31 months later
Just over two and a half years ago I made my first enthusiastic “Hello World” blog post. I was naive and eager and ready to make my mark on the world. A lot of the posts from my first 9 months are long gone as I didn’t bother to save all of them when I migrated to WordPress in November of that year. In most cases, you didn’t miss much and that’s really a blessing.
I’ve learned a lot along the way. Being a “long tail” blogger is an interesting (and well populated) niche to play in and it seems to call for some expectation management.
I’ve learned to not pay as much attention to stats and to calm down about traffic. I’ve just recently learned to relax a bit on posting frequency. The rest of this article goes into more details. Read more
Advertising and the Long Tail Blog
Displaying advertisements on a blog out at the end of the long tail is not too different from walking around a party with your fly open. Everyone notices, but very few are comfortable mentioning it. Well, I’m not shy! I’ve dabbled with a few different ad networks over the last 7 or 8 months and will share my (admittedly naive) thoughts below.
I should mention, before starting, that I have no hopes of actually making money (profit) via the ads you’ll see here. I do have a hope, however, of at least defraying hosting and related costs. At my level of traffic, hosting isn’t all that expensive… but if ads can help pay the yearly hit — without annoying visitors — then I’m game to try.
Referrals and Ads
Flair and Sparklies
