My website has always been a labor of love. I originally started it when I was about 14 years old in 1992 as a way of showing the world my treehouse. It then became a great way to share information about things I thought were interesting – mainly programming. My interests grew, and I started to document my hobbies, like unicycling, photography, woodworking and metalworking/machining. For a long time I avoided adding ads to my website. I really dislike intrusive ads, and I personally run adblocker software to get rid of them. 

Of course, there are costs to my site. Hosting my website isn’t free; it costs $120/year on Dreamhost, plus around $45/year for three domain names that point to it. I spent tons of time writing posts and sharing information; my time is pretty valuable, and I don’t get any compensation for doing this, but I enjoy sharing.

So, a few years ago I added a single Google ad to my sidebar, using AdSense. Here are stats from the previous year; it brought in a whopping $22.77. 

It is better than nothing, and the ad wasn’t too intrusive.

About a year or so ago, I also started including Amazon referral links. The basic concept is simple: people buy stuff through the link, and I get a small portion as payment. It doesn’t cost the customer more than it normally would, and I will only recommend or link to things I think are useful. I haven’t made a single penny from this endeavor, but it might payoff at some point.

Roll around to October 2018 and I redesigned my website’s look and feel. I took the time to make it work properly on mobile devices, but more importantly I am attempting to incorporate more ads so I can boost my own revenue. Individual posts have three ads; two square ones incorporated into my right hand sidebar, and one larger bottom ad. I’m hoping to get 3x the revenue from this design change. I’m sorry to have to do it, and those who don’t like it can use an AdBlocker to remove the ads.

I’m hoping my website provides some sort of value for the internet, and advertising is the way I can keep the content free. 

Do me a simple favor: click on one of the ads to help my revenue ;)