Thanks to a discussion on blogcatalog.com, a really good blog community, I found out that you cannot add affiliate ads to wordpress.com. Now please note that I said wordpress.com not wordpress.org. If you recall wordpress.com is hosted by wordpress but if you do wordpress.org that is open source software hosted by you.
So, in case you were thinking about putting up a free blog using wordpress.com and putting affiliate links do not do it! Please read the narrative below which comes directly from the wordpress documentation.
permitted.Sponsored / paid links are not permitted.
Affiliate and pay-per-click links such as Usercash and Clickbank are not permitted.
Text ads are not permitted.
A discreet link to your business in the sidebar or an About page is permitted.
One discreet link to Amazon per blog is okay, but if the primary purpose of the blog is to drive traffic to affiliate programs that’s not allowed. If you’re not sure, contact support.
Clicktrackers and any promotion of the “I made a million on the internet and so can you” type of advertising are expressly forbidden.
We have a very low tolerance for blogs created purely for search engine optimization or commercial purposes, machine-generated blogs, and will continue to nuke them, so if that’s what you’re interested in WordPress.com is not for you.
Rosie
Wow…glad I went with Blogger. Of course I had thought at one time of switching over to WordPress because so many people seem to like it. But then I read something on their feature page that said that they may occasionally run adsense ads on your blog…changed my mind real quick.
This also gives you a good reason to eventually go to WordPress.org or other platforms like Typepad or Movable Type that may involve cost but hopefully if you are using ads and adsense it will make up for the cost. NOTE: WordPress.org is open source and the cost is not for the software but for any help you may need in maintance, plug-in installations, etc but nothing if you learn how to do it yourself.
i am a beginner in monetizing my blog with Adsense. i still need to learn more about the tips and tricks on Adsense. hopefully i might be able to earn a decent amount of cash on Adsense.
Adsense is my main source of income when making money online. nothing beats adsense when it comes to making money online.
Yes, this is a good point, however, in reference to the post just want to emphasize that adsense CANNOT be placed on a WordPress.com site. You may get a way with it for a short nano second but soon and very soon your site can be taken down.
so I have a wordpress.com blog, and I’d like to use an adbrite ad in it, but I now know that I cannot. Is there a way to switch over my website to somewhere else that does allow ads, but still keep all of my posts and my (paid for) domain name? WordPress also says that VIP blogs are allowed to have ads, what defines a VIP blog? Thanks.
Great questions! Check out this link to help you transfer your WordPress.com blog posts to WordPress.org . http://codex.wordpress.org/Moving_WordPress
You will do far better, in my opinion to self-host your site with a WordPress friendly host than use VIP hosting which is very expensive. Here are two links explaining the VIP hosting.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/
http://vip.wordpress.com/
hope this helps
I heard about this what a shame.
Great article! I too am interested in all aspects of adsense markting.
With the cost of hosting so cheap, I’m not sure why anyone bother with a wordpress-hosted domain. Better to pay a few dollars to host the WP platform on your own site, and have the flexibility to do whatever you like.