The times they are a-changin’.
This post seems to be older than 15 years—a long time on the internet. It might be outdated.
Every so often, I get a request seeing if I’d like to put an advertisement on my website. It’s tempting sometimes, one little harmless ad to help offset the cost of hosting my site (it’s something like $100/year for everything). But I don’t, and you will never see any advertisements on my blog (save the Amazon affiliate linking and things of that nature that are unobtrusive). This site is first and foremost my blog. Its existence is to serve as a repository for the random bits of life I choose to store here. It is not a commercial venture.
Jeff Atwood had a great post on Blog Advertising a couple months ago and I want to reiterate one of his points:
Realize that advertising changes the nature of your blog. The first ads you take convert your blog from a non-profit to a commercial venture. It’s no longer a hobby; you’re being paid to blog. It’s work. And unless you’re only accepting only random ads, there are also new avenues for conflicts of interest.
This goes back to my point about this not being a commercial venture, but rather a place for the random bits of my life. The random bits of my life do not have any sort of advertisements as part of them.
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