A Money Making Experiment - Feedback and Active Involvement Welcome

fragmented

So would my google id be put only on my own questions 75% of the time or would that 75% be a mix of all members on random pages/questions?

If it was my own questions you can bet that you will end up with people from poor parts of tthe world building pages about Insurance, loans, mortgages etc then foruming groups to click on each others questions a couple of times a week. When i was a mod on the one of the big webmaster forums i was always removing many such posts per day trying to form click groups.

You say it would be other people who risk their google ID but 25% of the time it would be YOUR google account at risk.

Last time i looked (over a year ago) there are many question and answer scripts available on the net (some revenue sharing) compleate with scripts to scrape questions from other sites etc... and your site would soon be added to the list of sites for them to scrape from. None of then do very well in serps any more as there are far too many of them, and they have gone the same way as amazon clone sites.

c.ford

fragmented wrote: »

So would my google id be put only on my own questions 75% of the time or would that 75% be a mix of all members on random pages/questions?

If it was my own questions you can bet that you will end up with people from poor parts of tthe world building pages about Insurance, loans, mortgages etc then foruming groups to click on each others questions a couple of times a week. When i was a mod on the one of the big webmaster forums i was always removing many such posts per day trying to form click groups.

You say it would be other people who risk their google ID but 25% of the time it would be YOUR google account at risk.


Last time i looked (over a year ago) there are many question and answer scripts available on the net (some revenue sharing) compleate with scripts to scrape questions from other sites etc... and your site would soon be added to the list of sites for them to scrape from. None of then do very well in serps any more as there are far too many of them, and they have gone the same way as amazon clone sites.

Interesting thoughts. What would my google account be at risk of?

There are Q&A templates available true (edit:I dissected a few myself while setting this one up), and yes there are scrapers, but those have common footprints. My site is a customized Wordpress build and it doesn't carry a common footprint. Using one of those scripts from the wild, you may as well put up a big red flag that says hey Google, come get me, I'm a scammer! And generally, thats what those people are.

Us, we're here to help people help themselves.

To answer your question about where your Google Publisher ID would be placed: It would be put on random pages, and displayed 75% of the time. As far as ads are concerned, nothing is static or fixed, so every time you reload a page, a new ID is chosen,
to use in that same ad space, therefore a "click-group" would be a waste of time. Every time an advertising page is loaded a new ID is chosen from the database.

My site will do well in the serps as it isn't a typical prefab template geared towards Adsense, which Google is used to by now. Plus it will be people powered, not script powered. Content written for people, by people.

Edit 2: Further explanation on why click-groups would be a waste: If CG-Martha was to click through to "whatevermysiteis/aquestionbyjohn" she might see an ad that belonged to id 123456abc. But if CG-Dave was to click through to "whatevermysiteis/aquestionbyjohn" he would be very unlikely to see ads belonging to publisher 123456abc. And even then they would have to examine the source code every single time to check for the publisher ID and then waste FURTHER time checking to see if it belonged to the right person. Clickgroups are becoming less and less effective.

Flyonthewall

c.ford wrote: »

Interesting thoughts. What would my google account be at risk of?

It will be at risk the same as anyone elses when your ID is used. People can abuse the site by keep clicking ads, regardless of you taking steps to try and prevent it.

There are Q&A templates available true (edit:I dissected a few myself while setting this one up), and yes there are scrapers, but those have common footprints. My site is a customized Wordpress build and it doesn't carry a common footprint. Using one of those scripts from the wild, you may as well put up a big red flag that says hey Google, come get me, I'm a scammer! And generally, thats what those people are.

New scripts are created all the time for such things. Obvious or not, you still have to deal with people who will try and use them anyway. Not sure why you appear to think no one will target your site in any way. You are a new site and people like the fun/challenge of attacking/scripting for new sites and (security) systems.

