money-making schemes

Well, as you all have no doubt noticed by now, some time ago I added some advertisements to this webpage.  On the right column, you will be able to find links to my CafePress store, links generated by Google’s AdSense, and image links generated by BlogAdSwap.  Each of these were put there in the hope that people clicking on the links, or purchasing the items, might make a little profit for my webpage, offsetting my costs for renting the space necessary to keep this thing online.  Granted, the last item does not exactly make me any monetary profit, but it (hopefully) generates a little more traffic to my little corner of the cyberverse, which, in turn, (hopefully) generates a little more income.  This is all good and well, and seems to be working relatively well (by which I mean "not at all", but more on that in a bit) for those people who visit my domain through the main, front page. 

Of course, most of my visitors do not even see the front page.  I have been noticing this for some time now, but some specific pages of this blog get considerably more traffic than other ones, primarily due to the images contained or linked to therein.  I am certainly not complaining – I will take whatever traffic I can get, and since most of these people are being referred by Google searches (in a variety of languages), this can only lead to good things.  I had vaguely considered editing the posts on those particular pages to include something along the lines of, "Feel free to check out the rest of this site at…", but never really bothered to do so – as I have mentioned before, I tend to be somewhat lazy, and since most of these people are just looking for the images in question, I doubt they would feel the inclination to take a look at the rest of my non-graphical ramblings.  Well, something else struck my attention a few days ago – my advertisement campaign is completely two-dimensional, if even that.  The people being referred to my site by Google and the other search engines pointing them towards my pictures were not being exposed to even the tiniest of ads, and thus are not doing me the slightest bit of good (at least from the "Gimme money" standpoint). 

Well, this has all changed, is changing, and will continue to change until I get the format and arrangement down to my liking.  Currently, every individual archive page on my site has one CafePress advertisement at the top of the article, and a single Google AdSense strip beneath the article.  I will also be adding another CafePress advertisement at the bottom of the entire page, but that will actually be a referral link, as opposed to a link to my store.  Additionally, I am currently working on adding similar features to both the category archive pages, as well as the chronological archives.  I have not yet decided on the arrangement for those particular pages, and will probably be tinkering around with all manner of different orderings and the like, so please bear with me.  However, considering just how much I hate advertisements myself, they will be kept relatively low-key, and I will do my best to keep graphical advertisements to a minimum (though there is no way to avoid them with CafePress, unfortunately).  For example, the AdSense advertisements will probably be changing colors slightly in the near future to better match the color scheme of this site, so stand by for that change as well. 

"But if you hate advertisements so much, why are you using them yourself?" you may be wondering.  Well, I will be honest – the money.  This amount of webspace I use to host this weblog is not free, nor is the "full"-version store I have open on CafePress.  Thankfully, my store has been making strides towards being self-supporting, though it still has a little way to go.  This weblog, on the other hand… not so much.  Now, part of the reason I rent this webspace is out of sheer convenience – it is useful to have access to an effectively unlimited number of email addresses that are not tied to some free online webmail address, and it is also convenient to have sufficient storage space to put up family picture galleries, send files to people, and other such things.  But it would be even more useful, and more convenient, if this space could somehow pay for itself.  Short of asking for donations (which I may, eventually, get around to doing), advertisements are about the only real way of hoping to accomplish that.  But a few comments about them, while I am thinking of them.  First, you will never have any advertisement that generates a pop-up screen on this site, at all, ever.  I hate those bloody things with a passion like unto the fires of the sun, and since most webbrowsing software can block them these days anywise, it would be less than pointless.  If something does generate a pop-up (besides external links, which are almost universally set to ‘target="_blank"’), let me know about it immediately, and it will be expunged.  Second, half of the current advertisements are technically relevant to what you are reading.  Google AdSense advertisements are generated based upon the information and text contained within the pages upon which they are located, and while the connections between what I wrote and the advertisements that show up may occasionally be a little tenuous, it still does appear to be there.  Third, half of the current advertisements will provide you physical and tactile satisfaction.  I always liked the idea of CafePress, both from its "ego-press" point of view, as well as from the aspect of providing people actual items while still making money off it.  While I understand the use, draw, and function of linking-for-money, like AdSense, being able to produce something "real" has a warm-fuzzy attached to it that is a nice benefit. 

So there you are.  As an aside, and to avoid confusion, I have discovered that Norton Internet Security is exceptionally good at blocking CafePress advertisements, even when you tell it those web addresses are ok to show, so those of you using that particular brand of computer security software will miss out on those advertisements (not as though you will particularly mind).  However, on the front page (and soon every page… another thing I did to the main page, but neglected to propagate everywhere) you will see a "philosophy of firefly" link under every post – that link will take you to my store just as easily as the advertisements will.  Now, I mentioned back at the beginning of this post that my advertisement campaign was working "relatively well"…  I suppose relative to no campaign at all, it is working well.  Unfortunately, I have no real way of determining just how many of the purchases at my store are due to the links and advertisements here, so I can only guesstimate how well that particular system functions.  However, the AdSense traffic and profit… yeah, that is kind of sad. 

Here is all I am asking:  If you come to my weblog, and like the article you are reading, feel free to click on one of the AdSense advertisements, or feel free to check out my store. I cannot guarantee that there is anything in there that would suit your fancy, but from the sheer number of products, and number of designs I created for them, there should be something.  Thanks in advance. 

In closing, yes, I have been a veritable moron when it comes to effective advertising…  I did not think past my main page, which resulted in me losing a lot of potentially-advertised traffic.  Now it is time to go make sure I do everything I said I was going to…  For future reference, for all of my readers out there, putting advertisements on the main page of your blog is all good and well, but unless it is the only page of your blog, you should probably add some more on the rest, too…