Yes, yet another blogger has fallen to the lure of the dark side. I recently signed myself up for a Google AdSense account and today slapped the code for a Google banner on my main page, individual entry pages, category archives, and monthly archives. They’re kind of ugly, but not too obtrusive.
In a way, they are kind of an experiment. I have always been curious if people actually click on those things; I have trained myself to completely tune them out. Contrary to that training, is the second part of my experiment. I think that it will be interesting (at least for awhile) to see what AdWords ads get generated by the various subjects of my posts. For example, of all of the topics on my main page, why are all of the ads on the right side selling Star Wars DVDs?
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Update: Now the ads are all about blogging, which seems to be the default fallback when the subject matter of my posts do not correspond to any AdWords.
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This is not my first foray into commercializing my blog. I have been embedding Amazon.com® Associate links in my posts for awhile now. I figure that since a large number of my visitors are Googlers looking for information on iPods, the Bowflex, Braun razors, and Brad Pitt(?); I might as well try to make a little money.
(Brad Pitt??? I mentioned him once in passing. These people must be digging pretty deeply in the search results. “Triscadecaphobia” I can understand; I am usually the third Google result out of 191…but “Brad Pitt?”)
But I digress…does this mean that I’m going to start writing posts just so that I can shill something for Amazon? Hell, ya! I have no shame.
Seriously, though, the dollar amounts are not nearly enough to influence my posts. People would have to buy $200 worth of stuff from Amazon.com before I even see a dime (and then it’s only 5%). So you can rest assured that, for example, my endorsement of The Bowflex Body Plan and the Bowflex, itself, are genuine and the results I have enjoyed are real.
So now we interrupt this commercial to bring you back to your irregularly scheduled blog posts.
I’ll notify my boyfriend of your Amazon link and maybe he’ll buy the diamond for me. That way we’ll both be happy ;)
Sounds like a plan! Diamond solitaire or necklace? Of course, 5 percent of either would be a nice chunk of change. ;-)
Wow, I couldn’t even fathom buying something for $177,769 off of Amazon. For that kind of money, Jeff Bezos should deliver it to your house personally.
I suppose buying something like that online would be a good way of avoiding sales tax. (Of course, one is supposed to pay use tax for purchases made out of state, but who actually does that?)