--Blogger--
Blogger is Google's free of charge blog program (www.blogger.com). Like everything else Google touches, Blogger is incredibly user-friendly, very dependable, and widely used. The greatest thing about Blogger is that, again like everything else Google, it works seamlessly with all other Google applications. Blogger is the only blog host I know of that allows you to use AdSense with a free blog. It also links seamlessly with Feedburner, another now-Google application, to help your blog gain a readership. If you're looking to start a blog, I strongly recommend you use Blogger. The only issue I've run into so far is with the site theme. Why is it so hard for Blogger to provide templates with a decent contrast between background and text color?
--AdSense--
This is a fairly novel concept, though I believe this is how Google makes a profit. It's bizarre to me that a company that's produced the greatest search engine/man-produced algorithm (Google), the fastest and easiest to use web-browser (Google Chrome), the best free blog site (Blogger), and the best chat/news/online gaming/email integrations ever produced (GMail/iGoogle) makes all of it's revenue of internet ads. The rest of what google does is free services. I have a friend working for Google in the New York City office, and I'm convinced that they're about a hundred years ahead of the rest of us.
AdSense is simple. You write a blog. You put spaces for ads supplied by Google. Google's algorithm (something like a mix between God and the computer from War Games) reads your blog and puts insightfully relevant and non-abrasive advertisements on your blog. Google pays you for every person that clicks on an advertisement while on your site. Unfortunately, the way Google appropriates money for your "clicks" is a system more complex than post-transcriptional control in our biology. For people like me and you, it's simply enough to know that Google pays you for successful advertisement, adjusted for the value of advertising in your particular field.
--FeedBurner--
Feedburner is not simple. It's a free service (and a Google free service at that!). Feedburner takes your blog and converts it into an Atom or RSS feed. This allows blog readers to get regular updates about your blog in a newsfeed on their social network. I use iGoogle, and I get blog updates on my newsfeed through my Google homepage. Other people may use MySpace, Facebook, or a myriad of other networks to stay on top of their blogs subscriptions. In short, FeedBurner increases readership of your blog and decreases the amount of work a reader has to do to stay up-to-date on your blog by updating them automatically when you publish a new post. Without a newsfeed, readers have to check your blog manually/periodically to see if it has any new material.
I will be posting more about my blogging experience (interspersed in my blogs about my experience through Latin America). I plan to share my site visits, my click-throughs, my monthly revenue (if any) from AdSense, and anything and everything else about blogging with Blogger. I am quite curious to see if keeping a blog can actually produce revenue, though I am writing this blog to keep my family and friends in the United States involved in my adventures. I am also sharing my experiences to help any future adventurers (or escape artists) grow as individuals through new cultural experiences.
Saludos,
Z
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