years eve, the response has been extremely positive and we’re already up to our 100th pledge. However with over 6,000 visits a day to this site alone, I’m sure we can do better. So if you run a blog and would like to pledge your site earnings for January to help the victims of the Asian Earthquake and Tsunami, please head over to BlogAid and register your support now. With people only now starting back to work from their holidays and catching up on their RSS feeds, I’m hopeful we’ll reach the 200 mark even faster.

If your site doesn’t currently carry ads, programs such as Google AdSense and affiliate programs like Amazon Associates are very easy to set up and can be used solely for the duration of BlogAid. Alternatively simply donate a set amount to one of the many charities featured on the BlogAid links page.

Posted at January 3, 2005 3:23 PM

Comments

Anders said on January 3, 2005 6:52 PM

Great initiative; also check out (and link to, if it tickles your fancy) my links-for-dollars pledge:
Webloggers: Tive to Tsunami victims and I’ll give too

Cheers,
Anders

Malarkey said on January 3, 2005 6:56 PM

Andy, how about making the pledge list a little easier to navigate by adding 1|2|3| etc. and Show All links?

Brian Behrend said on January 4, 2005 12:51 AM

With all the links I’ve seen to BlogAid in the last couple days maybe you should put some Google ads on the actual BlogAid site.

Josh Russell said on January 4, 2005 1:19 AM

nice one, this is a really brilliant idea!

thought you might be interested in something i’m working on.. makepovertyhistory.org

kind of relevent i think. one of the hopefully positive things that might come out of this is the debt relief.

you can support MPH by wearing a white band. there’s even a white band for your site. you can paste this code below your <body> tag:

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://www.makepovertyhistory.org/whiteband_small_right.js”></script>

Rick said on January 4, 2005 3:19 PM

This is a brilliant idea. Though I do not have a personal blog, I’ll put this on some message board that I’m registered.

Elizabeth Wagner said on January 4, 2005 5:33 PM

I think it’s great you’re doing this. I just wanted to let you know, though, that a tsunami is not a tidal wave. Tidal waves, by definition, are affected by the moon’s gravitational pull, which we commonly see in the tides.

Andy Budd said on January 4, 2005 7:47 PM

Hi Elizabeth. You’re totally right about the tidal wave thing. In reality tidal waves are the waves you see everyday at the beach. However until the word Tsunami broke into common usage, most people incorrectly used the term Tidal Wave. Because of this erroneous but popular usage, I think it’s still reasonable to use the term on a non technical site. However the correct scientific scientific term is apparently a seismic sea wave.

Ted said on January 5, 2005 2:32 AM

Hi Andy
Could you post your blog-aid logo as a transparent png? I don’t have a white background and its difficult to get rid of the white around the smaller text.
Thanks

Charles said on January 5, 2005 7:17 AM

Hi, I got your site link from LittleYellowDifferent, which is doing the BlogAid program. I have a concern, and it’s not small. Blogs I’ve seen are mentioning earthquake relief on the same page that their AdSense ad appears. As a result, the top AdSense ad is an ad for a quake relief site.

Is Google donating that ad? If not, that site is paying big for every click that does not result in a donation, paying more than the BlogAid blogger would get as revenue and be able to donate (otherwise, Google would not make money from AdSense ads).

I did a search on “adsense quake relief site:google.com” and came up with nada. Neither anything in the news search.

Do you know anything about this. It would be ironic and sad if the BlogAid campaign wound up costing a quake relief group more than it makes from having the ad.

This assumes the ad is legit, of course. I know nothing about the organization placing the ad.

Assuming it’s legit, it would also be a great chance for Google to be heros and get some free publicity. However, I do not yet have evidence they have chosen to do so.

P.S. If e-mail is required, why isn’t there a “(Reqired)” thingy beside it like there is for Name and Comments?

Charles said on January 5, 2005 8:04 AM

(follow-up)

If I recall how AdSense works, and if it still works that way, the advertiser is charged just for the ad appearing, and clicking on the ad makes it more likely to appear.

There are 3 ways I can think of to make this work, only #1 of which the blogmeister has full control over.

#1. Don’t mention the earthquake on any page you have a BlogAid AdSense ad on.

#2. Google donates free ads to quake relief groups (maybe they’ve done this, but I have no word of it)

#3. Quake relief groups that advertise in AdSense need to include “-blogaid” in their AdSense keywords (and blogmeisters need to make sure to use the word BlogAid on any page that also mentions the earthquake or tsunami).

