It is great if you can get some additional revenue this way.  I don't know if you have any control over what ads get put in that box though.  If so, the direct links to study material endorsed by the users here would actually be an improvement to this site that aids so many and help you as well in getting compensated for your "labor of love" (as you once called it).  I see Pimsleur is one of the ads now.  We pretty much torch Pimsleur here as a needless waste of money so I hope they don't monitor the forum threads.

Last edited by bodhisamaya (2009 March 24, 1:54 pm)

bodhisamaya wrote:

I don't know if you have any control over what ads get put in that box though.

Adsense, as the name implies, tries to sense what kind of ads are relevant to the context in which they appear. That means that ideally most of the Adsense ads we see will be in regards to Japanese or study related stuff. However I have seen some about saving starving African children or whatever already.

Last edited by Jarvik7 (2009 March 24, 6:53 pm)

Jarvik7 wrote:

That means that ideally most of the Adsense ads we see will be in regards to Japanese or study related stuff.

Yes in theory. So far I'm seeing fairly random ads. More amusing is ads in Japanese on the topics where there are kanji in the title. In fact there are not so many advertisers for Japan study items, it's far easier to advertise ringtones and wallpapers

I think it would be best for all, you and me, to have direct advertising, but I'm still very busy with refactoring code, so I'm trying out AdSense first as it is relatively "passive" and easy to setup.

I just disabled AdBlock for this site, since I think I can trust you not to have horrible ads and your site deserves what it can get from ads.

So far, all the ads I've seen were about Japanese services or Japanese products.

@wccrawford : if you don't click the ads it doesn't matter whether you see them or not, though an ad blocker could interfere with the "pageviews" count of the ad tracking if it doesnt allow the ad code to run at all.

@Smackle: don't click ads you're not interested in or curious about. It's against Google AdSense policies to ask people to click ads. It will make very little difference anyway, unless a large number of people abused the system.

The top ad only shows for non registered members, that's the goal. I assume most of you are logged in with the "remember me" cookie right? So it doesn't matter. I want to see how the ads perform for Google search visitors who come and go.

So far it's made 2.4$ in 24h which isn't bad, if it makes 50 dollars at the end of the month, that's the domain name renewal paid plus a few other small expenses, it's a simple as that.

Heheh, I started seeing more interesting/relevant ones. One for HiraganaTimes and one for a Japanese Manga school.

hahaha, and this gem.

    *
      Want To Learn Japanese?
      1000's Of Japanese Singles Seek Language Exchange. Join Free Today!
      www.JapanCupid.com


Obviously, they've figured out the secret to fluency...

Have you considered seeking advertising deals with the big international suppliers of Japanese products? You could have an Amazon affiliate account and use that for recommended texts, then seek a deal with jlist.com and other similar sites.

Many people here buy from jList and Amazon, I'm sure they would all happily do so through this site to help support such a fantastic service.

edit: I just checked out Jlist's affiliate program, which offers a 12% cut of all orders made through your site. You can read about it here http://www.jlist.com/PAGE/affiliates.html

Last edited by Blahah (2009 March 26, 6:08 am)

Jlist/Jbox, thejapanshop, yesasia, Amazon, I'm not aware of many places whrere you can order Japanese study material.

Do you guys know other good stores where you've ordered before ?

Yes, my bad! The homepage and learnmore page now have links to Remembering the Kanji on Amazon   It does reach 8.5% once you sold 3131 items

Thanks for the positive vibes bodhisamaya

I will put advertising on hold now, and focus on finishing this refactored site. Only review index, study and members page left, but they are the more complex pages.

I just thought of one unobtrusive way to make (some) money through the forum...

Users often talk a lot about books. If you provided an easy way for users to add the links, you could potentially make some money as an Amazon affiliate.