When I started up mou.me.uk, it was never intended to be anything other than a portfolio. Having fell in love with WordPress (which has since become the backbone of most of my development work), it made sense that seeing as the blog was there I may as well use it.

Never in a million years would I have imagined that anything I wrote would actually draw in visitors – only a few hundred a day, but 6 months ago just a few a day would have put a smile on my face. As a result, my bandwidth is taking a serious battering and actually starting to cost me more than I budgeted for! So, Ive decided to experiment with a couple of Adsense ads on a couple of the most viewed articles to see if I can earn enough to chip towards the hosting costs (its unlikely I will, but hey, like I said – its an experiment!). I’m relatively new to web advertising, and aside from a few bits of common sense I’m still trying to get my head round what works and what doesn’t.

But I remembered back to a blog post I read from Donncha (one of the lead developers for the WordPress MU project) and it got me thinking. People that read your site regularly shouldnt be subject to it – as Donccha puts it, “Friends don’t let friends see ads”. These guys are the reason I’m motivated enough to blog anything, so the keeping Google ads out of their face is as good as a loyalty bonus. Likewise, if you leave a comment, you’ve taken the time to talk to me, the least I can do is not wave a Google banner in your face while I’m replying!

I can also thank the influx of visitors as the main reason behind my motivation to get over the fact my last project never left the development server, and get back into what gets me out of bed in the morning – web development. Its the key reason Ive sat down recently and brainstormed a few potential projects for the future – more on this another time.

And so, the long and short is, you may see a couple of ads on a couple of select articles. And even then if you read more than 5 of my posts, come in any way OTHER than a search engine, leave me a comment or read the article within the first 30 20 (oops) days of publishing – you won’t see them at all. Can’t say fairer than that eh?

Oh, and credit where its due to the WordPress “Who See’s Ads” plugin. After getting some background on a few different ad management plugins, this was the most flexible and the easiest to use. Although thats the problem with using WordPress – its hard to justify programming anything when someone else has already done a top notch job! Still, if thats the only thing I can find to complain about, things are good! 😉