While procrastinating this afternoon, I stopped by Bitch Ph.D., a blog I look at once in a while just to see what sort of thing she and her colleagues are writing about. I often agree, I often don’t, and I often think that she’s sharing, ah, a bit too much information of the sort that fuels the fires of the Ivan Tribbles of the world.
Anyway, I noticed that she’s sporting a new look on her blog and that includes blog ads on the far right column. Now, I like money as much as the next person (even though a lot of academic-types would prefer to not admit this), and I’ve wondered about the idea of putting up ads on this site. I honestly have no idea how much money I could make off of it, but if I were to clear say $50 a year for leasing the space, that would pay my annual icdsoft bill.
The problem though, as I think is evident with Bitch Ph. D.’s site, is it appears that you have little control of the ads themselves. At least I think that’s the case. For example, on Bitch Ph. D.’s site (at least when I checked it now), there were two ads, one urging people to sign an electronic petition to approve John Robert’s nomination to the Supreme Court and the other for a pro-life group, that seem to me to be at odds with the sort of ideas that are being promoted in the content of the site.
I have no idea how these ads came to be on this site; maybe it is based on sites that bubble up in Google’s rankings for searches on “John Roberts” or “Pro-Life.” And I have no idea how the Bitch Ph. D. crowd feels about these ads (ironic? money is money? who knows?). But if blog ads means that you give up a space on your site to advertise damn near anything, then I think I’ll keep paying the bills myself.