Click generously

And other things we cannot say or do not want to say.

No web site running ads is allowed to say "click generously" or something along those lines or to mark ads with misleading bylines like "visit our sponsors".

If you use one of the ad blocking modules available for modern browsers, you won't even see any ads. That would be the smooth way to enjoy the web without blinky parts or consumer temptation.

Not the best for us, though, because we are trying to make few extra bucks or euros by allowing ads to be placed on a website or in a blog. When people click on one, we get a few cents. Our goal is to make enough to cover the cost of hosting of a website we run.

Getting ads up and running on the website was a learning experience all by itself. Despite having quite a bit of "original content", the automated checker told us we had not enough. Which seemed strange because there are countless ad farms on the web with a few lines of content and as many ads as they can cram into a page.

Turns out, hand coded pages are out of fashion. Use a site design package, any will do, and you are good. The blog here was a different story, a couple of clicks and the ads were there.

Content policies that come with signing up to an ad program are a combination of common sense rules and rules that allow the program operator to protect themselves against claims that they tacitly condone objectionable content.

So, if your choice of blog topic is cooking or baking, gardening or healthy eating, you will not have to give much thought to the content policy.

If you do a free form current affairs blog where you can live out mild randomness of thinking or poke fun at the world, it is wise to go and read the content policy every now and then.

For novice bloggers, it may help to find some similarity to known embarrassing moments. Such as the "reply all" email to thousands of first puzzled and then annoyed folks. A badly timed "Reply all" can get you fired, a badly conceived blog or Twitter post can get you arrested or dragged into court.

A conceptually simple precaution is to modify Bob Dylan: think twice, 'n' it's alright.

If you have a hard time being silent for a day, get a handful of drafts ready, so all you have to do is click "publish" and be done.

For us. that means there may come a time when all you see on this blog are posts about the cats. It will indicate that we ran out of ideas or that something is preventing us from being our normal entertaining selves.

We at the K-landnews have diverse views on any subjects, including religion. Early on, we decided to stay out of the fray over religions. We will report on it as we see fit, but only a team member who has grown up with it will be allowed to write about a specific religion.
As in "you've had a share of my brain, it's only fair if I get so speak up."