Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Ads Paying Better ThanExpected

So some of you (who don't use AdBlocker or another program to block ads on websites) may have noticed I added advertisements to my blog this summer.

I had mixed feelings, mostly because I so appreciate the many people and organizations who don't fill their sites with advertisements (especially the pesky pop-up and pop-under ones!). I've even been known to contribute to ad-free sites just so they can afford to stay ad-free.

But a good friend added advertisements to her blog, and my dad strongly encouraged me to do so with mine. He pointed out that I used to get paid a lot to write, and perhaps my blogging would bring me in a little revenue that I otherwise wouldn't be earning.

So I finally got around to doing so. And the sky didn't fall in. But the click-throughs (clicking on ads) hasn't been huge and that's no big deal. Heck, if my friend Karli hadn't mentioned she added ads, I wouldn't have known it because I was using AdBlocker at the time. (I've stopped since I decided it was hypocritical to block ads while viewing other sites but to put ads on my own and hope everyone else wasn't blocking them.)

Then the weirdest thing happened. I actually got a call from a research company wanting to know if I would be interested in participating in a panel. Well, sure. I love doing focus groups, although I haven't done that many. I don't know yet if I've made it through the screening, and if I do, I won't be able to tell y'all what it was all about because you sign a confidentiality agreement when you participate in these things. But the only reason they were even interested in me in the first place is because I'm a blogger who had ads on her site.

Wild, isn't it?