Is this blog useful?

The main version of my daily blog is on google's blogger. This is the site I generally refer people to when they request information which is available in the blog.
http://boycottnestle.blogspot.com/

As you will notice, it carries no advertising, other than for Baby Milk Action products and an appeal for an occassional donation of, say, £3.00.

No google ads, for example. Google ads are something I have experimented with using myself to promote Baby Milk Action. You submit a short text ad to their system. You can assign keywords to it. It then runs an algorithm on it to ascertain how relevant your ad is when people search on specific keywords, or include ads in their own page - so called context advertising. You provide a bid value for each click. The more popular the keyword, the more you need to bid to be in the top 10 appearing on a seach page. The poorer the match of your ad to the keyword, and, I think, the rarer the clicks when people see it, the more you have to bid.

Some keywords are more expensive than other. I ran a test to promote our breastfeeding calendar using breastfeeding' as one of the key words. Try it on google and you'll see that ads from some big companies come up, such as Mothercare and Aptamil formula, all purporting to offer breastfeeding advice. They pay for each time someone clicks on their link - and the amount can be typically 50 pence.

So if you are bored you could click on their link for a while to eat into their budget. They do have a massive budget, however, and obviously see it is worth spending just to have people visit their website looking for breastfeeding information because they anticipate future sales of formula as a result. The site you are led to by Aptamil, encourages you to sign up for information, another key internet marketing strategy.

I too like it if you sign up for my briefings, not just in the hope that you will buy something or become a member, but also in the hope you will become that most valuable resource for the campaign: an informed person.

If you see google ads that you think are inappropriate you can report them. Look at the bottom of the search page for a link saying 'disastified'. Context ads on the pages of others have a link to Google ads where you can give feedback on them.

This blog also appears on the social networking sites:

Myspace, which does carry advertising (revenue goes to Myspace), at:
http://blog.myspace.com/mikebmact

and Yusie, which carries advertising and splits revenue with users (though some people thinks this will make them rich, you will only likely only qualify for a few cents a month and only see any money when it reaches $25), at:
http://www.yuwie.com/mikebrady/

I'm on Facebook to - which again takes advertising (revenue goes to Facebook) - and flag up particular blogs there. See:


So if you go to any of the sites that take advertising and see anything you think is inappropriate, please do complain to Google ads. You can also report to us via our monitoring
website at:
http://www.babyfeedinglawgroup.org.uk/

If you want the ad-free blog, see the blogger version - well, on that one you are only subjected to Baby Milk Action advertising.

Clicking on our own ads is the best way to support us, if you think this blog is useful.