Selling Out, or Buying In?

There has been a slight change to the look of this corner of the World Wide Web; one that made Natalie gasp. "How did you get corporate sponsorship?" I signed up for it through Google. "How much did it cost?" Nothing.

It cost nothing in terms of money, that is. Maybe a little pride. But hey, I hear there is a lot of money to make on this whole Internet thing, so I thought I'd dip my toe into the water and see how that is done.

So hoila, Google AdSense is now part of this blog.

And in about one year, if I'm lucky, I'll earn like $10. But hey, that can buy a taco dinner for two here.

In all honesty, I signed up for AdSense and Amazon Associates because I was curious how these things worked. Because in an ideal situation, eventually I'd like to try and create my own Internet-based business. That is part of the reason I started this blog to begin with - to get an idea of what foreign service people are reading about, writing about and want to know.

For the mean time, I'm happy (sorta) with just doing the freelance writing thing and running this blog. It would be nice, however, to reduce or drop the freelance thing altogether and focus solely on my own Internet business. The appeal of such a system is that I won't have to be reliant on other people's table scraps to find work, and the Internet, so I've been told, can be access all over the world.

So in the mean time, I'm dabbling a little bit into these little ads to get a better idea on how they work. Feel free to ignore them at your leisure (hope my advertisers didn't read that). And I'll be keeping an eye on them to make sure they aren't promoting a product I'd never use. For example, I already have set to filter any Get Rich Fast Scheme ads as well as dating and sexually explicit ads.

But if I see an ad pop up for say, Verizon, then I'm canceling this thing. Or Papa John's. Those two companies find themselves on the wrong end of my do-not-endorse list.

I have a little less control with the AdSense than with the Amazon Associates, at least as far as I can tell from my first day of these things. Google sells my space for fractions of a penny to the highest bidder, and the bidders will be people who think their products somehow match up with what kind of content I'm providing. Good luck with that.

With Amazon, while I'm typing away, there is a little search box on my right that I can type in my own topic, and it will provide some search results that I can then link to. Then if someone clicks on that link to buy said product, I get a little something back. I opted for a couple of books from the "for Dummies" series because I had used one of them to teach myself a little about HTML, and it seemed pretty useful. I officially endorse these books.

I also added an Amazon search box in the lefthand column, though I don't think I collect any royalties if you use it. As far as I know, it is just a service I'm providing for you, my readers, and the good people at Amazon, which, as many of us have or will learn, is an essential online shopping tool. And no, Amazon didn't pay me to say that (though if they feel grateful, they know how to reach me - wink, wink, nod, nod).

So there you have it. That is why I look like I'm selling out. If you don't like it, let me know, and if enough complaints come in, I'll consider dropping the ads, but in the meantime, I think I've raised $0.00005 so far. Talk about a get rich quick scheme!