You may have noticed (hopefully not) that I’ve added an advert into my blogs header area. Currently, this is an advert for Studiopress themes [they make the Genesis themes that I have been customising]. I have experimented a lot with adverts over time. Standard theme (pour one out) had built in adverts and I added some affiliate ads. Then I tried the Google Adsense a bit, especially when the Google Adsense plugin came out. (The Google Adsense plugin is super easy to use. But Google Adsense is only worth it if you get hundred of thousands of views and Google ads can be poor taste. Even when you think you have blocked every type of dubious content…something sneaks through.) I also used Buysellads on MacDaily [pour another one out] and made a little bit of money of them (just enough to cover the running costs, but not much more). They were all fun experiments but nothing really lead to much and generally just made the site worst.
However, with my new site design when I have placed content first and foremost (the text is deliberately larger to make it easier to read, there is no sidebar so there are few distractions) I thought that it could make sense to utilise the header bar space for a classy advert. Something which I think is good quality and useful and not cheesy, horrible or spammy.
So I’m trying it out with an affiliate banner for Studiopress themes. Just for the record, Studiopress themes are high quality themes built on the Genesis framework (and include the Genesis framework) from the people behind copyblogger (now rainmaker media). They are well designed but even more importantly (for me) super easy to customise.
The future of adverts on this site?
Even if no one clicks on it, I feel good about recommending it. In fact, here is a link to the Studiopress site with no affiliate link or anything. Maybe I’ll drop the link in a few weeks (especially if I start to feel slimy about it). I have at least one other advert I could run up there (for social warfare sharing plugins) so you might see something else up there at some point, in fact, if you’d like to advertise something up there, just contact me. I definitely won’t advertise any old rubbish, but if it is something good which I use and value, then I’ll advertise it.
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