You know the Adsense upgrade Matt was running around telling the media about last summer without a word to the actual users? Well, their latest member of staff appears to know nothing about it, and a guy asking about revenue splits is being ignored (never mind, eh? at least there’s a ‘better tone’ in there now). And while there are multiple strings relating to the theme marketplace already in the translation system (here, have a screenshot), not to mention an as-yet-unlinked-to page on the news blog regurgitating the stuff on Matt’s blog, on the adsense upgrade? Nothing.
Speculation is invited on why this has been put on hold. Has the second round of investment rendered it unnecessary? Do they now think they can get the revenue from selling themes instead? Have they twigged that ‘no ads’ is such a good selling point (in spite of not being true) that allowing users to display their own ads might actually cost them signups? Are they worried that they’ll make a net loss if people opt-out of having ads on their blogs? (I have no idea whether ads displayed to Google searchers on a moderately high-traffic blog would bring in more than $15 a year, but it seems probable.)
My money is on the first. That is why I put it first. I still don’t feel that theme-selling is motivated as much by money (the market for paid non-unique themes that look and behave like free non-unique themes is really not that large) as it is with gaining leverage over the manufacture and distribution of themes.
wordpress™ wank 
Robert Synnott said
Google ads on a high traffic blog would indeed bring in more than 15 dollars a year. For a blog with decent traffic on the right subject, potentially more like 15 dollars an hour.
Kissing Bandit said
With the size of WP.com, I’m thinking more along the lines of $15/minute or at least $5/minute.
-KB
Andrea said
Depends on what you mean by moderately high-traffic blog, I guess. From what I’ve seen, blogs with as little as 3K visits a week can pull in $15 per month, easy. (of course, I’m not thinking of just google ads, but there you go.)
timethief said
We thought the advertising on your blog was excessive and ugly, Well, check this out http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic.php?id=20803&page
In case it disappears from the forum I copied it below.
drmike said
Dang, timethief made me go look at the wp.com forums….
🙂
Kissing Bandit said
Damn you TT. Not only did you make me go look at the wp.com forums, you even caused me to post my second ever comment…of course, it was just to recommend they run to Tumblr. 😉
-KB
that girl again said
Ugh. I hate being reminded of the fugliosity we inflict on strangers. Most of the time it’s out of sight, out of mind, just as Automattic intended; because if I think too much about it I’ll have to move, and my Habari install’s not ready for prime time yet.
I wonder if they’ll try to pass it off as a ‘bug’ this time, or use it as an excuse to plug the vaporware?
timethief said
Have you noticed the change in the adsense/advertising FQAs documentation?
http://faq.wordpress.com/2005/12/08/adsense/
We now have “a “types of blogs” page as well http://wordpress.com/types-of-blogs/
timethief said
BTW the place to recommend for beautiful free photoblog accounts and a supportive community is http://www.shutterchance.com/
that girl again said
“Nice” blogs and “Evil” blogs? Why are they talking to us like we’re eight? Do we not have enough Club Penguiners here already?
Interesting though that Toni has apparently decided that commercial blogging is now OK, and you can link to your Etsy or eBay store without repercussions, or include Amazon affiliate links in your book review blog. Previously everyone who wanted to do this had to ask for individual permission, which might or might not be granted depending on who was fielding the emails. Yay, we has a policy. Finally.
Matt Algren said
I’d seen shutterchance before and was impressed with their design. Glad to hear that the community is just as good.
Kissing Bandit said
Well, ain’t that something. My post on the forum telling them to go to Tumblr was deleted. Maybe I should have taken a screenshot. *meh* You live, you learn.
-KB
that girl again said
😀
And whaddya know, they’ve trotted out the ‘bug’ excuse again and closed the thread. I wonder if this is the same ‘bug’ that was on my blog and which they may or may not have ‘fixed’ (they were always sort of vague on that detail), or whether it’s a completely different ‘bug’ which just happens to have the same sploggy effect? 🙄
Andrew said
Thanks for the links to the ads/affiliate stuff. So my Amazon affiliate links are legal after all 🙂
Kissing Bandit said
TGA, You rock.
Andrew, be careful. If you add one too many of those “affiliate links”, you may be labeled a money-grubbing splogger and have your blog shut down with no explanation because someone reported you and the wrong person was manning the support e-mail that day.
