Options for adding Advertising to a Blog

Recently I was saying I want to do some redesign and cleanup on Comparative Geeks. A major reason why is that we are considering doing this sort of work is because we are thinking about taking our now year-old blog and making it more our own. Registering a real, paid domain. Adding advertising to make a little money from the blog – maybe enough to cover the domain cost? Or how about all the various media that we consume to talk about on the blog?

So I am going to consider some of the things we are going through in our consideration process, for moving towards making a little money with the blog. There are other, major considerations – such as, blogging consistently, and having content, and readers, and commenters. Building a community, and delivering consistently. I’d like to think we at least have the solid start to this. I talked about a lot of what we’ve done with community building recently as well.

So I have done some research, and it’s told me that I likely don’t have good answers for you. So instead, I have links and my thoughts, on adding advertising to a blog.

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Publicize – Results from my First Test

So, as I mentioned yesterday, I was testing out Publicize on multiple channels. I think the test was pretty successful. The Twitter feed here on the site does not show the post to Twitter, as advertised – which is good, because otherwise you would see the post, with a Tweet next to it telling you the post was there. As I’ve mentioned before, Twitter is less of a reader and more of… something else. One of its better uses being perhaps its ability to feed into other things, like the WordPress sidebar, or Facebook. More on that below.

I ran into one snag: When shared on Tumblr, the blog post then kicked in the automatic share there – effectively, Tumblr’s version of Publicize. This resulted in two Tweets. The one from Tumblr also ended up in the sidebar here on the blog. It looks like my Facebook had been logged out on Tumblr, otherwise I imagine it would have ended up there twice as well. This was easily solved – I have turned off these automatic shares on Tumblr, but am still linked in where I should be able to share when I want to from within Tumblr.

From here, I have some further thoughts on Publicize… check out what I’m thinking, and then maybe let me know your experiences with it! (Also, I have just learned how to embed a tweet: http://en.support.wordpress.com/twitter/twitter-embeds/…)

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Internship: Done! Now what?

Hello dear readers!

I have completed my Internship in Library Science, and am pretty proud of the final product. I built the base of a virtual collection of materials about the Treadwell Mines here in the Juneau area, and it now looks pretty excellent. You’re welcome to check it out and give me feedback in the comments below!

http://treadwellsociety.com/home/

Meanwhile, that means I am trying to get back to the rest of everything in my life, because I am now done with my Master’s in Library and Information Science! So I have some things I want to talk about, things I want to explore, so let me lay out some of what’s on my mind! Read more of this post

Standing in a room shouting: Rethinking Twitter

Meta! A Tweet embedded in a tweet as a blog post about a blog post.

Meta! A Tweet embedded in a tweet as a blog post about a blog post.

The other day, we were talking about social media, and especially about Twitter. And from my experience with Twitter so far, I remarked that Twitter is a lot like a bunch of people standing in a room shouting.

It’s a marketing tool, I suppose. I certainly use it that way, like most blogs, and like my professor recommended: tweet each of your blog posts. But the more people you follow, the more that reading Twitter is an insurmountable task. I looked away from Twitter while writing these first two short paragraphs: 7 new tweets.

I am finding that Twitter is not particularly a good place or way to read what people are writing and putting out there. Which begs the question, how should tweets be read?

What good does Twitter do us?

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Office Memo to the new Online Sales Team

TO: Lake Onondaga Vineyard Online Sales Team

FROM: David Cox, Lead Blogger

CC: Ruth Smith, CEO

DATE: August 12, 2012

SUBJECT: Online Ad and Sponsorship Opportunities

As per your request, I have collected five ideas for Advertising and Sponsorship opportunities online. Read more of this post