If you could charge the Bush campaign 10cents every time you clicked on a link - sort of like an anti- The Hunger Site -for the RNC - wouldn't you want to participate? Of course you would; that's why Google invented AdWords.
Well not really. But that's what we can use it for. It works like this: When a person searches on Google (& others), "sponsored links" show up on the page. If someone happens to want click on one of the adds, the sponsor (say www.gop.com, owned by the RNC) pays Google a small fee. This fee goes from pennies all the way up to > a dollar.
As was pointed out in this slate article:, it can be a great form of advertising. The problem, or fun part, is if people start messing with the rules. See, Every time you delete your cookies (or more specifically, your cookies from Google) you can charge the site again. So if, say, 50,000 Kos readers (a small fraction of us) decided to pay Google a visit for 3 minutes each...well, what's stopping us?
Take the plunge, I've got which key words to search for and which sites are owned by whom.
Here are the websites: You know what to do.
GOOGLE:
"vote bush" will get you GOP.com (the RNC). Take `Em Down!'
YAHOO:
They give you two or three prominent featured adds in blue above the search results. They also give you Google-style adds along the side.
Here's what they say about their add program:
You set the price you're willing to pay for each sales lead and pay only when your customers click through to your site. [So just like Google!]
Again with Yahoo there is only one big horse to take down: the RNC.
"Republican" - Gets you www.RNC.org + some congress candidates.
"GOP" - Gets you www.RNC.org
"Conservative" - gets you the RNC, but also Celcius4111 (the supposed anti-Fahrenheit 9/11), as well as a few Repug candidates for congress.
"George Bush" - the RNC again, as well as some Republican stores and such.
LYCOS:
"George Bush" will get you www.donationreport.com which is actually the RNC again.
"Republican" will get you the RNC (as donationreport) in both the "Featured Lycos Category" and in the "sponsored link" category (as gop.com).
But I can't find proof that Lycos is running on the AdWords system yet, besides a general feeling that I read it somewhere. If anyone could confirm this I would love it.
The best part about this is that it's a two for one. We keep other people from seeing the adds that the GOP wants to get out, and we charge them for the right to do this.
The worst part about it is twofold. First that Google has something called a daily budget ( https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6312&topic=29). This will keep us from charging the RNC 10 million dollars in the next 5 hours. But as long as when you search there are still adds showing up, then there is still money for them to spend. So when / if we hit our ceiling, we'll know it. Who knows how high they've set their limit, and who knows, if we hit it, maybe they'll just think they're doing their job too well and increase the limit?
The second part is that everyone from johnkerry to moveon is invested in it too. We need to be sending them emails warning them that if they see a sudden surge in click-throughs (in Freep retaliation) then they should take their sites off the system immediately.
Here is how to tell JohnKerry.com. If you contact them please say so on a comment; after 15 or so I'll take this part down.
This is the best I can find for MoveOn.org. It's their pressroom. If you can find a better contact, post it or email me, or best, both.
The DNC This is the best I can find for them too. Just a general all purpose info contact form.
Here is the contact for the Blog MoveLeft: eric@moveleft.com - they seem to use AdWords too.
Since they could do this against us, and very well might be already, for this to work it has to be a group effort. Remember, they can Freep, but we can Freep better. There are a heck of a lot more of us.