Right, long-time visitors will know that I held out on getting banners on this site for about four years, so at least three of you might be interested in what the score is.

The banners will hopefully provide a steady income that will offset the trickiness of trying to pay rent and buy food when I’m self-employed. Simple as that really.

It all works on a system of impressions. Each banner gets one impression each time you load a page. After 1000 impressions I get something like 50p (that’s around US$1 these days). Not a great deal of money, I grant you, but it mounts up. This is why it’s good if you can tell your friends about my animations. The more hits means that there’s more chance I’ll be able to buy Heinz rather than Sainsbury’s economy beans for my toast 🙂

I also mention that clicking banners is good. This isn’t because I get money for clicks, it’s because if my site generates clicks from people then maybe I’ll be able to charge more money in the future.

So is this just corporate whoring? Well… That depends on the way you look at it. I prefer to think of it as a way that I can actively take back money that corporations have probably twisted out of me at some point or other anyway. If AOL foots a small part of my rent each month then that makes me a happy man. Do I expect you to buy any of the things linked to on the banners? Well, that’s up to you, as it always is with banners and all forms of advertising.

I think I’ve just won the award for ‘the most dull blog entry ever’. Thank you and good night.