ArticlesI received a very exciting letter today.
It was from Google.
My first payment from the AdSense revenues from this blog has arrived! As you may know, I have previously dedicated my AdSense revenue to my lifetime goal of purchasing my own weight in chocolate – perhaps as early as 2047. However, I have decided to postpone that plan, and instead give back to the blog-reading community who put up with my ads.
So, please join me in the first OddThinking meet-up, with drinks provided by Google! I’ll find some pub in a central location, put the Google money on the bar, and invite you to help me drink it away.
Now, Google have asked me not to discuss how much I make from AdSense, but I think I can give a few hints.
It isn’t enough to quit my day job (but that didn’t stop me!) As this is the only cheque that I have received in the past month, I think I can get away with calling myself a “professional blogger”, at least for a few weeks.
There is enough money that if only one other person turns up, we will have a very nice meal with a bottle of wine.
If two others turn up, we will be enjoying cocktails all night.
Even if 20 people turn up we should have enough for a free beer each.
Let’s face it, it will be a lot more fun sharing a single beer with 20 others than having some poor sucker stuck eating dinner with me alone, and having to listen to me tell the same damn stories that they have already read here. So please come along and save a fellow reader from such a fate!
The date and venue is still TBD: it will be mid-September, and I am happy to hear suggestions (weekend or school night?).
There’s only one rule: Everyone (over the age of 18) is invited who reads the invite on this blog. This isn’t a free-for-all. It’s a free-for-my-5-star-readers.
If you live in Sydney, and are interested in sharing some free beer, please de-lurk in the comments. I am just looking for an idea of the interest at the moment. You’ll need to keep reading the blog to find out the final date and venue.
Comment by Chris on August 7, 2008
Congratulations. Shouldn’t you frame the cheque and reminisce fondly those days in the future when you’re pulling down gazillions in AdSense revenue and buying your own weight in chocolate every week?
Any day in September is good for me. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights have unpleasantly early mornings following them, but they’re still possible.
Comment by John Y. on August 7, 2008
I would so go to this if I were in the Sydney area at the right time. Well, it’s in the future, so it’s certainly not an impossibility. But it might well be more likely that the people you do round up happen to bring the millions of laser pointers they have lying about their homes (y’know, to play with the cats) and want to celebrate the anniversary of the artificial red eclipse idea by taking a stab at an actual artificial red eclipse. (Who knows how good the calculations were until they are tested by physical experiment?)
Comment by Andrew on August 7, 2008
Now I am curious: I recall commenting on one of the Google ads previously. Seeing none in this post, I wondered if it was because my RSS reader was tossing them away. I looked at the page directly; no ads. So where are they?
Also, I’m not coming until you start playing Ultimate like you promised.
Comment by Julian on August 8, 2008
Andrew,
As discussed in the bowels of this post, Google AdSense adverts do not appear in the RSS feed or in recent articles. They only appear in articles older than two weeks.
The basic idea is that I value my regular readers – they tend to add the most value. I don’t want to annoy them with adverts; I want to buy them beers instead.
However, my long tail readers (i.e. hits from Google searches) are ripe for monetization.
As for Ultimate – I have been almost every week. I almost went this week. I almost went last week… I have had a really good excuse every single time. (This week, it is because I have caught either a common cold or the bubonic plague; the test results aren’t back yet.)
Comment by AndrewD on August 8, 2008
Hey, free beergle from a professional blogger. Sounds good.
Not sure I really have a preference for week or weekend, but I’ll try to be in it.
Comment by David on August 8, 2008
I’ve often wondered how much it would cost to get me to de-lurk. And all it took was the promise of a free beer. Who knew I’d be so cheap?
Comment by Andrew on August 11, 2008
D’Oh! I even read that post, so I have no excuse. Well, the good news is that the ads are not bothering *me*, so enjoy your beer. Remember, it’ll taste better after a good game of Ultimate…. cue catchy beer ad jingle…
Comment by Richard Atkins on August 13, 2008
Count me in for your Sydney-based Google-funded beer-related shenanigans. Name the time and place and I’ll be there…
Also: Andrew, are you really saying “You can get it catching a frisbee”?
Comment by Andrew on August 14, 2008
Richard: as a matter of fact, I’ve got it now.
I doubt you can get it catching a frisbee, though; it doesn’t rhyme with anything. I got it chasing a disc.
Comment by Geoff on August 26, 2008
Sounds good to me. Most days are the same. Was that “a central location” or “a Central location” ? How is the retirement going, he asked jealously.
Comment by Andrew on September 4, 2008
Connecting the “artificial red eclipse” idea and the “what to do with this money” idea… I give you War or Car?. A list of things that could have been done with the money we (for some suitable definition of “we”) spent on the Iraq war. Enjoy.
Comment by David on October 24, 2008
So, when do I get my free beer?
Comment by Julian on October 29, 2008
Excellent question… Hoping for November.
Comment by Richard Atkins on November 28, 2008
With precisely one weekend left in November, is there any hope at all for our
hero to save the daywinner of second prize in a metaphorical Google-funded beauty contest to organise this in time? Stay tuned for the answer to this, and other puzzling questions… Like how can you explain NP-Complete by angering more people than Jeff Atwood? Or how can you get a 956 point reputation on Stack Overflow without really trying? Or how fast can that fire engine redbroommop really go?Comment by Julian on November 28, 2008
I am terribly sorry. I haven’t delivered on my commitments yet.
It basically boils down to: I want to give you all at least 2-3 weeks notice of the event, but there has been a threat of impending travel- at-short-notice hanging over my head, so I haven’t been able to actually commit to a date myself.
We have now waded into Christmas party territory, which means many people are overdosing on organised drinks events. I am now thinking about mid-January (which makes me wonder if I should just stall until April and make it an anniversary event!)