I had an email today which suggested I should start advertising on my C# article pages. I’ve considered this in the past without coming to any conclusions. I would certainly plump for Google AdSense on the grounds that it’s fairly non-invasive. I just can’t decide whether or not it’s a good idea.
Pros:
- I get money for things which do actually take a fair amount of time to write.
Cons:
- I’d need to work out what the tax implications are (particularly in terms of being in the UK when Google is in the US). I don’t currently fill in a tax return, although I’ll have to next year anyway…
- People might get annoyed with the ads and not want to read the articles.
- People might feel that when I link to an article either here or in newsgroups, that I’m just doing so to get more money.
That last point really worries me – but maybe I’m being paranoid. So, what do you think – should I give it a try, or would it “spoil” the articles?
Jon Skeet's coding blog 
Hey, you did the work, you should get paid, right?
Besides – Google ads are very non-intrusive. I would say "go for it".
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If the revenue from that ads would provide you incentive to more frequently write quality articles, I think you should go for it. On the other hand, if the money really doesn’t matter to you or if the tax situation is so cumbersome as to prevent you from writing an article that you otherwise would, don’t bother.
Most likely, the ads wouldn’t bother me.
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Thanks for the comments folks (and others who couldn’t get the human proof to work – sorry about that). Google ads are now on all the "main" C# pages and the threading pages. I haven’t put them onto the miscutil or ebcdic pages yet – I may do that later.
Currently they don’t seem to want to give me any actual adverts, but hopefully that’ll sort itself out soon…
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IMO, the ads you’ve put up are fine.
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The ads look good to me.
Some ad providers are so far over the top that it seems as if they’re purposely trying to annoy and turn away viewers. Like a billboard with an extendable robotic arm that pokes passers-by in the eye. Odd strategy.
Google does a great job with this, though, and it makes all the difference.
(I’m less fond of your captcha, though – it almost has me disbelieving my humanity)
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Jon:
I tried doing the same and ran into a problem, we were having troubles with the MSMVPS server at the time and each time google checked out my site (or attempted to), the site was down. Hopefully this won’t be an issue for you and yes, I think it’s a great idea and since your stuff rocks, you’ll probably make a few bucks off of it.
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