Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Assuming that things are working correctly, you most probably will have noticed a Google AdSense ad box between the list of pages and the first post on the page.

I actually signed up for AdSense in the middle of last year, but when I changed the blog to the current theme, which I like quite a bit, there was really no place to put ads that wouldn't mess of the flow of things since the theme has only one sidebar. I consider the recent comments very important, so I didn't want to push them down, and there's not really any point putting an adbox halfway down the page. I finally took the time to go through the tutorial and figure out that I could probably put in a horizontal adbox near the top by hacking it into the theme's header HTML code.

That's how. Now why? This is a hobby blog pure and simple and that's not changing. At the same time, if I can make a little money with it, well, I am certainly not averse to that. Frankly, I have my doubts. By its nature Columbia Closings is a very local blog for a medium sized city, and simply does not have the traffic stats that something with a wider geographical appeal might have. My other venture into commercialism, the Columbia Closings Cafe Press store has so far cleared me a grand total of $10.00 (and cost, if I recall correctly, $60 to set up, so I'm still $50 under water on that -- not that I mind as it was fun to put the calendars and other products together).

So, we'll see what happens. If the ads bring in a miniscule amount, I may drop them, otherwise not. At any rate if you surf without javascript turned on, or if you Firefox users load the adblock plugin, you should be able to avoid seeing them.