Ditching Google for Amazon

I’m dumping Google for Amazon in a couple of ways, and here’s why:

For the past year or so, I’ve had a Google AdSense block over there to the right. Not because I had illusions of making any money, but to get a sense for how it worked, and what typical click-through rates are on a personal blog. As the focus on my posts moved away from the Code and Literature of the blog’s tag line, and more to Money, the ads settled in on a bunch of penny stock pushers. No one clicked on anything anyway, and in the course of the experiment, I netted little more than a postage stamp’s worth of value.

Consequently, I’ve dumped the AdSense in the sidebar and limited my commercialization to book recommendations. For my kind of site, I think this works a lot better. And my decision to do so tells you something about the two companies.

Fat Head Aggregators vs the Filtered Long Tail

Currently I’m reading Howard Lindzon’s new book, The Wallstrip Edge (full review later, when I finish). I’m about 1/3rd of the way through the book, just past the part where he describes experiences in finding trends. And the trend I see here is not only relevant to monetization of blogs, but to the underlying stocks as well.

Google is great for monetizing commercial eyeballs. AdSense works not for the long tail, but for the “fat head” aggregators and ad farmers who can pull in 1M page views per month, or really narrow their focus to attracting search traffic on a topic rather than building an audience. Facebook’s click through rates, which are reported to be notoriously low (in the 0.04% range), in fact may be more typical than anyone wants to admit. Like so many of the faith-based schemes that have been exposed in the last year, AdSense profitability and conversion ratios seem to be overstated. Not good for the GOOG. A thesis I’m working on for a later post is that you can find things that are “too good to be true” and profit by avoiding them. As the web matures, I suspect that the AdSense ecosystem, which for much of the decade was too good to be true, will grow far less attractive monetization option.

Amazon, on the other hand, caters better to the long tail, to those finding trusted voices, and to those building audiences.

The trend I see (confirmed by observing the many-to-many relationships on Twitter, and by the dynamics of StockTwits as it relates to trend following is that repeated interactions lead to trust, and so much commerce—finding things, finding what you should be interested in, learning what’s best—are enabled and made more effective by the social filter. The actions taken due to these recommendations results in real commerce taking place; a “real” transaction occurs as opposed to a trivial payment for shifting attention.

Trust the Filter; Monetize the Trust

It’s no wonder that a trend rider like Howard is investing in StockTwits and Amazon; it’s a coherent theory that makes sense. Trust the filter; monetize the trust.

So I’m avoiding Google and looking to buy Amazon. Put another way (inspired by a line in Howard’s book), I’m more confident that Amazon is the next Amazon than I am that Google is the next Google.