More IS better!

You know, I had a lot of trouble deciding how/if to advertise on Jungle Photos. The fact is that it is getting to the point where I need to get something tangible back. Yes, thank you everyone who sends nice emails and does the survey, etc. but I really need to take care of the bottom line here. Ah, the economics of survival. Anyway, I have been adding ads (see previous post) to the website's pages, starting with the most popular and working my way down the list. And so far, it seems to be paying off, literally! Well, it's not a huge jump, but what I am seeing is an increase in book sales. It doesn't mean I can retire just yet, but it's going to add up, slowly but surely. Once the ads are set up, I can turn to content development and promotion. Hey, it's all about marketing... Capitalism works!

Adding ads—sell out?!

Okay, I confess! I have been busy adding content to the site. But most of it in recent days has been ads for useful products such as relevant books. I signed up to some affiliate programs which is a way to make money from the site without actually selling anything. So maybe it's a sell out since I always wanted the site to be free of charge. But the fact is in a year, I received barely $50 in donations and $30 of that was from my sister. I get money from Google Adsense, which is nice and covers the cost of hosting, but I don't get any compensation for my time so it is still a labor of love. Hence adding ads. But I have added new pages, some related to products and others being routine updates:
Latest Amazon, Africa and Galapagos news
Ideas Shop: Great gifts for the holiday season
Product of the Week
Technical Notes

All right, all ready!

Yes, yes, yes. I know. I've been neglectful, AGAIN! But it's only been a couple of weeks, if that. And I've been busy, busy. Check out the Jungle Photos home page, and you will see what's going on. Major new stuff! Such as a concerted effort to put amazon.com ads on each page. (Sellout! Oh well... I guess I feel like it's about time I cashed in on all my hard work since donations have been rather thin—non-existent, actually.) To supplement this I made a Product of the Week page, since the home page will have a new product featured weekly, and the Product of the Week will be an archive for those. I also made a page for technical notes so people can see how I built the site. It's been a slog! However, as I say "If you're looking for trade secrets, we're not giving anything away!"

Um, what else? I upgraded the search engine, since my software supplier (APB Systems) have a new version. It's cool, featuring more search customization choices and the ability to format the results page. I am also working on a cleaner home page design. The ads make things noisier, so I want a cleaner look and also some bells and whistles to keep things looking up to date. Watch this space for announcements!