My Blog Is Now Monetized!

Me mowing my lawn July 7, 2008. I have since progressed to a riding tractor to mow my almost one acre of lawn. I have no photos of that.....yet.

By now my regular blog followers have noticed that my blog is now monetized. Yes, ads are on my blog!

Me, one who hates ads has succumbed to the almighty dollar. 

Well, one thing I have to say is that Google (the company behind Blogger.com) has done a nice job of placing the ads. Also, the ads are appropriate for my blog, the senior citizen that I am. Good job Blogger!

Now, how much money am I making? Would you be surprised to know that I'm not going to buy that condo in Palm Springs anytime soon? It took me three days to earn $1.07! At this rate I'll be long into my next life before I earn any signifiant money. Oh well, I was always curious how many people read my blog. Now I have an idea. I'm just one grain of sand on the world wide beach of bloggers. 

As the logo says to the right of this post:

"Life Is A Long Lesson In Humility"

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a lawn to mow. I save sixty dollars every time I mow my own lawn*.  

*I can't mow my lawn in very hot and humid weather. I pay my local landscaper Jose Sierra $60 to mow my lawn, which I have mowed once a week. This summer has been particularly brutal with the hot and humid weather. Today the temperature is 72 degrees F and although the humidity is still high (97%) I can manage to mow my lawn myself. I have a very cool John Deere zero degree turning riding mower. An added bonus is I really look butch when I mow my lawn. Always a plus!

Monetizing My Blog

An update on monetizing my blog.

It ain't going to happen. Even though I dislike ads on blogs I had considered monetizing my blog to earn a little extra money. 

Like many people today, in The Convicted Felon's economy, I'm finding my fixed income isn't keeping pace with the ever rising costs of every day living. It's especially noticeable with grocery shopping, although I don't need that much food to keep me going. I have ruled out ever going to restaurants again, probably forever. Besides, what I cook for myself is way better than most if not all restaurant fare I have encountered. I would only eat out again for social purposes. I used to like cooking for people in my home but not anymore. Too much trouble. And it's the other costs of every day living like heating, Internet, electric, lawn maintenance. I can keep up for now but I don't know how much longer. I do have a nest egg which I may have to dig into eventually. That's why I have a nest egg but I would prefer to keep that nest egg there....just in case.

When Bill was alive his modest Social Security income contributed to the household expenses here at Casa Tipton-Kelly. Also, my part-time job at the hotel helped with expenses, especially my quarterly trips with Pat. Those two sources of income are gone as are my quarterly trips with Pat. Which is just as well because of my mobility problems now. 

I broke down my wall of resistance to monetizing my blog when I realized there was a possibility of adding to my household income by doing something which I like to do, write. And after twenty years of blogging, surely I developed a following which I hadn't kept track of. 

So a couple of months ago I submitted my request to AdSense, Google's ad platform. I was expecting immediate reaction and approval but I was wrong. When they finally did get around to getting back to me I was told I have "little content." Well, that flabbergasted me. I naively thought my blogs had "content". Here we are back to my high school English class days when my essays were criticized mercilessly and little if any encouragement was offered. Actually no encouragement was offered which is why I came to dislike English class and it's heavy emphasis on reading Shakespeare. Is there anything more BORING than reading Shakespeare? Maybe "The Mill on the Floss" by George Eliot, which was my big project. I never did finish reading that boring book. I think I still have that book!

So folks this is good news and bad news. Probably more good news because for those of you who have been following my blog all these years (I started in 2005), it looks like my blog will continue to be ad-free. In the meantime I'll look for another source of income but my options are limited. I can sell just so many vintage jeans on eBay. My other option is to cut back and hopefully The Convicted Felon with his tariffs won't affect my expenditures that much. I don't buy toys from China.