You can’t advertise on WordPress, can you?!?
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jangawolof, you and I are disagreeing on matters of personal taste. I don’t think we’ll ever agree, but we don’t need to.
The best business blog around is Guy Kawasaki’s, and he only advertises his own books or the products of companies he invests in; that is a smart business decision.
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raincoaster, oh, I completely agree…not trying to change minds just express my own and engage in discussion.
About Kawasaki’s blog…that is exactly the way it should be! What is so wrong with that? People visiting his blog would be very interested in what he has to sell…but not everyone is able to have their own product so the 2nd best thing would be able to sell someone else’s product that directly ties into their website or blog.
Well, this horse is pretty much pulp now so I’m just going to let it rest in peace…happy holidays and have fun blogging!
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I’m just drawing a distinction between a business blog and a personal blog. WP.com is going for the personal blogs, and other services are pursuing the business business, usually charging for it.
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As you do not have a VIP account you cannot advertising on your blog and I think you already know that.
I’m not sure what the tone’s for, but please don’t assume you know what I know. It’s impolite and unnecessary.
Disregarding that for the moment, I don’t already know that. That’s my point. I see in the TOS where advertising/making money by the blogger is strictly forbidden, but then I see elsewhere that sometimes it’s allowed. But no one’s gone on record as to when those sometimes occasions are, and whenever someone asks for clarification, there’s no response from staff and increasingly common abuse from volunteers. Timethief wants me to report blogs that are breaking the rules, but we still don’t know what the rules are. And now we’re being told to sit down and shut up.
Do you see where the frustration comes in?
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What we have is in the faq, if you are in doubt or want something clarified please get in touch with me through Support.
There is one sure-fire, absolutely guaranteed, no questions asked way to advertise here.
Write a book, get it published.
You can advertise that :) -
Staff have gone on the record in the forum repeatedly asking people to report blogs they think are in violation. They say if you’re in doubt about whether or not it’s VIP, report it anyway. They know who is and who isn’t.
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There is no “tone”. I went back and read your posts and believed you understood that only bloggers with VIP hosted accounts could advertise on their blogs at this point in time. http://wordpress.com/vip-hosting/
I most certainly did not tell anyone to sit down and shut up. In the very first post in response to the OP I provided the answer to the question asked https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic.php?id=17352&page&replies=45#post-130045
There is no blogger initiated advertising allowed on wordpress.com blogs, except for those like the one you name which is a VIP blog. http://faq.wordpress.com/2005/12/08/adsense/
http://wordpress.com/vip-hosting/ -
I believe the frustration is due to it being discussed many times over previously. Over and over again.
The volunteers here know that the ToS doesn’t spell it out. It’s been pointed out to staff many times over with no change. Heck, some of them have asked staff point blank for a specific place within the ToS that we can point folks to but have never gotten an answer on that. We’ve been told a couple of times to point folks to the FAQ on Adsense only to be told later on not to point folks to the FAq for policy issues.
Staff should be answering that one but for some reason they choose not to.
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> I joined WP knowing fully well that ads were not allowed and I’m fine with that…I just don’t understand the rationality behind it.
> Timethief wants me to report blogs that are breaking the rules, but we still don’t know what the rules are.
the rationality behind it and the rules are as simple as that ones: http://bash.org/?779320
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Do you see where the frustration comes in?
As I cannot see into your mind I can only speculate on where your frustration is coming from and I have no desire to do that. I have no desire to have blogger initiated advertising on my wordpress.com blog and I moved a blog on my domain to a web host to rid it of wordpress.com authorized adsense advertising. Remarkably, my web hosting at A Small Orangecosts only $25 per year (with a 2 month freebie if I choose to pay for the whole year in advance).
I’d like to encourage you to reduce your own frustration level. You can do so by contacting staff directly and perhaps even by moving to a self hosting your own blog so you can advertise on it.
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I’d also like to encourage you not to make defamatory and inflammatory statements that cannot be substantiated like “increasingly common abuse from volunteers”. All those who do read forum threads are aware that this allegation is unfounded.
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The reason people have to contact staff on ad policy is because they’re making it up as they go along. (Why are self-authored books OK? Because that’s what Scoble was advertising. If Scoble had directed a film or was selling software he’d written, promoting those things would be definitely OK too.)
If you’re uncertain about whether or not you can do something on your blog, contact staff. If staff don’t get back to you, assume there’s not a problem. What other people are doing on their blogs isn’t really your concern, unless it’s blatant spam. I’ve come to the conclusion I have better things to do with my time than snitch on others.
Earlier this year Matt was telling the media in interviews that people were going to be allowed to show their own Google ads on blogs for a fee, but he seems to have lost interest in that now. There is stuff about paid themes in the translation strings, nothing about ad upgrades. Make of that what you will.
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And if staff does approve what you do, keep a copy of the email in case another staff member or the same one changes their mind at a future time.
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Is there any way to tell a VIP blog from a non-VIP blog? Does it have a “WordPress.com VIP blog” type statement on it anywhere? If not, perhaps if it was added, it would help avoid some of these “well, he does it why can’t I?” type of questions. If there’s a clear indication – perhaps at the bottom of the page, where it already says “Blog at WordPress.com” – then we all know that they’re not violating the ToS, they’ve paid money for an upgrade. Then we know that we don’t need to report them. Which saves staff time and allows them to concentrate on other things, like getting that “get rid of the ads” upgrade up-and-running. And saves volunteers time because (hopefully) people wouldn’t need to keep asking that question in the forums.
What do you think?
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Is there any way to tell a VIP blog from a non-VIP blog?
Most of them have their themes within a specific subdirectory labeled ‘vip’. Take a look within page source in your browser to see if you seen their theme’s stylesheet coming from a subdirectory with that label.
if yes, then it is.
if not, then it’s a toss up.
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Example from icanhascheezburger.com:
https://s-ssl.wordpress.com/wp-content/themes/vip/icanhascheezburger/style.css
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There is no “tone”.
Sure there is. It’s right there with your assumption that I’m being argumentative for the sake of argumentativity. (-ness?) (“. . . and I think you already know that.”)
I most certainly did not tell anyone to sit down and shut up.
Sure you did. “If you want read discussion on blogger initiated advertising there’s tons of it in the forum searchbox.” You aren’t encouraging actual discussion, you’re encouraging reading previous discussion. That is, sit down and shut up.
I’d like to encourage you to reduce your own frustration level.
Thanks for the tip. Interestingly enough, a reasonable answer to my quite-reasonable question would do just that. If you have no answer to that question, I’m not sure why you’re responding.
I’d also like to encourage you not to make defamatory and inflammatory statements that cannot be substantiated like “increasingly common abuse from volunteers”. All those who do read forum threads are aware that this allegation is unfounded.
I calls ’em like I see’s ’em.
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I cannot believe the crap you guys go on with you obviously have too much time on your hands!
Is there a straight forward answer out there about advertising on a site. A simple yes/no answer will always work1. are we allowed links to another site i.e an affiliate link…? Yes / No
2. are we allowed and do we have the option of adsense or google ads? Yes/No
3. can a blog be a sales letter to a product with a single link to the actual page thats selling the product? Yes / NoThank you :-)
Scott.
Merry Christmas
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