I want to start a very simple blog that will have ads on it. Where should I start?

February 3, 2012 3:07 PM

I want to start a very simple blog that will have ads on it. Where should I start?

I'm not very internet savvy except when it comes to, you know, reading it. Is there a simple solution for what I want?

There is a topic where I'm a bit of a subject matter expert, and I think it's not well represented on the web right now. I've been doing research for "competitors" for about a year and they are horrible eyesores with generic content.

I'd like to start a blog about my subject. There will be original content written by me and photos that I take. It's somewhat instructional in nature. If I never make a dime, that's fine. I harbor no illusions whatsoever of becoming a blogging millionaire, or even a hundredaire. If there are hosting costs and I can make a few bucks toward them, great. If not, that's OK too. I enjoy my subject a lot, I like sharing this knowledge, and I'd like to get back into writing ANYTHING really.

I don't know any web design stuff and I don't know what platforms are good and which ones let you have ads. Where should I start? Do ads / ad money work differently with different hosts / platforms?

Links to good sites to LEARN about all this stuff are welcome - google searches result in a lot of yucky "make money blogging!!" crap. Suggestions for who/what to use are also welcome. Thank you!

posted by anonymous to computers & internet (3 answers total)

The blogging aspect and the ads aspect are largely separate questions, as you could pick a blogging platform and then plop in your ads. If you want to research it yourself further, I would suggest searching them separately, "best blogging platform" to determine that, and "best advertising network". May cut down on the get rich quick results you'd find otherwise.

For ads, Google AdSense is the de facto standard and is pretty easy to use. You just set up an account with them, they give you a snippet of text to embed in your site, and you're good to go. Google will then display ads and keep track of clicks and whatnot, and when you accrue more than $10 of ad views, I think, they send you a check. The amount of money you get depends on the number of views the ads get as well as the particular topics the page is about. If you write about very specific things, that can help, as your viewers are a more highly targeted population, so the showing ads to them will be worth more to Google. You can keep track of all this by logging into your AdSense account, and it's pretty fun to watch.

For blogging, popular options are Blogger and WordPress. Blogger is owned by Google, so it integrates well with AdSense, and you don't need to do the hosting yourself. I'm not sure how well it works with a custom domain name. WordPress is a solid blogging platform, but if you host it on wordpress.com, you're not allowed to use third party ad networks. You can, however, install it on your own server and then embed whatever you want.
posted by losvedir at 4:10 PM on February 3, 2012 [1 favorite]

I'm recently started a blog, and I'm use blogger/blogspot. It's very, very easy to set up a blog and post to it. It's easy to add photos. There are several simple, non-ugly templates to choose from, though you might eventually want to pay someone to design a header for you if you want your blog to look unique. It's very easy to add ads too, though I haven't done that and don't plan to in the near future.
posted by insectosaurus at 5:02 PM on February 3, 2012

Here's a site with some good "getting started" type advice.
posted by spilon at 8:25 PM on February 3, 2012