You may have noticed a few “less-than-subtle” changes to my blog over the past couple of months, so I thought I’d explain what that’s all about. When I returned from my round-the-world trip, I discovered the software that drives my blog (WordPress) had a new version available, so I downloaded and installed it. That’s when the “look” of my blog changed slightly, with the ‘Photo’ and ‘About’ tabs at the top rather than on the right hand side.
More importantly, this new version allows me to use something called ‘tags’ – a list of them is shown down the right hand side of my blog and beneath each individual article. Now, every article I write allows me to associate it with keywords (tags) that best describe the article. For example, the other day when I wrote about the new electronic readers that are coming on the market, I associated the article with keywords like e-ink, e-paper, and technology. So what does that all mean? Hopefully, it means more readership for my blog. Now, when someone Googles the word e-ink, my blog could be one of the sites that is returned because the search engine “reads” the tags and “sees” that the article is about e-ink.
Then, in anticipation of attracting more readers, I signed up with Google AdSense to display ads on the blog. Essentially, businesses who want to advertise on the internet sign up with Google, which pairs them with appropriate websites and blogs that allow advertising on their site. For example, if a company that manufactures widgets signs up, Google displays the company’s ads on blogs and websites that discuss widgets. How does Google know which blog to pair with their advertisers? They “read” the blog electronically. Initially that created a problem in my case, because Google thought my blog was about donuts, so all the ads that appeared were for donut franchises, Dunkin’ Donuts, and donut makers. But after a lot of research and a little tweaking I figured out how to exclude many of the donut ads, so now the ads that appear are (mostly) appropriate for the subject of each blog (although donut ads do still appear occasionally). I earn income any time a reader clicks on one of these ads. It’s never going to make me rich (I’ve earned $3.61 over the past two weeks), but Google AdSense might earn enough to pay for my web site hosting each month and every little bit helps.
The next step was signing up to become an affiliate with Amazon.com. If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you already know that I am fascinated by new technology. Now, when I write about new technology or electronic gizmos, I can link to those items on the Amazon.com website. Stay tuned, because over the next few days I’m going to tell you about just such an item – the amazing new pentop computer.
So, that’s what’s up with all the changes on my blog. As they say, there’s nothing so constant as change.