To answer your question about where your Google Publisher ID would be placed: It would be put on random pages, and displayed 75% of the time. As far as ads are concerned, nothing is static or fixed, so every time you reload a page, a new ID is chosen,
to use in that same ad space, therefore a "click-group" would be a waste of time. Every time an advertising page is loaded a new ID is chosen from the database.

Ok, you know that and we on here know that. They don't know that. You can add it to the site but that doesn't mean they'll read it. In fact, they're the people least likely to read it. If they don't know it means they're still going to try it.

The way the IDs work may be random but that doesn't mean they won't show enough for click groups to abuse the system, especially to start with as there will be less members and therefore less IDs.

Flyonthewall

c.ford wrote: »

Edit 2: Further explanation on why click-groups would be a waste: If CG-Martha was to click through to "whatevermysiteis/aquestionbyjohn" she might see an ad that belonged to id 123456abc. But if CG-Dave was to click through to "whatevermysiteis/aquestionbyjohn" he would be very unlikely to see ads belonging to publisher 123456abc. And even then they would have to examine the source code every single time to check for the publisher ID and then waste FURTHER time checking to see if it belonged to the right person. Clickgroups are becoming less and less effective.

So what's to stop people creating a script that will search for specific IDs? Or for them to click any ad regardless of ID (perhaps unknowingly clicking other IDs) and put everyones accounts at risk (especially if there are only a few members)?

c.ford

Flyonthewall wrote: »

Yeah but that's the point isn't it. Who will want to risk their account? There's no way I would ever sign up to a site where the site will then use my google ID on random pages when others could so easily abuse it. I use my google account on other sites and may want to use it for others in the future, I'm not risking that for a few pence (or for that matter, even for a fairly large amount).

Granted but if you aren't willing to use your publisher ID on a site that offers you free publishing, what's the point in having a publisher account at all?

Flyonthewall wrote: »

You can say you have stuff in place to try and stop people and you can write it clearly on your site that the ID will be on random pages, not your own so trying to play the system won't work. But you can guarantee that at least one person will never read that, they won't care and they will try and abuse it.

I can't and won't allow a few bad eggs to spoil the show.

Flyonthewall wrote: »

Plus we're only going by your word that there's something in place - not to say you would lie but most people won't ever see this topic, they'll have no idea who you are and only be going by the site.

I have absolutely no reason to lie to you, and if you had joined my site from the wild I would be more than happy to show you the system in place. I know there are hundreds of places I could put this thread and spam the hell out of it, but I chose to come here because I wanted real opinions and input, rather than a place to advertise.

Flyonthewall wrote: »

Considering how rare it is to get a google account back and how many options you have for google it wouldn't make sense for most people to risk it.

Clearly the one thing that I or Google can't help you with is how much trust you place in a site. As anyone would say "If it feels wrong, it probably is". You have to follow your instinct, just as I did when I opened this thread. If your gut feeling was to stay away from my site, then so be it. I've found that human capital can be asset and liability rolled into one, but one thing remains constant - there's always someone new.

c.ford

Flyonthewall wrote: »

So what's to stop people creating a script that will search for specific IDs? Or for them to click any ad regardless of ID (perhaps unknowingly clicking other IDs) and put everyones accounts at risk (especially if there are only a few members)?

IDs are stored in a database until a user loads a web page. Until that point, the id doesn't exist at all.

Clicking other people's IDs would only serve as an "I'm being a douche" warning on google's "suspicious activity" radar. Unusual click patterns tend to have any earned funds reversed within a day. There's no profit or loss in it for the idiot or for the account holder; no-one wins or loses, especially if your site is totally compliant with Google's policies.

geordie_joe

c.ford wrote: »

Interesting thoughts. What would my google account be at risk of?

Click fraud.

Someone wants to click their own ads, or gets someone to click for them. You say they won't know which ads have their id in and which ads have yours. But they will know that 75% of the time it will be theirs. That's good odds, click a link and you have a 75% chance of earning money.

This also gives a 25% chance of the link being yours, so sometimes they will click yours. If you have one user then you have 1 x 25% chance, if you have 10 users you will have 10 x 25% chances and if you have 1000 users you will have 1000 x 255 chances,

But each users will still only have a 75% chance themselves.

