I remember when Satellite Television first became available to us in Ontario. We bought a huge 12 foot satellite dish and had yards of cable buried in the ground and routed through the house. We lived in the country and prior to the satellite dish, we had an antenna and we could get Channel 3 and Channel 3 and Channel 3. Yup, 1 channel! With the dish, we received dozens, maybe even hundreds of commercial-free channels (legally then) and we were thrilled. Over time things changed and eventually the dishes got smaller and we not only had to pay for television reception (which was justified) but now we were paying for channels that bombarded us with commercials as well.

As many of you know, I have been hoping to eventually find a way to earn a living from my writing and increase our readership. Recently, thanks to a fellow fulltimer, I learned of a way to earn money from our website by discreetly inserting a variety of advertisements, automatically through Google AdSense. Essentially, once our application had been accepted (it has), with some file insertions, the website would be loaded with advertisements and everytime anyone clicked on one from our site we would earn money from it. The ads would change according to the subjects covered by the text.

I keep remembering how angry I was when the television stations I watched via satellite became bombarded with commercials, especially when I had to pay for the privilege of watching them. Well, even though this site is completely free for all to read, after much contemplation, we have decided to keep it commercial-free, as well. I know the ads can be ignored but that would defeat the purpose of them, and we don't want a bunch of Internet advertisements to detract from the journal entries or photographs. I will keep pursuing my quest for getting paid to write however, for now, I will find a way that keeps our webpage intact and non-commercial and maybe because of that, the readership will grow even more.