You may have noticed The The Pontificators’ main page and search results page have ad banners along the right hand side now. W00t! We have sold out! At least we would, if anyone was buying. The chain of reasoning behind the ads goes something like this:
- The Pontificators was formed because it seemed that this little family cluster had a high percentage of creative people — writers, poets, songwriters and artists — who would benefit from a forum for their work. And instead of an individual forum (which some of us have already done elsewhere), a shared forum would be great because we could pool our creative output into a common stew of goodness, which would help keep the content fresh.
- Fresh for whom, you might ask? For our millio — er, hundre — uh, possible dozen readers. We always assumed our stuff was worth reading, and that eventually we would draw an audience. Pass the purple crayon, I’ll draw us one now… (scritch scritch)
- When and if we get more readers, having some targeted advertising would help defray the costs of hosting the site, and maybe buy an annual bucket of chicken for the family picnic.
In other words:
Phase 1: Start thepontificators.com
Phase 2: ???
Phase 3: Profit!!!
So I hooked up with Google’s Adsense program, along with Powell’s Books and Emusic.com. Go over there right now and click all those ads, willya? Thanks.
Adsense is kinda cool, because Google somehow monitors page content and serves ads related to what is on the same page. And (full disclosure) every time someone clicks on one of those ads The Pontificators get a little love, anywhere from 10 or 20 cents to over a buck. Heck, if you sign up for an Emusic.com free trial, we get *SIX* bucks. So do that now too please. Operators are standing by.
So the first day or so that the Google ads were up, there was an ad for MyJewishLearning.com. Sign up for free Jewish recipes in your email. So I clicked on it. I figured, hey, win-win-win. I like any kind of food; I like Jewish food, what I know of it; and I’m interested in all things Jewish from a cultural and historical perspective. PLUS I get some $love$ for my click.
Here is my report: MyJewishLearning.com is pretty cool. I get a couple emails a week; they’re not spam-bombing me. I have clicked through to the main site and it’s nicely put together. Of the skillion pages on the intarweb, I’m glad I learned about this one. They even have an all-things-Jewish-for-Dummies series of flash videos called Tod and God. In Episode 3, God, a redheaded female genie DJ, tells Tod how and why to hang a mezuzah. What could be more awesome?
In other news, I didn’t get my nickel. I don’t know why. Maybe Google somehow knew I was the owner of the page, and won’t pay me for my own clicks, the nefarious bastards.
You might have noticed that I have mentioned MyJewishLearning.com a half dozen times, but haven’t linked it. That’s because I’m hoping all these mentions of the site and other Jewish things will make the link come up OVER THERE >>>>> (pointing to Google AdSense).
Because if you click it there, we get some love. And everybody needs love, baby.