Your users risk never increase beyond 75% if they try clicking their own links, but yours increases every time a user tries it.

How many chances do you think google will give you if you are suspected of click fraud?

fragmented

From what you answer, yes it looks like click groups would not work, so you have that covered, and nothing risky using your own id on their.

However if i wrote questions targeted at high paying keywords, or good answers to boost your page serps, the chances are someone else would benifit from that 75% of the time and you would 25% of the time.... chances of me benefiting are very remote.... so no incentive to write good questions, or good answers as my google ID won't be on those pages.

Is the 75% equal chance per member or does number of questions/answers posted also come into the mix. Where is the incentive to write good answers over short ones.

As for you doing very well in serps, i hope you do manage to, but a quick search for revenue share question and answer site brings up many results pages of other sites you need to do better than to get onto the 1st page of results.

To be honest you would probably get far better feedback from one of the webmaster sites/forums, as not many here have google ad accounts.

c.ford

Flyonthewall wrote: »

It will be at risk the same as anyone elses when your ID is used. People can abuse the site by keep clicking ads, regardless of you taking steps to try and prevent it.

I'll trust Google to do its job on that one. Even if anything should happen to my pub-id, I don't really mind as other income streams and different revenue sources are currently being worked on and will be introduced over the coming months.

Flyonthewall wrote: »

New scripts are created all the time for such things. Obvious or not, you still have to deal with people who will try and use them anyway. Not sure why you appear to think no one will target your site in any way. You are a new site and people like the fun/challenge of attacking/scripting for new sites and (security) systems.

Oh I know we are ALL at risk of James T. Hacker and Billy B. Spammer but the truth is, I have to put my trust in the defensive technology I have, as well as my own ingenuity.

Flyonthewall wrote: »

Ok, you know that and we on here know that. They don't know that. You can add it to the site but that doesn't mean they'll read it. In fact, they're the people least likely to read it. If they don't know it means they're still going to try it.

I know there are those who will try because its Sunday and there's nothing better to do, or because hey they saw the ice cream van go past or whatever other dumb reason inspires such morons to do these things. But honestly, those people are in the minority. I've run websites with 50k+ visitors a month so I'm well seasoned, to blow my own trumpet.

Flyonthewall wrote: »

The way the IDs work may be random but that doesn't mean they won't show enough for click groups to abuse the system, especially to start with as there will be less members and therefore less IDs.

Less members does imply less IDs that's true, but again, I have enough faith in the technology I have and the technology Google has. My business will be safe, and hopefully people's publisher accounts will be safe enough too. And as I already mentioned, there will be other ways to make a little money too, such as watching videos, testing games, filling in surveys etc.

Thanks for your thoughts Flyonthewall!

c.ford

fragmented wrote: »

From what you answer, yes it looks like click groups would not work, so you have that covered, and nothing risky using your own id on their.

However if i wrote questions targeted at high paying keywords, or good answers to boost your page serps, the chances are someone else would benifit from that 75% of the time and you would 25% of the time.... chances of me benefiting are very remote.... so no incentive to write good questions, or good answers as my google ID won't be on those pages.

Is the 75% equal chance per member or does number of questions/answers posted also come into the mix. Where is the incentive to write good answers over short ones.

As for you doing very well in serps, i hope you do manage to, but a quick search for revenue share question and answer site brings up pages of other sites you need to do better than.

To be honest you would probably get far better feedback from one of the webmaster sites/forums, as not many here have google ad accounts.

Cheers fragmented, a few good points there.

We won't be targeting other Q&A sites in that fashion though. We will be after long tail keywords that only 50 people a month search for, but somewhere in the region of a couple of million of them.

Also, Google ads won't be the only incentive, people will be able to watch videos, test games, fill in surveys as well as win vouchers for various big sites like Amazon, Tesco etc.

We just want to have a bit of fun, and help a few people out along the way, so here's hoping