Sell Out

In case you didn’t notice the enormous banner across the top of the site, I thought I’d let you know I’ve become a sell out. Coincidentally, that song was playing on the radio on the way home last night.

Selling out seemed like an obvious choice after a friend tried it and started raking in the dough. I’m sure I won’t rake in the dough because he was getting more traffic in a day than I get in a month, but some dough is better than no dough.

I’ve tried donations as a revenue stream, and with a grand total of $1 raised to date, it doesn’t seem like the best approach. The Amazon.com referrals are helpful, but it still doesn’t even pay for hosting. So we’ll give this a try and see how it works.

For now I’m experimenting with the ad placement. The top of the home page seems unobtrusive — and, more importantly, I don’t have to redesign anything. On interior pages I’m trying a skyscraper ad at the bottom of the sidebar. We’ll see how that works, though I’m already noticing that some pages are just too short — if this proves effective, I’ll rework some of those placements.

I’m not sure how I feel about the whole materialistic side of things. At one point I was rather idealistic and wouldn’t want ads on my site. But paying the bills helps. And this is a pretty simple way to do it. It’s not like I have control over what ads show up, so I can’t gear my content for the best monetary impact.

At any rate, it’s fun to see what ads Google decides to serve up on what pages. They basically have a computer search your page for appropriate keywords and then post ads matching those keywords. Hence the homepage has a post about the Red Wings, so ads about the Red Wings. The category pages make for pretty clear-cut ads. I also have the ability to block specific advertisers, so let me know if there are any ridiculous ads I should consider blocking.

Go capitalism!

2 thoughts on “Sell Out”

  1. Well, at least you’re not a communist. So you’ve got that goin’ for ya.

    Disclaimer: What I’m about to say isn’t supposed to be judgmental or anything like that, because I’m totally OK with what you’re doing. I’m just sharing what I decided.

    I had thought about doing ads too. I eventually decided that the site was a service I provided out of my pocket for my friends and random visitors, and that I didn’t want anything back except conversation. It’s worth the $50 or $60 per year to me to be able to write and create and show what I’ve done, and get comments on it from people I love.

    On the flip side of that, I could do and get all those things and still put ads up. So maybe it’s actually that I’m too lazy to figure out how it’s done, and too afraid that after I do the 10 to 20 minutes of work, I’ll end up making 25 cents a month for it. :-)

  2. I’ve decided against ads on my site because I don’t even pay for hosting, so the only expense I have is the $10/year domain registration. It runs on a pentium 75 under a desk somewhere on the 4th floor of the CC building. Sure hope that 850MB, 7 year old hard drive doesn’t fail. ;)

    I do sell t-shirts, but I figure if you’re dumb enough to pay for my advertising then I don’t have to worry about selling out. And its cafe press so I’ve made exactly $3.00 so far, and I don’t think that’s enough to get a check, although I should look into that. That’s like a whole meal at Wendy’s.

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