In June this year, we received notification that our web hosting company RapidSwitch was increasing the prices of the hosted server service we use by an additional 15% from 1st August 2022 due to the significant increases in energy prices in the United Kingdom.

Then in October, we received another email telling us that the prices on their services would increase by another 20% from 1st November 2022.

We have always paid for twelve months server hosting every April. After these price increases, we have been sent new invoices for additional “power catch-up” for November and expect to receive these until the next renewal date in April 2023.

The income from the websites we host from our web design business, Apexweb, has always covered the server rental costs. Still, with this 35% increase in cost and expect more price rises next year, we do not think we could continue without passing on some of the increase to our web clients and trying to find other sources of income to supplement the hosting costs.

To raise some additional income, I have added paid advertising to this blog and my local tourism website, Virtual Swanage.

I have always tried to avoid adding third-party advertisements to the blog, but due to the massive increase in hosting costs, I need to explore other sources of income.

Cookie Consent

To comply with EU and UK laws on tracking cookies, I found the open-source Cookie Consent from https://orestbida.com/demo-projects/cookieconsent/, which has excellent documentation and demos for integrating the code into your website.

This allows me to block loading the Google AdSense scripts until the visitor consents via the dialogue box.

Advert Placement

I have tried to make the new adverts as unobtrusive as possible, and they are placed at the end of the blog posts and below the side navigation.