Thanks, Google, For $106.86! Thanks, readers, for your understanding!

Photo and blog post by John Hoff

So I've got all these North Minneapolis friends who are bloggers--Hawthorne Hawkman, Hillside Chronicles, NoMi Passenger, The Irving Inquisition--and I'm the only one who has bothered to "monetize" my blog by going into the digital guts and fooling around with some buttons. Heck, I've even put up an advertisement for the hottest new law office in North Minneapolis because I am so excited to see this kind of development happening on Lowry Avenue North.

The other day, right when I was hard up and needed it the most, Google sent me a check for...

...$106.86.

Just today I looked in the "monetize" function of my blog and, heck, there's already another fourteen bucks in there since Google cut the check.

When I cashed the check, I got it all in singles and I've been carrying around that wad of bills like a drug dealer at Hawthorne Crossings strip mall. And I got to thinking...money is good. I'd like some more of it to pay bills.

So here's the deal. I'm going to monetize the heck out of this blog. You might be seeing more ads popping up in places they haven't been seen before. Check out the post I did about Rufus O. Victor and his straight jacket, click here. You will note there's something that's been added since the post went up--a little advertisement for a police themed clock available through Amazon Dot Com. Why the police clock? Well, as I type in my template there is now a little Amazon.com funciton which appears to my right, and I can search for products and pick from an assortment of products. That particular product came up associated with the word "police." So there you go.

In the future, there may be something random or oh-so-appropriate for sale at the end of each blog post and, geez, I'm thinking this may go on for darn near every blog post until blogging is no longer the hot trendy thing, just something old people do in nursing homes ON THE MOON.

My dear and loyal readers, I hope you don't mind the ads.

And to my assortment of blogger friends, a plea: monetize your blog. We are putting massive amounts of content out into the internet in our free time, but from this content there is potential ad revenue which can make its way to our neighborhood to buy paint, to buy time on our cell phones so we can talk to our public officials, to buy gifts for our children. We put so much into telling the story of our neighborhood. Let's at least TRY to get a little back, now and then, in the form of a check, baby.