You’ve probably noticed that the side bar now has a Google Adsense ad in it. They finally relented and allowed me to join the program after rejecting two previous applications because my site had naughty words on it. The application took longer this time around so I think someone actually looked at SEB instead of just some bot scanning the page and they decided we’re not really any worse than a lot of other sites that display Google Adsense.
At the moment I’m just using the one ad box in the sidebar and it may contain five or so text links or a single graphic ad and it’ll vary on what it has based on the content of the page it appears on. As I expected I’m already finding a bit of humor in what ads it decides to show on various entries. I believe it’s possible for people who want to advertise on SEB to specifically request their ads appear here if any of the people who have contacted me in the past about advertising here are still interested in doing so. I have no idea how much it would cost or what the process would be, but it’s there if you seriously want to associate yourself with SEB.
I went with Google Adsense because it seems to me to be the least intrusive of the various ad services out there. I’ll probably be putting up a Google Referrer and perhaps a Google Search box at some point as well. I haven’t decided on whether to put the ads into the RSS feeds as some sites are doing, but my inclination is not to do that. I don’t expect to get rich off these ads, but if it helps to offset the cost of hosting a bit until I can land a more lucrative job then I’ll be happy.
Posted on 04/19/2007 at 12:49 PM 
Yeah, their keyword scanning algorithms produce odd combinations, like the time my banner had an ad for a Christian science fiction novel at the same time as a couple of ads for lesbian books. It totally ignores the actual content of your posts, so writing negatively about some alternative health practice still generates ads for it.