Of course the first thing that springs to many peoples minds is the Google Adsense programme. However with the global economy being the way it is currently I’ve been reading on lots of blogs that this model is no longer profitable. Companies are tightening their financial belts and therefore cutting back on advertising spending, or at least looking at alternative methods which give them better value. The other downside to Adsense is that I think it provides little value to readers. Yes I know they’re supposed to be context sensitive but very often they’re not. Plus, a lot of people use ad blocking scripts these days so it’s kind of a moot point anyway.

The other obvious choice is affiliate advertising. I have no experience at all with this so I can’t say whether it works or not but I have heard it’s successful for many people. The great advantage with this is that it enables you to pick and choose affiliates that are highly relevent to your topic, and therefore your readers.

Affiliate advertising is a strong contender for me but I wonder if there other ways of gaining income for a new blog. When I say income, I’m not expecting fortunes. At least not to begin with, say for the first 6-12 months. My expectations regarding finance are very rough and although I will be working hard I’m seeing my initial outing into the world of professional blogging as kind of experimental. If within 6 months I can start making enough to pay the hosting bill with a little extra left over I’ll be happy. Anything over that I’d regard as a bonus.

Which brings me to my last choice.

I could not have any advertising at all, and take an ‘open source’ kind of approach, in the hopes that I may gain some paid blogging jobs elsewhere as a guest poster or regular contributor. I can see some problems with this though. Firstly, I could work my ass off for months and months with no gain at all. Secondly, if I allow my content to be used elsewhere (even with a link back to source) it might massively hurt search engine rankings. On the other hand I’m a big supporter of the open source ethos and I know it’s successful in many other fields, but I’m not at all sure how it would work with online content.

My research into this is ongoing, but I must admit I’m leaning more toward non-traditional methods. Times are changing and I think bloggers need to change and adapt with them. I’m just not quite sure how yet.

If you’re reading this and have any experiences to share, or know of anyone who has taken the open source model and adapted it to blogging, I’d love to hear from you!

Spam – everyone hates it, but on a blog install it’s best not to just ignore it and let it mount up. The other day I had to go through a database and delete over 12000 spam comments for somebody who had no anti spam plugins and was running an old version of WP. It wasn’t a pretty sight (site?). Akismet is your friend! As is Bad Behaviour and Spam Karma 2. I’ve only lately installed the last two here, Akismet has been doing a very good job but it does fail to catch the odd one or two. Extra fortification can’t be a bad thing. I’m not sure on the best settings though so I’ve left everything at default for now, if you have trouble leaving a comment send me an email via the contact page.

Scuttle has been upgraded. I love it, though there are a few bugs I’ve noticed. Namely that the RSS feed seems to display in reverse order, as do the links on the main page when not logged in. Haven’t managed to find a fix that works for either issue on the Sourceforge page. It’s not a biggie for me, I tend to use the tags or search when looking for a link anyway, and as it’s only me that uses it it’s not a huge problem. Shame about the RSS feed though.

As you will notice, I’m also tinkering with the theme again, using the excellent Simpla theme as a base this time. I’ll continue to tinker over time, think I’ll be sticking with this one for a while, it’s nice and clean looking and very easy to work with.

I have been inactive on my blog here for a long time now. That’s partially down to having other things to worry about, and partially down to depression. I have lots that I could write about but can’t for fear of upsetting those close to me (my husband does occasionally read here as do one or two other family members). It’s a dilemma, because on the one hand I’m sure it would do me good to write all these thoughts that I have down, but on the other, I worry that some things will be taken personally when they shouldn’t. For that reason I’ve decided to set myself up with a blog elsewhere, under an unkown name. Of course should certain people happen to come across it they may still guess who is behind the writing, but it’s unlikely. And I doubt it will gain any popularity because it’s mostly for personal reference and therapy. It’ll likely be extremely boring to anyone else.

I wonder how many other bloggers do this. Quite a number I’d imagine, it must be quite liberating. I’m looking forward to the sense of freedom.

It was a nice surprise, and I’m always up for new toys to play with, I just have absolutely no idea what I’m going to do with it yet.

A linkblog maybe?

I’m a little heartbroken about it, because I love those templates so much, but I need to learn more about how Textpattern works. I can’t do that by cheating with somebody else’s work.

It’s only a small site though, so it can’t be that hard. Can it? :)

I’m also planning a new blog running WordPress. Much as I like Textpattern, I do miss my old favourite too.

I’m aware that this may seem like I’m doing too much all at once, given that posting here has hardly been regular of late. The new blog will be a slightly different style of writing though, and I’m hoping that keeping one up to do date will help spur me on with this one too.

I’m not crossing my fingers behind my back, honest!

I’m posting this not to create panic, but to warn people of this potential issue. It’s up to you of course, but it’s probably wise to delete both the install.php and upgrade.php files located in your wp-admin directory as a precaution. I’ve already done so myself.

update
More on this issue in the WP support forums.

I know I have the URL right – http://www.thekatswhiskers.com/xmlrpc.php yet it just won’t work. Any ideas why?

Hope I can find a solution to this, otherwise I’ll be hunting for some kind of photo gallery plugin.

Congratulations to all, and a special congratulations to Father Luke who won both in the Writing category and 1st prize! A well deserved win I feel.

And a big thank you to everyone who took part, from those who submitted their sites, to the judges (especially Shadow who has worked very hard), it was a great experience. I hope we can do it again sometime.

Have you entered yet? If not, why not? All are welcome (well, provided your blog is powered by WordPress anyway), and if nothing else it will gain your blog some exposure.

So what are you waiting for? Get over there and enter! NOW!

Did I win? Of course I did! Not a prize, but I still feel like I won something in just being able to take part. The talent on display and just the sheer amount of submissions was outstanding. As has already been said, we’re all winners in this one.