Hope this helps.

Andy Budd said on January 5, 2005 8:45 PM

Hi Charles,

Thanks for your comments. I’d like to make it clear that I’m in no way advocating that people post AdSense ads on their site and then encourage visitors to randomly click on the ads to earn money. This is both unfair to the advertisers and obviously against the AdSense T&C’s.

As such, those who are clicking on the ads should be genuinely interested in them and it’s up to the individual advertisers to decide if this is a good way to spend their marketing budgets

The posts mentioning BlogAid may be showing appeal type ads because the charities are actively targeting specific keywords. However once these post get a few days old, most blogs will be back to discussing their usual stuff and I doubt the mention of BlogAid will have a significant influence.

However this is one reason why I chose not to display AdSense Ads on the BlogAid site. The site is purely about the Tsunami Disaster so would permanently be carrying these type of ads, rather than a more general mix of ads.

David said on January 6, 2005 12:55 AM

Andy,

Why don’t you just encourage people to put charity, redcross or donation ads on their site instead of google adsense?

Google take a certain percent you know (surprise!) and you are basically putting money in their pocket by encouraging people to use adsense for donation purposes.

It is also a kind of clumsy way of doing it - most ads will be about “whatever” and as long as the visitor sees the blogaid logo he will click to make a donation - not because he is interested in the product. Google will likely follow up theese issues very soon and start to close accounts for fraudulent clicks.

I would take away the adsense pledge and encouragement to add adsense together with a blogaid logo, before people start to ask “why was my adsense account closed?”

Charles said on January 6, 2005 6:50 AM

I just went to Google’s Web site. I see it is now cost-per-click, not cost-per-display pricing, so you are right that simply displaying the ads costs the advertiser nothing (and generates nothing for BlogAid). However, the other problems as mentioned by David in the previous post do remain.

BTW, your live comment preview flashes whatever paragraph is being typed into.

Andy Budd said on January 6, 2005 8:42 PM

Hi David, I really think you’re missing the point here. I’m not encouraging site visitors to use AdSense ads as a means of making a donation. As I said in my previous post I actively discourage people asking their site visitors to click on their links in order to contribute.

Lot’s of people would like to donate more but feel that can’t afford to. The money bloggers make from ads and affiliate programs is extra money that they could quite happily do without. The point of BlogAid is to encourage site owners to donate this extra money, not to give visitors a way of donating by clicking on ads.

Will Croft said on January 6, 2005 11:45 PM

Really good to see you got a letter published in today’s G2’s Life supplement in the Guardian.

Fabulous work you’re doing here.

Andy Budd said on January 7, 2005 12:33 AM

Bugger. I just sent them a quick email to let them know about the project. If I’d known they were going to publish it I’d have written a better one.

David said on January 7, 2005 2:02 AM

Andy,

Don’t get me wrong, I like the site and the project you have going. The only thing I don’t understand is why you want people to start up an adsense thing and donate the profit to redcross. I have seen a blogaid logo next to adsensa ads on many pledged sites, and the result is exactly what you claim not to do: encourage visitors to click the ads to donate.

It’s everyones call on this, but personally I’d go for a donation ad or charity/redcross ad. That way, the money won’t get spilled along the way and the advertising would comply with the adsense TOS.

Don’t tell me that the blogAid site is not encouraging people to use adsense and donate the profit, because that is exactly what is says on the site. But the result of that is a bunch of bloggers who refer to blogAid when displaying the ads, and that is the same as encouraging the visitors to click as a donation.

The thing that hurts the most with affiliate / adsense ads for a good cause, is that the giants themselves are taking large percents of the profit. That can be avoided by using direct distribution of donations through the charity sites.

Ben Spicer said on January 10, 2005 10:49 AM

Hi Andy,
this is a really nice idea, its great to see people helping however they can. The British public has been very kind in donating so much money. We should be proud of ourselves!
Have you heard about the Tsunami Relief Concert being held in Cardiff at the Millenium Stadium? Snow Patrol, the Manic Street Preachers, Badly drawn boy and McFly (!) all confirmed this morning (Feeder, Eric Clapton, Lemar and others have already confirmed).
I bought tickets at the weekend - awesome, and donated to the DEC, but go blog aid!