The Evils of Advertising and Merch (Site Update)

Hey-lo!

So here’s the grip: I’m putting ads on the site.

I hate ads. In fact, I think that advertising in general is right up there with the genocide, torture, and Michael Bay movies. If there were another way of swinging this, I’d be all for it.

This is, unfortunately, a necessary evil. As of right now, I’m running adsense units on the site and looking for new ways to swing things.

It’s my hope that with a bit of work, I can host videos without those annoying in-video ads on this site and earn enough money to keep the site running without taking cash out of my pocket. I’m not looking to get rich off the site or turn blogging into my full time job. I think that puts too much strain and priority on advertising and makes the whole mess more annoying to everyone involved.

I AM looking into a service that allows bidding on adspace, instead of the usual google-generated stupidity that nets me five pieces of lint and a slap in the mouth.

I also plan on having some merch put together, in the form of stickers, T-shirts, and maybe some DVDs of my videos for people to buy if they want. I realize that’s a bit arrogant, so I’m not going to have more than a few items that are related to me. Instead, they will focus on my abilities as a designer and graphics dude and include inside jokes and graphics from this blog and videos. Of course, there might be the few basic “text on a shirt” kind of bits. Hard to ignore them, since they are easy as hell to make.

But I’m going to put designs to a vote by YOU guys, so that stuff that isn’t good gets the axe and things that pass can get feedback for tweakage.

The ads will never be pop-ups, or annoying “You’ve won a free ipod nano/laptop” kinds if I have my way. Adsense will have to be the bit for now, but that may not last long.

So please give me your thoughts on this whole arrangement. I can’t say that comments telling me to keep the site ad-free will be taken seriously without a suggestion on how to make money to pay the server bills. Suggestions are completely welcome and kind of needed at the moment.

 Loading ...

Project Wonderful – Your ad here, right now, for as low as $0.00