The end of an era, or is that error

This site has always been a pet project for me. I never had any real goal in mind other than to express myself in ways that only the broad reach of the internet could. Unfortunately, that expression comes at a cost. Domain registration and web-hosting are part of that cost and to offset that cost, I’ve tried various ways of monetizing my site(s). The most obvious ones are the sidebar ads – google on the left and amazon on the right. Some more subtle ways have included Text Link Ads (under “see also”) but that seems to have suddenly dried up and Amazon Context Links which automatically turned certain words into amazon links (underlined links) but as you can see from the email below, that too is going away.

At this time, we will no longer be offering Context Links. Starting October 14, 2008, any Context Links on your site will be disabled and revert back to regular text. You do not have to take any action unless you?d like to modify your existing content to use some of the alternatives available which are outlined below.

These alternative widgets have similar functionalities and may perform even better. The first alternative is the Omakase Widget which automatically features ideal products based on Amazon’s unique knowledge about what works for your site, for your users and for the content of your page. Another great widget option is the Quick Linker. It allows you to link quickly and easily to relevant Amazon products as you write your blog posts or page content by including custom HTML tags right as you type.

But all is not doom and gloom. Google ads still pay for the site and the holidays and birthdays are coming up so some refined and specific amazon links should help out. More importantly, the site will be a little less cluttered as these random and often odd links are dropped from my pages. i also will be making subtle design changes to this site to improve the organization and reduce visual “noise”.

So if you have any suggestions, let me know.