Advertising, and other Thoughts

May 16, 2008 · Filed Under This blog · 2 Comments

I’ve been showing Google ads for a while now, and I’ve been experimenting with one or two other ad systems.

Why bother showing ads? Simple: income. However, what I want to do with potential advertising income is use it to help me devote more time to running the 5 or so sites I have set up.

The more income I can generate, the more time I can devote to this blogging thing. Why? Well, first I like it a lot, and second, it sort of fulfils an ambition of mine, which is to become a full time writer. Writers, like everyone else, need to eat, support families, and pay bills - hence the ads.

I’d also like to take people on to help me out and build my little network into something useful. Obviously, if I want people to work with me, I’m going to have to give them something in return. Again, the adverts should help me move down this road.

Shortly I shall start running some ads for an Italo-English real estate company. These ads won’t produce any income initially, but I hope they produce results for the advertiser, for this blog and the other sites I’d love to spend more time developing.

I do hope you, my valued readers, and great bunch of people don’t hate me too much for going commercial, and I hope this post explains my motivation a little.

As always, thanks for reading and commenting. It is great to hear from so many people, and to have made quite a number of on and off line friends.

Cheers!

Alex Roe - the man behind Blog from Italy.

Tags: ads, Blogging, Italy, This blog

At last, Top Gear in Italy

February 25, 2008 · Filed Under Italian TV · 2 Comments

Some time ago, I wrote a little post with some suggestions for improving the TV here, one of those suggestions included adding a decent motoring programme, like Top Gear which I got back in the UK.

Well, for a couple of months now I’ve been buying the Italian version of the Top Gear magazine, and it is not at all bad. Then I noticed a few ads, including one whole bus which was covered in an ad for the Top Gear motoring programme.

Finally, car mad Italy gets a good programme about cars, motorbikes and all things motoring, I thought. About time too, even if the programme is part of the Top Gear franchise, and therefore, not Italian in origin.

However, there is a downside. Isn’t there always? The downside is that to see Top Gear you need to have a subscription to Sky, which, incidentally, we almost had, but for some mysterious reason (possibly because I was always a bit short with the Sky telesales people - I hate telesales), our Sky subscription was never activated, even if we now have Cartoon Network and CNN.

What the heck, I can at least read about exotic and un-environmentally friendly cars in the colourful Top Gear magazine. And Italians finally get a magazine that is a) not as dull as ditch-water and b) is not a thinly disguised car manufacturers brochure.

Tags: ad, ads, buying, car, cars, good, Italia, Italian, Italians, Italy, magazine, motoring, People, read, Rome, sales, Sky, subscription, Top Gear, TV

Entrecard

February 6, 2008 · Filed Under Blogging · 2 Comments

I don’t know if you have noticed, but I recently added a small widget down on the right hand side of the blog. You con recognize it becuase of the ‘E’, which stands for Entrecard and next to this letter there is a picture with some text and this links to other blogs who are ‘advertising’ on my blog. The payment I receive is in the form of credits, which I can then use to buy ads on other blogs.

At first, I was a little sceptical about the Entrecard system, mainly because it means I have to go clicking around the www to amass enough credits to be able to pay for an ad. This clicking is akin to leaving your business card, (Mine is on the left) which is the way the Entrecard site puts it. I have to say that as a result of clicking I’ve come across some very nice blogs. And far from being a chore, this clicking is more a voyage of exploration. Yes, there is some dubious stuff out there, but there is lots of interesting material too.

In fact, this system is not a bad way to reveal your hidden gem of a blog to the reading world. So, go on, create a wee blog business card and sign up. You might just find it quite a lot of fun. Entrecard is totally free, and, in theory you can even sell your credits to others. Even if money does not bother you, it may not be such a bad way to donate money to a good cause you would like to support.

Any criticisms? A few, but nothing serious. First of all, this system can really eat up your time. And second, I have not come across any new blogs dealing with Italy and things Italian, not just yet, anyway.

And before anyone brings up the point, no, nobody has asked me to write this, I just thought I’d spread the word and, maybe, encourage a few others to read and or, even better, to set up blogs.

Tags: ad, ads, advertising, blog, criticism, donate, Entrecard, good, good cause, interesting, Italian, Italy, sign up, site