freeg131: Philip Gamble

When applying to University in the UK you have no choice but to use the UCAS system (unless you only apply to Oxford and Cambridge). They charge you £15 for the privilege of using an over-complicated website which requires you to use separate login details to apply and then track the progress of your application.

Not only that but in the past 3 days they have sent me three separate letters containing nothing but an advert (for Lloyds TSB, some student housing company and for the Teacher Development Agency) and three letters explaining that they send us this junk to keep the cost down.  This far from the only junk mail they have sent me though, I have had adverts for O2, numerous for yougofurther, BBC Radio 1’s “surgery” program and some shop called One4Uni.

Why are they using our future as a business?  Because they can.  Because £15 x 550,000 applicants (£8.25M a year) is not enough.

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In May advertising revenues from GameMaker Blog were $11.54 + £5.00

Quite a low click-through ratio is being achieved with AdSense, when compared with the format installed on my Aidy Boothroyd soundboard, despite the fact that it is currently displaying ads for computer hardware, limo hire and loft conversions. I guess moving the ads above the fold so they are immediately visible when the GameMaker Blog loads could have a big effect on the number of clicks, so I have moved them above the ProjectWonderful ad which is sold by time period.

Earnings from my websites about Cassiobury Park and Stencyl for the past couple of months can be seen below - the revenue is all from a company called Matched which pay £3 for each page they can match an ad to per month (up to a maximum of 5 pages).

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