Blogging with Ads and a Blog Store

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From Denny: Whew! I've been blogging for nine months now (on the oldest blog The Social Poets where I started all this craziness) and am just getting into learning about ads. There are so many options and it takes a while to absorb it all. Mostly, I've waited to develop my content on each blog and then see what people find interesting.

You can develop your own aStore with Amazon Associates though it sure takes some time to develop the look you want to best complement your blog in color and design. Of course, I just wear it out trying different combinations so it takes me longer. :) I finally got around to developing this blog's own store.

Amazon is a trusted company for both the customer and the blogger. I prefer an ad company with a good reputation since it's my reputation on the line as well.

Anyway, there are ads for MP3 Music, Gourmet Food, Free Music, Sale Books, Video, Cell phones, and the Romancing The Chocolate Store as choices. Take a look and browse through it all for ideas. If you are like me you just enjoy window shopping! :)

What's fun about some of these ads is they add visual interest to what could be a static blog so I thought I'd try it out and see what appeals to everyone. At least they are tasteful unlike what some companies offer. The ads are placed at the top, sprinkled in the sidebar and above and below the posts area.

Oh, yes, for new bloggers, you definitely want to get Google ads. Why? Forget about making money from them as it's a joke unless you get a million hits. The only sites and blogs that get hits like that are porno and I'm not interested in writing garbage. You only make $1 for every 1,000 hits so it could take you a year or more to make $100.

When you go to join up with Google just make sure you have at least 60 to 90 posts of content. They might turn you down for less. What they are looking for is enough content to analyze to know what ads to place with you. If you post daily it won't take long to develop a theme or trend that Google will find attractive. Once you have been at blogging for a good six months and are not overwhelmed, upgrade for free to Google Analytics. Analytics goes deeper into analyzing how you are doing and what posts are the most popular. They let you know if your traffic is from search engines or direct because people already know about you.

The real reason you want Google ads is because they keep track of your numbers for you to let you know if folks are actually reading your blog. That was the real reason I activated Google ads. I wanted to see if anyone was interested in what I was offering since I was a newbie to blogging. Previously, I always kept private journals and then finally decided to go public. It was a pleasant surprise to learn the level of interest out there in web land! :) Thanks for your support, everyone!