Can I Advertise My Business On This Blog?

This post is especially for a fellow blogger known as "G.J," whose blog title is "fruta planta."

An article in my Virginia Legislative bill-reader series was about the "Hazards of Voter Identification," security risks created by displaying complete home addresses on government-issued ID cards such as drivers' licenses. For many years, Virginia residents have been displaying only mailing addresses, which are usually office or post-office addresses, so that uninvited visitors can't find their homes.

G.J posted the following comment:

"blog must be more informative so that we can get more ideas about plastic id card printing.
Plastic Business Cards [linked to a dot-com site called plasticcardmonster]. Plastic cards [linked to one called alltimeprint]."

Well, first of all...although ads for businesses that print plastic cards might belong in the ad space beside an article about official government-issued ID cards, the key idea for commercial printers and their customers would be that a privately printed card should not look like a government-issued ID card. Commercial printing services are for private business cards, invitations, place cards, and so on.

Secondly, I can't personally endorse the services G.J wants to endorse. In order to put live links on this blog without going through Google Ad Sense (which is currently disabled, apparently because someone who tried to build a web site for Grandma Bonnie Peters' Veggie Burgers, several years ago, hasn't completely disabled that site yet) or Amazon (which is currently enabled, but not yet sending us payments) you need to:

(1) Confirm that these sites meet Google's security standards and won't harm readers' computers. It's crucial that you do that because I don't have the technical expertise to do it for you.

(2) Purchase an advertorial that shows readers where to find your home page, blog, web site, etc., and why you're qualified to endorse a commercial site (i.e. whether you make the product, use it, are paid to endorse it, etc.). I'm not sure about Google, but Yahoo has a policy of asking writers to specify whether they actually make or sell a product, received money for endorsing it, received free products such as review copies of a book, or just felt like writing about it. I like this policy and would like your advertorial to include this information.

And...ahem!...if we wanted to spend our time just handing free ads to strangers with no benefit to ourselves, we would have continued writing for Yahoo / Associated Content, where Priscilla King and Bonnie Peters were published in previous years. Please don't try to embed commercial links in comments here.

So, regretfully, I'm making the editorial decision to remove G.J's comment. This article is by way of apology to G.J, who is welcome to submit advertorials either for the printing services or for the herb supplements that seem to be the main topic of her blog. G.J and anyone else interested in advertising here is welcome to e-mail Saloli here for details.