-KB
Andrew said
KB, Thanks for the warning. And, btw, I just checked, and:
Congratulations! moneygrubbingsplogger.com is available
options said
congrats KB!
and welcome to the club of the “tinfoil hat brigade”, “paranoid theorists”, “bad elements”, or “‘insulted’ volunteers and their minions” and “the former power clique here” (as it’s been encouraged by the very next message from the staff member in the same thread), or simply “the forum bots” as Sam Bauers (meet yet another new lord of the key) said, probably expressing a common POV outspoken somewhere on the #wordpress.com-staff
KB, you have baptized (in its original meaning, i.e. dipped) yourself into the muddied by the obvious BS waters of the wordpress fora and inevitably have been undergone le baptéme du fer (‘baptism of fire’). as the volunteer fora mod have noticed recently while trying to invigorate the happiness engineer: “…you need tough skin to be in the ‘firing line’ ! Enough said!”
here is (an almost) hard copy by the Google Inc. of some of the latest purges, including yours; and here is a funny picture of today’s b0rked fora — looks like either the staff team have found a very good stuff and was having a great time somewhere in Denver, CO or the new pre-alpha admin is ready to get tested by the ecstatic sheep.
sunburntkamel said
they’re in arizona, and so far it’s only the pre-alpha login page.
options said
do you believe AZ stuff any much better than the one from CO?
😉
options said
I believe that is exactly the same outstanding bug wordpress.com user-base will have to live with because it’s hard to fix it due to its bizarre nature (and probably low[est] priority).
timethief said
Interestingly enough only 8 people have signed the ‘we want adsense’ petition posted to the forum thread that I linked to yesterday http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?yestoads
And here we go again http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic.php?id=20955 So, does anyone want to place a bet on how long it will take for this thread to be [closed]?
I must say that I’m getting off on the welcome I have received to the club of the “tinfoil hat brigade”, “paranoid theorists” and “bad elements” group. Although I have never been hyper critical of wp.com and it’s staff and despite the fact most bloggers perceived me as a fangirl, I’m here to say that I look so hot in a tinfoil hat that I may never remove it.
As for the bullshit that Mark spun by implying that I was a copyright breaker in the off-topic thread I observe that he safely said that after I was rendered “inactive” and was unable to reply to his innuendos.
For the record, Mark emailed me saying that because wp.com and the FAQs were under a creative commons license I could write about stuff in the FAQs but I could not copyright it. I immediately closed my account at “myfreecopyright” and I removed the embedded mcl number from each and every post on my blog. But as we know that was a wasted effort because none of the tags and categories on the posts were appearing on the global tag pages due to the ridiculous labeling of the blog as “mature”.
Matt Algren said
I laughed when I saw the petition. It’s horribly constructed and more importantly we know it won’t make any difference. Just like requesting local tags or non-broken themes or tag clouds that work. Waste of time.
Thanks for the clarification on the copyright thing. It’s about as non-shocking as I figured it would be.
Kissing Bandit said
Thank you, options, for the warm welcome into the honorary
dissenters clubtin-foil hat brigade. I feel appreciated now.-KB
Kissing Bandit said
Hey options,
Do you realize that you’re inactive again? (Wonder how long it will take them to delete my third ever comment in the WP.com forum.)
-KB
timethief said
Yup, we have been rendered inactive once more. Interestingly, we are no longer able to link our usernames to our blogs. This is despite the fact that many bloggers have their usernames linked to 3rd party sites and, that no requirement that one must link to a wordpress.com blog or nothing has ever been defined. Once again the “inactivated” are impacted by “mature” trick.
timethief said
Woah I take that back. All of a sudden my username is linked gain here but just let me check if it’s linked to forum posts I made. Nope. My username is no longer linked to forum posts. Example http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic.php?id=20856#post-159084
AJ said
timethief, the “inactive” is linked to your forum profile.
timethief said
Thanks AJ I know that. I didn’t express myself clearly above. Here in this blog my username is linked to my blog. However, on post I made to the forum previously my username is no longer linked to my blog and that change took place yesterday.
that girl again said
I find the avatar-blocking especially amusing. I mean, there are much worse things I could have put in my avatar by way of protest (I just went for the public service announcement). Do you think somebody did put much worse things in their avatar by way of protest and that’s why all URLs and avs of blocked members are now censored?
Weathervane said
I should be banned but they never do it because they know it’s what I’m hoping for though there’s no reason others can’t be happy. People disappearing—digital masks disappeared by being unlinked—is no way to go. How did you get your avatar up here—by electronic rope? Did you rise hand-over-hand up a rope like Aladdin? Is this The Princess’ bedroom? Did we climb up here?
timethief said
@weathervane
I’ve answered thousands of questions on the forum and it seems to me that those bloggers who have been rendered “inactive” were presumably perceived to be some kind of threat to somebody in wp’s inner circle. Just what kind of threat they were perceived to be posing by doing staff’s work for them – free of charge – has yet to be revealed. So, unless you have an alternative username that you used to answer forum questions with and you were a regular who answered many questions, why do you say that you should be banned?
I assume my blog has been “un-linked” from my username and that my avatar is no longer being displayed because TPTB don’t want bloggers to click on it and arrive at my tumblr blog. On the other hand, perhaps there is no malice and this is the result of one of their infamous coincidental “bugs”. [rolling eyes]