This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Very interesting question here today. And by the way, welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. If you are new, I'm so glad that you're here every single day for the past 1,411 days. I've been making this short broadcast to help people make money apart from their day job.
It's all about creating freedom so you can do more of what's important to you. Now, in our year of interaction, I've been getting a lot of great questions from listeners. This one is really interesting. What if the topic you're trying to teach about is controversial to the point where the tech companies don't even allow you to advertise on them? And when I first heard about this, I was like, wow, what topic could this possibly be?
What could be so controversial that Google says no to your money? Because as we all know, they take money for all kinds of things. Now, even after I heard the actual question, the actual topic, which you'll hear in a moment, I'm still not actually sure why it's so controversial. In fact, it's the opposite. This person, our listener, is actually trying to mend relationships that are strained or broken, which, you know, seems like a pretty good thing to do, but she's running into problems with the algorithm and ad approval with Google.
And this is all an automated process, of course, so it's probably not a conspiracy, but nevertheless, it is a problem. It's a challenge for her. So I'll let her explain more how to market a controversial topic. That's what we're gonna talk about, and I think I have a pretty good answer for her as well. So all of that's coming up after this brief message from our sponsor.
[Music]
Hi, Chris. My name is Karen Tibbles, and I'd like your advice about a project that I'm working on, but I'm running into roadblocks because the topic is so hot and controversial in this politically polarized environment. I struggled to get my ads approved on Amazon, even though Facebook is not a problem, but I'd love to do a Google AdWords campaign, but they don't allow any ads on the keyword civility or fractured relationships. I have a couple of ideas. One is to create a YouTube video on fractured relationships that might be able to work.
Another is to talk about how to have a calm Thanksgiving, but I'd like your thoughts. The book is "Pursuede Don't Preach," and the newsletter is "Mending Fractured Relationships on Substack." [Music]
Hey, Karen, thank you so much. Thanks for being out there, and thanks for all you do. This sounds like a much needed project. I'm not sure why those keywords are so controversial.
As mentioned, I'm sure it's just some algorithm thing. It's interesting what gets removed by the filters and what is allowed. So definitely weird that civility is a word that is not allowed or fractured relationships. However, I do think there are a couple ways around this problem. One, I like your idea of the YouTube video.
I think that's good regardless of anything else because that's free, you know, so that's always good. Also, it's gonna reach a different market, et cetera. But also, specifically for these keywords and the ad approval issue, mending fractured relationships, I like that phrase. I think it's a good title for your newsletter, but I don't know that people will actually search for that phrase, at least not a lot of them. So I was trying to think, what will people search for that would be relevant to this topic?
And Karen and anybody else out there, they might have better ideas than me, but I first thought of, well, don't get along with family or family politics or family disagrees about election results. Like those are a few phrases that I thought could be, you know, connected here. And those may not be exactly right, but if you think more and research more using a keyword tool, which we've talked about a couple of times in the program, there are tools you can use, you know, that kind of show you a lot of different search phrases in terms and as well as the volume in terms of how many people are searching for them. You'll probably find a lot more options that are easy to get approved that don't run into that, you know, civility censorship. And hopefully they aren't too competitive as well, so they won't be expensive.
Now, last but not least, how to have a calm Thanksgiving is a great topic. Oh my gosh, so many people in the US are gonna need that resource. Listeners, if you wanna check out Karen's work, go to persuadedontpreach.com. You can see her book there as well as a signup link for that aforementioned newsletter. Karen, thank you for all you do.
Listeners, thank you for all you do as well. I am cheering you on in these strange, confusing times. I hope that you do something today. Just one small thing to get closer to a goal you believe in. And if you have a question or a comment, just come to sidehustleschool.com/questions.
Join me again tomorrow. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And just like Karen's YouTube video, it is completely free. All right, my name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
from the Onward Project.
