Amazon Ads in RSS Feeds

A while back I’ve added an advertising module to my site that allows me to inject amazon item ads both into the site content and into the rss feeds. I hand pick the items, which most of the time fall into one of the three categories: stuff that I would probably want myself, stuff that I already have, stuff that I mentioned in the post, and stuff that is just funny. Four categories.

This is not “punch the monkey”, not the same one ad that some bloggers stuff into their rss feeds and keep there forever until you are sick of it. From time to time the amazon items are really funny.

On the other hand, at my level of readers, the princely 6% commission that I get on Amazon purchases that come through the site, it’s not really a major financial incentive. The ads do cover my hosting expenses, but I do kinda feel guilty of thrusting the ads on my readers.

So, tell me, what do you think about the ads? Should I just junk them? I already replaced some of the ads on the site with links and ads for products that I simply like, without getting any payment, just as a way to say “thank you” to the people who make these products. I might do the same thing with the rest of the ads.

A new poll

I played around a little with Advanced Poll, a free perl script that is automatically installed by Dreamhost, only to realize that it’s not particularly advanced. You can’t even have a dropdown-stlyle multiple choice question! Also, I could not find a way to make it work in an RSS feed. Then I installed a Democracity plugin for WordPress, which, while a bit easier to work with, is even more limited in features. Do you, my loyal readers have any suggestions or do I need to write the stupid poll software myself?

Meanwhile, the current poll is a pretty simple question. Go vote.