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Comment by phirephly | Hacker News Reader

I blindly click ads on websites I like, once I realized the stupidly high amount click-throughs pay ($0.10-$1.50 per click from Google Ads)

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Don't do that. The money doesn't come out of thin air, the advertiser pays it while getting nothing in return.

Ethical issues aside, if the advertisers see lots of clicks but no buys coming from a site, they could simply stop advertising on that site (or, worse, report the site for potential click fraud).

If you a like a website, a much better strategy is to simply send the site you like money, buy something directly from the site you like, or (least helpfully) actually buy the item an advertiser is selling after clicking through their ad on the site you like.

Wait - its ok to game the heck out of advertising placement, but a single guy decides to game the other way and he's doing something wrong?

The ad is there, its my pageview, I'll click on anything I please, thank you very much.

It's not just because he is doing "something wrong", it's mostly because he isn't really helping the site he wants to help as gnossis pointed above.

Of course he's helping - they get money when he clicks.

He is helping in the short run and might be harming in the long run.

Read the aforementioned comment.

Read it all, thank you.

And the only known is, they get money when he clicks. The rest is speculation and straw-men.

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