Why You Shouldn’t Ignore My Ads

You may have noticed the ad block in the sidebar here. I think that has been pretty consistent since the beginning. What you may not realize is that all the ads on my site are actual endorsements. Wait…let’s back up…

On most blogs, you will probably find contextual advertising. Blocks of advertising that try to market things to you based on what the blogger has written about. The blogger makes money when people click these advertisements. The amount of traffic they bring to their blog has a direct effect on how much income they can generate.

I started to go with this standard approach, but something bothered me. I think of my blog as an extension of myself. I don’t like to promote or advertise people or companies or anything that I don’t actually believe in (at least a little, anyway). So, I ripped out the ads I had and started thinking of other ways to monetize my blog. I have to pay for it somehow, right?

What I ended up doing was selecting a few things that I actually benefit from. These are products and services that I use to increase the quality of my life. You may see programs I use to make money, products I use for my health and nutrition, and stuff that I just think is cool.

In any case, you can think of the advertising here as me giving you a direct referral. Don’t even think of them as ads. Let’s look at them as little windows into my life in addition to what you can learn from the actual content I write.

So, shake of the ad-blindness. I have taken time to promote things that have been useful to me, because I figure you may benefit as well. This is not a demand, just a little heads-up.