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| [Ben]: | Google AdSense | Discuss This [3 comments so far] View Comments | I get a lot of traffic through my pictures of the day archive. Google and Yahoo both have many of my images indexed and for the most part I don't see those viewers at all. They show up in my logs as having pulled down this image or that, just sucking bandwidth and cycles and not much else. That's fine, that's what a public internet site is all about. Still, my server isn't high-end - it's an old IBM Netfinity 5000 box with shamefully slow processor that used to be owned by O.K.F.C. in Grand Rapids Michigan (still has the "Property of" sticker on it). About the only thing that is up-to-date is the RAID array.
A lot of you who have accounts here hit the front page once or twice a day, and if there's something new you log in. Most of you are friends and have been around here for years. You're my real audience and I really, really don't want to drive you away.
The point of all this is that I'm going to try to experiment with Google's AdSense program. Google's ads are pretty clean, as far as ads go, and have a better vetting process than other places out there. Plus, considering that Google is responsible for the majority of the incoming traffic, I figure I'll try to get a little money out of them whilst I'm at it. I'm sure it won't be much, but hopefully it'll add up enough to let me slowly upgrade my machine. First thing I need to give it is more certified memory. At some point I'd like to add a redundant power supply, a redundant network card and - depending on what kind of revenue I get from the program, maybe even look into a new server machine altogether. But that's in the extreme long-term.
For those of you militantly against the idea, let me know or download the CustomizeGoogle Firefox extension to blow away the ads entirely. I won't be offended. The forum itself will remain ad free for the forseeable future. I may also add a Google search bar to the public sections of the site. That might help if you're looking for an image.
This is going to be a trial period. If it is successful, it may provide me with the incentive I need to put more work and time into the site. We'll see. |
| 2006-02-06
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