Before we move on to the incredible sight of Uluru (Ayers Rock) I feel I should write a short post about my rationale to ‘add’ WordAds to my blog.  This morning I’ve noticed that at the end of my last post there is a small advertising box.  It hasn’t come as a complete surprise you understand because I signed up weeks ago for WordAds, but I do feel the need to explain.  I’m a full time student with no income; my husband supports me, and from next semester he will also be supporting our son financially when he joins me at The University of Queensland to undertake a BA in Criminology.  To earn $1 from WordAds you need approximately 1000 page visits.  If you look at my stats for the two months I’ve been writing this blog you’ll be able to calculate that: in a year I may be able to pay for a pack of my pens.  It’s hardly selling out, but I do understand that some visitors may find adverts intrusive and might not come back for a second look. So here’s what I personally considered before signing up:

• If I write good content people will still want to read it and visit my blog.
• If I was writing for a magazine column I’d get paid substantially more than WordAds will pay AND readers would be flicking through pages with adverts on them.
• If I ever achieve the holy grail of WordPress and find myself Freshly Pressed I’ll be wishing I’d put adverts on my blog as I watch my stats go through the proverbial internet roof.
• We all put a lot of time and effort into writing our blogs, and even if it’s only for a few cents I’d like to be able to say I’m getting paid something for it.
• My visitors are under no obligation and are still reading for free.

I hope that’s cleared the air between us because next up is the rock that marks the figurative, if not the literal, center of Australia, the rest of our trip on The Ghan, some rock art at Katherine, and our final destination, Darwin…….I’ll be watching out for any crocodile handbag adverts that accompany those posts just to make sure we are politically and ethically in tune with each other

P.S – there was a ‘high fibre diet’ advert after my Errant Hamster post today…….I can assure you that no hamsters were consumed in the writing of that post…….or maybe it was a reference to eating too many Hula Hoops????!!