Chica - Absolutely. I have seen some very OVERdone sites when it comes to advertising and would NEVER want my site to look like that!!!! Thanks for visiting and for your kind comments about my blog.

StillKindaStuffy - I have been chuckling on and off all day about your user name. I’m really thinking not so much “paid to blog” as “using my blog as a way to earn a little bit of pocket money” (with the thought that *maybe* it could actually be a small income one day). I’ve never had a page on digg and possibly never will so I’m not sure that will be too much of a problem! But the focus is something I’m aware of and have a few concerns about whether it will change anything. Problem is, it’s hard to know until you try it.

Emma - yeah, I realise I’m covering old ground here but I also have a lot of new readers so wanted to be sure before I went ahead and upset anyone. I appreciate you taking the time to put your opinion on record here.

I’ve offered my opinion before so hope you don’t mind a repeat lol. I hope you do well with this and make some income from it, you deserve to be paid for your time and ability. For me, the issue of ads on blogs is not clear-cut… I do tend to hold a bias that monetised blogs generally have a somewhat different and less personal ‘flavour’ (for want of a better word) but some are still worth my time to read regardless. I imagine yours will fall into that category, although as I mentioned before, I do think the money aspect is likely to have some effect. I guess it’s how much effect that determines whether I continue to enjoy a particular blog (but tbh I think I’d always check in sometimes regardless, just to see how you’re doing).

All in all, good luck with it.

Emma.

Desertqueen - I appreciate your support and your faith in me.

Stillkindastuffy - After I picked myself up off the floor from laughing over your username I started bouncing with glee over the fact that you left me a comment!!!! Oooohhh. A PAID author weighing in on the discussion. It’s an excellent point and one I have pondered on myself. My concern about this no longer being “fun” but a “job”. Of course, I doubt I’d ever earn enough to REALLY consider this a job - but you never know………. If I earn a few $$ can I still call myself a “professional writer”??????? Don’t worry, I have to learnt FTP next…..*&%$@…….. Who’d have ever thunk little Lightening would contemplate earning money from anything COMPUTER related?????

BizBeacon - thank you for your input. I agree that a few private ads that related to content and came from places that I could fully endorse would be the ideal and is what I am working towards. I think though I need to do a bit more learning about the value of advertising on my blog so I can set realistic expectations before I start approaching companies directly. It is definitely something that I would like to do in the future though. I also need to build up some more techie skills first (see my FTP comment above) so that I can implement stuff more complex than “stick this code in a widget box for your sidebar”

Frogdancer - I think we need to look into what’s going on with your username now that you’re on wordpress. Otherwise your private email is going to be spread all over. Load times is something I’m concerned about too and something that I will be keeping an eye on (so let me know if things slow down much). Do you use firefox? I’m finding that helps. I’m going to write a post about it on lightening’s blogworld soon.

I never look at ads on other people’s blogs anyway… who’s got the time?… and when you’re on bloglines it’s not an issue anyway, unless you want to add a comment. Some people’s blogs take an age to upload, and maybe it’s because of the ads. I stay away from them. One person’s blog has frozen my computer 3 times because of all the content on the page. Or maybe I mean ‘constipated’ instead of frozen. Either way, nothing was moving, so now I read her but I’m not going back to comment until I’m back at work.

I know what you mean about blogging costing you timer and $$. I’ve decided to take on another tutoring student to make up the $$$. Trouble is, it doesn’t have the symmetry of your idea of making the $$ back from the blog you spent it on in the first place. As you can see, I’m a bit all over the place with it. Personally, for me I’d say no. For you… obviously it’s your space and you can do what you want. You can paint it pink all over if that’s what you want to do. (Oh, wait, you’ve already done that…) I guess the buzzword here is to be discreet about it. Most of us ignore the ads anyway.