2005-07-21 21:33 ☼ post
I’ve pretty much decided on an Axodys migration/update approach where I will setup everything at wp.axodys.com, get everything to my liking, and then move all of the WordPress infrastructure over to axodys.com when it’s ready to go. At this point I have all of my old posts imported and I finished cleaning up and refactoring all my categories this morning. I’ve tried out a few different plugins and have technorati style tags working, but I’ve reached the point where I need to start figuring out the ins and outs of WordPress Theme creation/modification so I can really start customizing the look and feel of things.
One new thing that I want to do while I’m setting up the design that will ultimately become the new axodys.com is to figure out how to incorporate Google AdSense ads in an unobtrusive way. I actually got turned down the first time I applied for the service back when it debuted, but reapplied this week and was finally accepted. I’d heard that they had relaxed their acceptance policy a little bit since my first attempt and with guys making $10k a monthearning-a-six-figure-income-from-blogging/ off their blogs I decided it was time for me to see if I could get a piece of the action. I don’t have any illusions about making that kind of cash. At this point Axodys doesn’t have anywhere near the kind of traffic that is needed to generate significant monthly income and it isn’t doesn’t have a specific topic area, but AdSense seems worth experimenting with and if I can cover a portion of my hosting costs it will worth it.
My initial plan for putting AdSense into Axodys is going to be strictly at the archive page level. The front page and all feeds will continue to be ad free and will continue to feature posts in their entirety. I got this idea from Darren (who has a ton of good ideas on AdSense) over at problogger.net and it seems like a logical approach. Most of the traffic that could generate click-throughs on the ads come from google searches on specific topics that I’ve written related entries on and I don’t want to annoy the few loyal readers that I’ve been carrying with me these last 6+ years. Eventually as I get more familiar with WordPress, I may also look into having AdSense ads only begin appearing after the posts are a few days old.
Before I can get going with AdSense though it’s imperative that I get my new design figured out so I can begin implementing it. The default theme is nice, but it’s not quite what I’m looking for. Time to get cracking.