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users are probably expecting a WordPress blog. WordPress and the community might well have a
legitimate interest in keeping the associated look and feel relatively ad free.
The gray area seems to be for those of us who have paid for a custom domain name. Such a blog
seems more “mine,” from the blog owner's perspective, and the blog's character might be such
that ads would be more or less appropriate. Yet ads are still banned.
To be fair to Automattic, ads on blogs are generally not very lucrative. Most blogs don't get much
traffic, and the mood inspired by most blogs seems to be more reflective rather than actively com-
mercial. So, for most blogs, allowing ads might cause a lot of damage to the user experience with-
out generating much revenue.
Even if you were to do relatively well with your advertising, it takes a lot for the money to add up
to much. You might get 5 cents, for example, every time a user clicks a Google AdSense ad on your
site. If your click-through rate on the ads were as high as 5%, which is considered very good
indeed, your average payment would be a quarter of a penny per pageview on your blog. To make
$10 a month, you'd need 4,000 pageviews a month—more than 100 per day. To make $1,000 a
month, you'd need 400,000 pageviews per month.
Still, the prospect of at least paying for a morning cup of coffee from blogging profits entices many
people to ask Automattic for help on the advertising front. The management continues to tease us
with hints that AdSense ads, or at least Amazon partner program links, might be available soon;
but as of this writing, nothing. Until then, this topic seeks to make it as easy as humanly possible
for you to upgrade to using the WordPress software and adding plug-ins and custom code, includ-
ing revenue-generating options, yourself.
Who Is WordPress For?
If you're still deciding whether to use WordPress for your current and future blogging needs, you'll
want to know who it's best suited for. If you've already committed to it for now, you'll still want to
know this so you can get the most out of WordPress, and decide how long to stick with it.
Blogger as a Worthy Alternative
Let's begin by pointing out that there is one type of user for whom WordPress might not be the
very best option: those who put an absolute priority on simplicity and are not very interested in
growing their blog or their blog's impact over time.
If this describes you, a couple of other platforms besides
WordPress are worth considering. The main competitor to
WordPress among beginning bloggers is Blogger, now owned by
Google. Blogger is all about making blogging dead easy, launching
beginners with what is literally a 1, 2, 3 approach to getting a blog
going (see Figure 1.2).
tip
WordPress makes it easy to
import blogs from several com-
peting platforms, including
Blogger.
