Social Justice Corner
When I decided to look into putting ads on the blog, I didn’t realize that WP.com has a policy against ads. Affiliate links are okay as long as the purpose of the site isn’t to drive traffic tot he affiliate links. But ads appear to be right out unless you have a VIP account. This may change in the near future, but for now there shall be no outside ads.
Since I’m linking the 3 column layout and I’ll have space for something over on the left, I came up with a different idea. The Social Justice Corner. Every month I will pick a social justice issue I sympathize with and put up a graphic and text about it on the sidebar. Like the Jena Six graphic a few posts down (but smaller). I’ll still blog about these issues whenever I like or they come up, but each month I’ll highlight one.
I love the Social Justice Corner, but no ads is a bummer. You could run your own installation on your own domain, and then you can do whatever the heck you want, bwahaha!
I’ve definitely thought about it, but haven’t done so for a few reasons.
One is that I never know what kind of traffic I’m going to have day to day or month to month. Remember the Barak church post? That got 11,000 hits in one 24 hour period. I shudder to think what would have happened if I’d exceeded my bandwidth or was on a server that wasn’t designed to have that kind of traffic. not expecting such a thing, I wouldn’t have prepared for it.
Last month I got over 32,000 pageviews. I’d have to figure out if buying a hosting option that could handle the hits and also give me enough base transfer allowance would negate the money ads would bring in.
Plus, I don’t know what would happen if I moved the blog to a different URL in terms of visitors and googlejuice. When I moved from blogger, I was able to change the template in such a way that it showed th new address on all pages. I don’t know that I could do something like that here or if they would frown on me doing such. Even if I could, it would take a while for Google to index the new pages and drive people there instead of here.
I probably wouldn’t have any trouble transferring database info to a new wordpress installation, but it might be a pain in my butt.
I’m still holding out for the possibility that WP.com will allow us to have ads if we buy an upgrade for such. I sent feedback on the issue and hopefully they will listen to me. I can’t be the only one who would like to include just one or two tasteful ads on the sidebar.
I hope they listen to you, then. It really is a win-win for them as well as you.
you can always set up the domain mapping — and leave this as a stripped-down mirror site. Plus, you have a place to go that already has your posts, should you exceed bandwidth.
I don’t have your traffic, but that’s what I’ve been thinking about doing, thought I’d offer it up as a suggestion.
PS: I forgot to add that I like the idea of a Social Justice Corner.