Monetizing the Ephemeral Joys of Childhood

      As some of you may know, I have been in the Information Technology business since the early 1990s. With this much experience you would be correct that I have seen many trends come and go. I have also built up a fair reservoir of knowledge about the nuts and bolts of how the Internet works and how it can be made more secure.

      Though with all this knowledge I still don't understand the intricacies of how companies like Google make money selling ads on the Internet. To try and fill this gap in my knowledge I accepted an offer from Amazon to monetize this blog.

       Here is what Amazon says about this new integration with Blogger:

Once the service is enabled, you can either create a new Amazon Associate account or link an existing account. Then when you go to write a blog post, an Amazon box will appear on the right side of the screen. You can find items on Amazon using the search box, and add them to your blog posts with a single click. You can choose to add just a text-based link, a product image, or a link + product image.

This is going to make it way easier for Blogger users to post affiliate links in their posts, and so there's a pretty good chance we're going to start seeing an explosion of Amazon links on Blogspot sites. If you're worried this is going to lead to an explosion of irrelevant, spammy links, Google is way ahead of you. The blog post announcing the new program points out that "affiliate programs work well when readers trust you," and suggests users avoid posting items simply for the affiliate fees, lest their blogs start to look like they only exist to make money for the author.

      I love the part about how affiliate programs work well when readers trust you. My comeback is, "how much will they trust me in the future when I start inserting ads for Amazon Best Sellers inside posts recalling days gone bt?" How sincere can my postings be, especially ones filled with descriptions of activities we used to cherish but haven't given much thought to as of late? I guess we'll see how it goes and if it just ends up as one more attempt by a writer to sell his soul in order to garner a little attention. Maybe I can keep it more dignified than this and maybe with a little luck I will never be inspired to include an Amazon ad in one of these entries.

      In the end I'll probably just chalk the entire exercise up to research about my chosen profession and if a dollar happens to comes my way I figure out some appropriate use for it.