I run ads on my two food sites. The ads pay for the server, some site related expenses, and a little bit more.
If only I didn't have to run any ads. Ads clutter up a site, even the most discreet ones. Ad insertion code is often gimpy. Ad code is often invalid. Some really bad ad code can even make a browser crash, a server crash, or break a page design. Mostly, ads suck.
Back in early November, I wrote about using my food blog, Just Hungry, as a lab or experimental platform for operating a monetized, sort-of-commercial, blog.
Since then I have put some more effort into deriving an income from Just Hungry. Here are some of my observations and such.
This is part one of a possible series of posts where I ruminate on food blogs, mine in particular, and the food blogging world in general.
This here is a personal blog, and as such I never intend to have Adsense ads or similar on it. (I do use Amazon associate links to link to books and media.) My food blog, I was just really very hungry (or simply Just Hungry) on the other hand is monetized in several ways. It has Amazon associate links, an Amazon astore, Google Adsense ads, affiliate ads, and so on.
It's not that the objective of the site is to make money (it's more of a therapeutic thing, to get the obsession I have with food out of my system), but I monetize it in large part because I'm very interested in seeing how the various monetization schemes work, especially when it comes to blogs. And, I think a blog with a non-tech focus is the best place to see what's going on.