Honestly though, I clicked on one of your “current groove” selections once, expecting to read your thoughts on the cd in question, but of course was re-directed to Amazon. Stealth advertising. I like to know ads are ads before I click on them….

Since then, I’ve never clicked on any of the ad links – they don’t even “register” with me any more. I suspect that most people are the same.

Whilst your ads are more subtle than most – books and music, people come to your site for your take on tech issues, not your reading or listening habits.

(Similarly I might watch Susan Sarandon in a movie, but why would I care about here politics?)

Its a tricky one, no doubt. How do you generate income to cover the costs? Should the website be a labour of love or a commercial endeavour? Or somewhere in between?

Blocritics manage to insert numerous Amazon ads into their RSS feeds – supposedly contextual, but often the ads are way off. A review of Texas Chainsaw Massacre is just as likely to have an ad link to a book on deforestation as it is the DVD.

Do you receive revenue for just achieving page views, or do the ads need to be clicked?

I think you’ve made the right decision about RSS’ing the whole articles. I’ll take the RSS feed, but will still visit the site every day anyway, as a significant part of the experience is reading the comments, which often expand on, or elicit a broader perspective on the original article Such as this :)

Good work JK

I’m using FeedBurner at the moment to insert Amazon ads into the feed articles – it’s kind of limited, but could be worth a try. In the end, though, the important thing is that people *read*, not *how* they read. Each one that does that is another person that might spread the word by talking about you or linking to you, which brings in more people to the site.

And anyway, Robert Scoble is very fussy about his full feeds, and it’s about time you got Scobleized.