Opinion, please, is taking ads “selling out?”

As some of you have noticed, I bit the bullet yesterday and shook the tin can, asking for any spare change you could throw this way, via the Amazon Honor System, to help defray my monthly bandwidth-overuse.

And I have been blown away by your generosity. I always knew I had some of the kindest readers in the blogosphere – turns out I have some of the most generous, too. Amazon has alerted me to the names of some but not all of the donars. Those whose name I received have already been thanked personally, but I don’t mind doing so again! Those of you who have donated anonymously, please accept my sincere and heartfelt thanks. I know from experience that God is never outdone in generosity – that whenever we help out others, it all comes back to us, sooner or later – but it still humbles me to be on the receiving end of other’s regard.

That said, while I am certainly, even as you read this, rattling away looking for change, I am also considering putting up some blogads, to create a little bit of revenue, so I don’t have to do the begging thing. It would also help in the lean months – like this one – where my other writing is either not selling, not-yet-published or (as in the case of July) simply not getting done because the blogging has kept me so distracted! :-)

But I have resisted doing ads up ’til now, partly because I don’t even know where I would put them and I hate a cluttered-looking site, and partly because I kinda like being ad-free. (As you know the Anchoress Bookshelf section with links to Amazon Books, is strictly to raise funds for my brother’s hospice – I see no revenue from that at all.)

Anyway, long drawn-out way of asking your opinion. If The Anchoress starts blogads, will it be distracting? You don’t care? You think it’s great? You strongly hate the idea? You’d rather not think of it and just go eat some ice-cream? Me too!

Please post your thoughts! :-) Thanks.