Ads on a WordPress Blog

A friend recently asked me if I was making a lot of money from the advertising on my blog. He mentioned the fact that there were ads for a variety of products from toothpaste to flights appearing at the bottom of my posts. He sent me a screen grab of the blog, and there were all these commercial ads. I was surprised, and more than a little troubled. It was particularly confusing, because when I looked at my blog on my computer, I couldn’t see the ads.

It took a check of the small print to find out what was going on.

At WordPress.com, we sometimes display advertisements on your blog to help pay the bills. This keeps free features free!

We only run them in limited places, and we do not show ads to logged-in readers, which means only a very small percentage of your page views will actually contain ads.

As I was logged into WordPress it never showed me the ads, and I was unaware anyone else could see them. I don’t want other people’s ads on my blog so I’ve paid for an upgrade that stops these ads appearing.

I do have affiliate links on the blog. If I mention a product I will usually put a link to where you can buy it on Amazon. This is where I do most of my shopping, it’s not intrusive, and I receive about 4% on purchases if a reader visits Amazon through my website. It’s only a few dollars each year, but I won’t scoff at a free book or DVD once in a while . On rare occasions I also put links to B&H Photo, Video, and Pro Audio. They are a great camera store based in New York City that ships internationally. For somethings, such as the fantastic but expensive Hanhemule Photo Rag Pearl paper I print with, it is still cheaper to buy in the States and ship to Japan. B&H likewise has an affiliates program which I am a member of.

So from now on the blog shall be ad free, but if you’d like lend a hand by purchasing items through the following websites that would be fantastic.