Tuesday, September 18, 2012

But wait, there's more!

The prospect of "monetising one's blog" flies way above our heads at Riddled, simple farming people that we are, uncomfortable with anything more abstract than a mangel-wurzel or a milking machine (one soon learns to tell the two apart in an agrarian economy). But the notion -- explained to us slowly and repeatedly by Evangeline van Holsterin, H.B.a.t.O.E. -- is to host advertisements; ideally ones that are tailored to the unique profile of the blog's readers, and to the search terms that attract them.

In the case of Riddled this would mean webvertisements about "anthropomorphic monocle", "18th century cannon", "mister twister - buttplug", "tattoo microsoft office" and that perennial favourite, "tits gore".

One day we might learn how to do this... some time after we have worked out the intricacies of customising the settings on the Windoze task-bar. But until then, whenever noxious or eye-injurious graphics pop up to shatter your concentration, rest assured that we put them there on purpose.

It has further been explained to me -- with diagrams scribbled on the backs of beer mats, and on the table-top with spilt beer, and on the back of my head with the flat of a hand -- that there is a vibrant ecology of spurious websites trying to cash in, using content scraped elsewhere on the Interducts to attract randomly-Googling readership as an audience for the webvertisements .

Then there is TrafficPaymaster, software emanating from one Grant Shapps, which automates the process of generating spam websites -- with the special feature of rewording the stolen material through a thesaurus word-replacement process. The resulting content reads like assembly instructions translated from Mongolian, but of course coherence is not the point... the webpages only have to fool a search engine for long enough to direct readers thither, however briefly they stay. Let anyone suggest that similar software is involved in Riddled posts and the Banhammer will fall from Heaven like the quality of Mercy, equally unstrained, but heavier.

But Mr Shapps is not personally using his software. Instead he sells it to other people, offering them the once-in-a-lunchtime opportunity to make a fortune rorting the Interlattice for webvertising windfalls. It is the classic get-rich-quick scam. Not only does it appeal to the greed and stupidity of the rubes (relying on their failure to ask themselves, "If this package is so lucrative then why is he selling it to us?"), but it adds the allure of exclusivity (for the windfalls would dry up if everyone were busy polluting the intermesh with spamsites).

Even the income from charging TrafficPaymaster customers a £313 stupidity tax was not enough for Mr Shapps so he has gone seeking new fields of dimwitted cupidity to exploit. With such success that the English Conservative Party have appointed him Minister of Housing, and now their new co-Chairman.
Feel the synergy! He can use TrafficPaymaster to write the Party Manifesto!


ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

You saved the best joke for last!

I see a number of common taters on that post are rather fried over criticism of Cameron and fiends.

mikey said...

Man, I can't WAIT to try that Spam Upside Down Pie recipe. Yum.

Thanks, Smut!

Substance McGravitas said...

I see an in for the Pirate Party.

Sirius Lunacy said...

Operators are standing by. You'd better hurry up and order one our limited supply is very nearly gone.

M. Bouffant said...

Oh yes. Signed everything over to his wife, mother or spawn & hasn't a thing to do w/ any of it now, n'est-ce pas?

"If this package is so lucrative then why is he selling it to us?" Rarely asked alright.

Smut Clyde said...

Operators are standing by.

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...


You've been meeting with Arthur Laffer?

Hamish Mack said...

You can have Spam Upside Down Pie or death.
Frankly there's not a lot of difference.