Day: August 24, 2014

Preserving my space (and penalizing greed)

You all know I sell advertising on my site. Wait, you didn’t? Go here.

Anyway, a couple months back I was reading the reaction to a post I did when someone mentioned they saw a full-page ad for Durex condoms. On my page!

Now I run what I consider to be a family-friendly, PG-rated site with a minimum of profanity, damn it. (Surprising when I could easily cuss like a sailor about how this state and nation are currently being governed.) So a condom ad is about the last thing I would knowingly approve, particularly a full-page one – first of all, it covers up the advertising for which I am actually paid!

So I looked into this and a lot of people were thinking it was malware of some sort, trying to clean out their computers and finding they were fairly clean. I did that as well, and mine was fine.

But the ads would still come up – essentially it’s a large pop-up ad which supposedly goes away after 30 seconds. I never ran across a condom ad but they were for other relatively familiar products, and I found them annoying. I often search my site to verify my back links are the ones I’m wishing to use – an example is when I write the AC Week in review as I did yesterday for this morning – so I would see these ads every so often. It wasn’t every time, but maybe every 20th or 30th.

This morning it happened again, but in the search for the cause I found a number of places which blame a long-time feature of this site. This is a reply deep in the linked thread:

UPDATE: It looks like the vector for this exploit is ‘Sitemeter’ — after ‘sitemeter’ went bankrupt, their domain-name was bought bought up by the same “Black Hats” who own ‘adverstitial’ and ‘vindico’, and the “Black Hats” are now using the ‘sitemeter’ URL to inject the JavaScript ad exploit via any webpage whose owners were careless enough to neglect to remove their ‘sitemeter’ code on the theory that it was “mostly harmless”… >:(

So if any of you still have ‘sitemeter’ code on any of your webpages, it would be a good idea to delete it, ASAP.

Another blogger named Jennette Fulda found the same thing in a much wittier fashion – apparently her site had the same issue.

So after about eight years or so, it’s goodbye to SiteMeter for me, too.

It’s not like I don’t have other ways to count visitors, as I have Google Analytics and another service as well. But I did have the principle that my SiteMeter was (almost) always open, while most other bloggers I’ve run across were oh-so-secretive about their readership. (Yet one often claimed to have “record days.”)

I noticed as well that SiteMeter’s privacy policy changed right around the time people began to notice these ads – it could have been a coincidence, but since I don’t want their large ads they don’t need to put cookies on my site.

Regardless, I’m sure someone saw the thousands and thousands of sites which used SiteMeter to measure their traffic as an advertising gold mine given the data they collect, particularly as many didn’t have any advertising to begin with. Well, as word of this gets out SiteMeter is going to lose what little business they have because no one is giving us a cut of this and I don’t have to have their services when there are others out there which don’t intrude on my site in such a manner.

Listen, I don’t make a lot of money from this site. Yes, I have several political advertisers who pay me but come November that gravy train goes away. I’m hoping they are replaced by non-political businesses and have some prospects in that regard, but there’s always room for more. And every so often I get my tip jar rattled, which is nice.

I also get frequent e-mails about advertising, guest posts, or “traffic exchange” on my site from various entities on a regular basis. Just this month alone I’ve been hit up by Nova Media Networks, Vanbex.com, RTB System, Kitara Media, and Global Ad Space. Never heard of any of them, and I’m betting it’s the old pennies per CPM trick. (The Vanbex is a bitcoin exchange, so I think I know how I got on that list.) I would rather have more control on the content, so I keep my Amazon spaces, Newsmax (which pays me a small fee per month for the space), and the advertisers you see herein. (Some pay more than others, but the Patriot Post gets a free space because I write for them.)

I also get a modest fee for writing the music reviews, which is nice because I like listening to many different types of music – or at least can tolerate it to write an honest review. (If you’re surprised about the monetary aspect, I noted it up front.) I know a lot of other sites sell merchandise, promote themselves incessantly on what passes for their radio network in an effort to fish for advertising, and so forth – we’re all trying to monetize our websites somehow.

It wouldn’t have bothered me so much if they had come to me and offered me a piece of the action, but what SiteMeter forgot is that we don’t have to use their service. So to heck with ’em.

AC Week in review: August 24, 2014

I didn’t get as much in as I would have liked, but as promised I did speak to some trade issues last week.

In the meantime, my AC cohort Ed Braxton continued his look at how manufacturing is moving beyond labor. In the first decade of the 21st century, a net of 5 million workers exited the manufacturing field; meanwhile, the composition of those who remained began to change.

This actually goes hand-in-glove with something I featured a few weeks ago, summarizing a report where the authors’ contention was that the standard tool of future manufacturing workers wouldn’t be a wrench but an iPad. While there will always be a need for human hands to make certain things, the lack of physical activity required for manufacturing many common objects shows the need for brains exceeds the need for brawn.

My editor Sean Keefe is now part of the writing team, with his first piece being an interview with an American brush maker. Interestingly enough, one piece of advice Alan Schechter of Gordon Brush Manufacturing Company had: “Have a strong voice to your politicians to support American made.” That brings me to my two pieces for the week.

The kernel of one post began as a remark Andy Harris made at his recent town hall meeting. I think I’d heard it before, but the fact that Russia halted imports of American agricultural products in response to our sanctions for their bad behavior in Ukraine reminded me that “made in America” still has to serve a global market, and trade wars hurt all of us. Yet trying to put these pacts together and iron out differences is akin to herding cats, particularly when a dozen nations sit around the table and Congress is feeling left out. Both are the case with the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership.

So it was a somewhat slow week, although late last week I read that one story I’ve followed for awhile has reached a resolution. There’s also some movement in the energy sector that may spur a story, too.

I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to bury my next AC review on Labor Day weekend or wait two weeks, so sit tight. I guess it depends how much I write over the next week – hopefully it will be a productive one in all aspects.