Make Money from Ads on Wordpress.com?

[dburk]

Hi Warriors,

I just noticed this on the Wordpress.com Features page:

Advertising

To support the service we may occasionally show Google text ads on your blog, however we do this very rarely. You can remove ads from your blog for a low yearly fee. In the future you’ll be able to show your own ads and make money from your blog.

I thinking about beefing up the traffic to my Wordpress.com blogs to hit the ground running when this new feature launches. Has anyone heard any details or timelines for this money making opportunity?

[paulgl]

I've seen that message for a while.
Since all my wordpress blogs are hosted by my own host, I can already
display my own ads and don't show theirs.

I think what they are referring to, is just 'allowing' you to put adsense
on your free (wordpress hosted) wordpress blogs, similar to blogspot.

If wordpress allows free users to put adsense on their blogs, google
will effectively own the advertising space on the blogging world.

If I was thinking about blogging and getting ad revenue, I would get a paid
(hosted) wordpress account or the blogspot one.

Paul

[dburk]

Hi Paul,

I do have plenty of hosted Wordpress blogs, but I also have a collection of Wordpress.com free blogs that I currently use to help drive targeted traffic to websites I'm promoting. It would be nice if I could make a little money from ads on those sites, the same as I do on Blogger.com.

The ad revenue has been one big advantage Blogger.com has had over Wordpress.com, with the addition of this new feature I think Wordpress.com may become my favorite web 2.0 publishing site.

I'm just curious if anyone has heard any specifics about their program or timeline for implementing?

[paulgl]

I had a couple of wordpress hosted ones as well, but switched them
over to blogspot because of the settings that a free member
gets. I think I first noticed that message a couple of weeks ago.
When I first saw the message, my first thought was, "Yeah, right."
I can't say what it would do to their bottom line. No incentive to
pay them money to host.

I'm now thinking maybe they will have their own ad network and
allow a sharing of the ad revenue. Probably not like adsense, but
something in-house like facebook or something.

Partnering with google makes sense, and at the same time, does not
make sense. Why make wordpress another blogspot, right? You would
be giving in to your competitor.

Your post has me thinking now of all sorts of scenarios that they must
be mulling around. I think wordpress is thinking how to compete with
blogspot. Maybe even partnering with yahoo or something.

I still say, "yeah right," because it would be a nightmare to compete
with adsense and blogspot with a program that you need to build from
the ground up. IMHO, a trade off is more likely. That is, they get to put
a banner on top of your blog, you get the rest of the space for whatever
you want. That way there is no program for them to come up with, and
they monetize it. And if you pay the hosting fee, no banner ad.

Granted, you can have your own text and image ads in your posts, etc.
on wordpress nonhosted, but that's not where the "easy" money is, is it?

Paul