I tried Google’s Adsense, a piece of code that places “relevant” click-through ads on your blog. A good idea on the surface, if you don’t mind having ads somewhere on your page, and since it also generates income based on how many click-throughs you get, it could also be lucrative. The dark side? Ah, yes – there’s always a dark side. They have this nifty thing called a filter that allows you to screen out certain ads, types of ads, or ads from certain domains. So far, so good. The ‘bot that scanned my first few entries zeroed in on the fact that I have dogs (see previous post). So, naturally, the ads that popped were from a puppy mill (TMBWitW and I believe that there are enough animals waiting to be rescued or adopted that puppy mills are not needed), a German Shepherd trainer/breeder (if you wish to have a pleasant day, do not ask TMBWitW about breeders), and a couple of ads that popped from e-bay and finders.

Well, I blocked the ads from the puppy mills and breeders, but then the e-bay and finders ads filled up with bits about “Come look at the dogs we have for sale” – and if I were to block e-bay, that would probably shut down just about all of the ads that might show up. So much for generating income, no matter how small.

I did, however, keep the Google search feature. If you use it from this blog, that will generate a little bit of income. Not asking, just mentioning. It probably won’t add up to a whole lot, and since this blog site is free (Thank you, Blogger!) it’s not like I have a blog bill to pay or anything. I may try the ad thing again later, after I have varied the content of the blog a bit, or at least gotten more focused towards the Family.

UPDATE 4/22/08 – now that I am on my own domain, I do have a bit of a bill – but I’m not trying to support this with donations – yet.