Well, I have to make a decision:
Hi Michael,
Thank you for your prompt reply.
I represent the CPays.com affiliate program. We promote 16 online
gambling brands.
I would like to advertise at least one of our gambling brands on your
website – either with a text link or banner.
We can sort out a CPA commission plan (one time payment for player) or
we can work on a revenue share basis (commission from the players’ net
loss)
What do you say?
James
I have investigated putting AdSense ads on Notio, but I haven’t gotten around to it. Focused blogs can pay the bills this way – I know someone who has a blog focused on TiVo and the like, and he makes about $1,000 a month from Google AdSense. But Notio is hardly focused, in case you haven’t noticed. I could probably make a dollar a month or something. Maybe ten. Gambling ads have got to be more lucrative than that.
Let’s see, do I care about gambling morally? I have no idea; I’ve never thought about it. The one time I was in Las Vegas it was weird and disorienting. We didn’t play anything the whole four days. Certainly the worst of the gambling downsides are bad – and seeing a thin, pastey, leathery-skinned grandmotherly woman with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth, one hand holding a beach bucket full of quarters and the other a Bud Light, playing slots at 5:30 AM first thing off the elevators is pretty gnarly – but is it bad in the main? Probably not, but maybe, though it’s not my cup of loose-leaf green tea. Who was that guy a couple of years ago railing against gambling until he got caught bankrupt from it? Some extreme right-wing hypocrite intellectual (I know that doesn’t narrow it down much). He thought it was bad, except he lost his shirt doing it. I’m not nearly that conflicted. I hardly have a horse in this race, yet.
If I say ‘sure,’ then do I want a one-time payment, or a cut of the player’s loss? In gambling the house always wins, so there will certainly be a net loss most of the time. In both cases, you have to trust them to keep good records and pay you honestly. Hehehehehehehehehehehe.
Aesthetically, no, I don’t want a banner ad above my beautiful photos. But it probably pays better than the text link, and it might have some irony value.
If I’m operating from my heart, then I’d have to say No. But what if the money is good? What does the heart say to that?
So let’s think like a mercenary: How much per month would I have to earn to ignore any personal issues? What’s my price? (I should run a survey, to see what y’all think my price is, that would be interesting!)
One incentive would be if they can get the spambots to stop filling my comments with online poker spam – then it would certainly be worth having an ad instead. Good business model for them – flood bloggers like me with comment spam, then offer to turn it off and get a cut of the proceeds. They’d call it a win-win.