As I wrote in yesterday’s post on “The Losing Business of CPC Arbitrage”, I am beginning a monetization experiment on this blog. My hope is that this does not turn away any of my existing readers. I am going to be as least invasive as possible with the arrangement of my advertising. If you have any feedback on this please feel free to comment. I am trying to see if it is possible to create a balance between advertising and valuable content. I will continue to provide insight on social media, entrepreneurship, and technology but will additionally document my experience in monetizing this blog. Hopefully this can be a learning experience for both of us.

Now to the core matter. What was the first step in monetizing this blog? Applying to various internet advertising programs. The ones that I have selected to participate in so far are:

• Text-Link-Ads - I will be using Text-Link-Ads to provide ads in my RSS feed as well as testing their site based ads. At the end of each post there will be a single text ad that is a sentence long. Text-Link-Ads provides a variety monetization methods. This includes site based text ads, post level ads, and feedvertising.
• ReviewMe - ReviewMe gives advertisers the flexibility to create review offers for their blogger marketplace and/or order reviews direct from specific top blogs. I plan on occasionally posting reviewme posts, but not too frequently as I want to maintain a high level of informative postings.
• Google AdSense - If you don’t know what Google AdSense is then you’ve probably been hiding under a rock for the past couple years. Google AdSense is one of their primary sources of revenue. Google places targeted ads on your page based on the subject you are discussing. If approved for this program, I will be placing the ads on the sidebar.

My only concern in the whole process is maintaining my integrity. As a reader, do you think that I lose integrity by accepting ads on this blog? I’d love to hear your feedback. So let me know!