You’ve probably seen the targeted text ads that Google runs alongside its search results. Well, it seems that Google is now offering its “AdSense” technology “for web publishers who want to make more revenue from advertising on their site while maintaining editorial quality.” The ads are supposedly targeted according to the content on your page; I found a very useful page that preview the ads for a particular URL. Here is a preview of ads for the blog/home page , and here is a preview for my ‘80s main page.
I’ve avoided banner ads and their ilk for some time now, although I have subscribed to several affiliate programs like Amazon, MovieGoods, and GEMM to help pay for ISP costs, web hosting services, and domain name registration. I’ve never made much money with any of those programs, and I have yet to come close to turning a profit on the site, but that was never the goal of my site anyway. Still, it would be nice to turn some of those hits into some money I could put towards offsetting my costs. On the other hand, I really don’t want to “sell out.” The text-based ads are fairly unobtrusive, at least, but I don’t know whether it’s worth compromising my site’s relatively noncommercial content. What do you think? I’ll see if I can direct some traffic to my message board; I’ve posted a poll there to let you guys vote, or post comments below and please let me know what you think. Thanks in advance…
