Update: As of 6/23/2008 I have removed the Google ads.  I learned the things that I set out to learn from using them.  There was no noticeable financial gain from using them, so I just didn’t both when I updated the site.

I made a decision this week to add Google ads to the blog. There are a couple reasons for doing this. The most obvious was to monetize my efforts in writing with a step that is very easy to implement and maintain. I wanted something that wasn’t going to take a lot of time now or in the future.

The second reason is to have some first hand experience using the Google AdWords interface. It’s been several years since I’ve actively used it. Google traditionally creates fairly intuitive UI’s with clean design. Looking at things that are simple and effective is great inspiration for my own design.

I also want to be able to give my customers information about their options in monetizing their own sites. Occasionally I’ll talk with someone who has been lead to believe that doing a little advertising on their site will bring in an unrealistic amount of income based on their quantity and quality of traffic. Rather than try to give them an everybody-in-the-web-industry-knows explanation of why that’s not going to work. I’d rather be able to provide some approximations based on my own traffic and ad revenue of what they might be able to expect.

As a side note, it also gave me the opportunity to check out a WordPress plugin called AdSense Deluxe. I love that you don’t have to wade through a lot of confusing instructions and options to get up and running. I’m also really impressed with the option to reward the author. Click a checkbox and 5% of your ad impressions will generate revenue for the author of the plugin. It’s easy and simple. I’m only too happy for the author to receive some compensation for his work if he’s going to make it so effortless on my part, a lesson to developers everywhere.

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