I visit Amazon’s website quite a bit. I have been selling items there for about four months. I have an associates’  account, and I like shopping there. All in all I spend too much time on that site.

Used to be that I haunted real physical bookstores. Hell, I even worked in a couple. Now, I find that booksellers don’t know their product and stores seldom carry what I want. It’s just become easier to log onto Amazon and check out what it recommends based off what I have reviewed or bought. It’s fairly accurate and I like the customer reviews. More often than not I trust them more than professional reviews.

The Amazon ads on this site generally don’t net me much. Maybe not even enough to make it worth it. And I only net an extra $30 or so a week selling books and CDs. Again, not exactly big money. But I have only one goal with these ads, and that’s to pay for my hosting costs and other costs associated with this site (URL renewals, etc). And I have only one goal with my book and CD selling, and that’s to fund my book and CD buying. I am behind on both, but every bit helps.

Eventually, I will look into other ways to monetize this site, but for now, this seems to be enough. For one thing, this journal is mostly just for my friends. Or maybe not even. Maybe it’s just for me. Either way, I am not going to annoy anyone with popups and iPod giveaway ads. “Congratulations! You’ve one a free iPod pyramid scheme. Just screw yourself and five friends and we may send you an iPod.”

The Google AdSense ads don’t net me much either. And again, not sure they are worth it. They rack up even less cash than my Amazon account does, but I find it entertaining to see what kind of ads do appear on my site. There’s been a lot of ads for pens and shirts. And so far I haven’t seen much advertised that I object to.

I don’t have any unrealistic expectations from doing this. I don’t expect to stay home getting rich journaling online. I can’t image I’ll ever make more than a couple of dollars a week from this site, but that’s enough to pay my costs. And that’s enough.

If you know of better affiliate programs that aren’t annoying, let me know and I may add them. Drop me an email or leave a comment (comments are moderated).