I’ve previously reported that wordpress.com did not give bloggers the ability to incorporate AdSense ads into their blogs. I just came across a post in the wordpress.com FAQ that explains the reasoning was to avoid the attack of the spam blogs that free sites like Blogger.com got slammed by. However, they also hinted that we could expect functionality for including ads on wordpress.com in the future:

We currently don’t allow Adsense or other JS ad code on the site, though we probably will in the future. However right now it is keeping sploggers (spam bloggers) from exploiting WP.com and only a few legit users have asked for it.

We’ll announce when you’ll be able to add Adsense or Yahoo or Chitika to your templates.

I look forward to the time when they do allow wordpress.com bloggers to earn a little money for their hard spent hours blogging through adsense, ypn, chitika, and what-have-you. I think that would be a great move for wordpress.com as right now that’s the number one reason I’m not recommending it to bloggers looking for a hosted solution (in which case I’d currently say go with TypePad). There are plenty of legitimate bloggers who would like to be compensated somewhat for their writing.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t think that wordpress.com should continue to take a hard stance against sploggers (spam bloggers) - by all means, nuke their butts! They could make it easier to identify splogs by adding a little button of ‘flag as spam’ in the dashboard for wordpress.com users who are logged in and surfing other wordpress.com blogs. Right now they’re asking users to use the Feedback button to send them a note when someone comes across a splog - but by installing a button on the dashboard that automatically sends that feedback they could make the process of reporting splogs that much easier…(my 2 cents)

c|net posted an article yesterday about how Google indavertantly revealed internal projections. Some of this leaked information should be of great importance (and very disturbing) for professional bloggers:

Google said that “AdSense margins will be squeezed in 2006 and beyond.”

It’s not like Google isn’t already making a ton of money from AdSense - the leak also said that:

Google expected ad revenue to grow from “$6 billion this year to $9.5 billion next year.”

So why does Google need to reduce publisher’s earnings even more?? As it is, earnings paid on AdSense clicks are marginal compared to what the advertisers are paying for those clicks (and what’s going in Google’s pockets).

Looks like bloggers need to take a better look at the Yahoo! Publisher Network (which is still in Beta) because Google is apparently planning on screwing AdSense publishers in the upcoming future.

As just another reason to not upgrade to WordPress 2.0 (or even install it in the first place for now), it’s been widely reported that WP 2.0’s live preview feature causes serious problems for those bloggers who utilize Google’s Adsense to monetize their blogs.

Lunacy Unleashed has a great article on dealing with the adsense problems in Wordpress 2.0 dealing with the adsense problems in Wordpress 2.0, as well as a few workarounds.

In sum, the problem stems from the fact that the live preview will try to fetch your google adsense ads, even if your post has not yet been published. This can be seriously problematic, as when google tries to determine appropriate contextually relevant ads for the page, it receives a 404 (page not found) error because the page does not yet exist. At a minimum, this could result in ads that aren’t relevant to the content on your page. At it’s worst, it could result in your adsense account being suspended, “since Google prohibits displaying ads on 404 pages”.

Not good.

Michael Hampton’s post provides details on how to get around this problem by modifying your template code (which beginning WP users are probably not so comfortable doing..) to put in a check to see if the what’s being displayed is a preview, and if so not display AdSense ads using the following code:

// Paste your AdSense code here //

Unfortunately, this workaround still results in multiple problems, the first one being that there is a known bug with the is_preview() function in WP 2.0. Furthermore, the abovementioned code only works ‘inside the loop’ (see Matt Read’s post for help in understanding “the loop”, as well as the information on The Loop in the wordpress codex)

Michael suggests yet another workaround for those who want to place their ads outside the loop (a common occurence) in the form of the following code:

is_preview): ?>
// Paste your AdSense code here //

HOWEVER, because of the problems with the is_preview function being quirky in WP 2.0, these workarounds don’t always work and in the words of EUGENIUS, “It looks like until is_preview is fixed, don’t put adsense on the WordPress (2.0) blog.”

To me, I find this unbelievably unacceptable -with the given propensity for the majority of bloggers these days to utilize Google AdSense ads on their blogs, I simply cannot understand how it is possible that this was not resolved prior to WordPress 2.0’s being released, and is reason alone not to use it (never mind upgrade your existing installations to WP 2!) And shouldn’t there be a simple checkbox to just turn live preview off for those of us who would rather have AdSense ads working on our site than see a live preview of our post?? How hard would that really be?

If you’re going to put a lot of time into your blog, you might as well make some money off of it - and people are - to the tune of five figures a month!

You can make serious money with your blog by joining Google’s Adsense program, which serves up text ads based on the content on your site. If visitors to your blogs click those google ads, you’ll make some cash which can quickly add up to quite a large amount. People everywhere are now hyping programs on how to quit your job and make money from adsense while working from home. There’s a reason for the hype - making a living from adsense isn’t just a fantasy. People can and do blog for a living.

If you have a blog you can sell advertising on it very easily at blogads.com

You can also use affiliate programs to advertise products that relate to your blog (like if your blog is all about Madonna, you can link to places that sell her CDs, etc).

Here’s an article on Blogging for Dollars

Here’s what the folks at Google have to say about using Adsense to make money with your weblog

Here’s a post from a blogger who added adsense to his weblog in an attempt to cover the costs of his TypePad account, only to discover he was earning a second income from his blog!

This last article is a little dated, but still worth checking out: Blogonomics: making a living from blogging