Last November WordPress.com announced the launch of our WordAds program, whereby WordPress.com sites can partner and share revenues on ads sold and managed by WordPress.com. Since its beta launch, WordAds has grown to over ten thousand sites. WordAds has been a success because bloggers can focus on content and building their audiences while handing off the time-consuming role of advertising optimization to the WordAds team.

Today, we’re launching a new homepage for the WordAds program: WordAds.co. Here, you will find our application page as well as FAQs and a discussion forum. Moreover, most WordPress.com sites can now launch WordAds on their site within days of application.

To celebrate the successful launch of WordAds, we sat down to interview one of the program’s first sites at MyNintendoNews.com. Not every WordAds site has the visitor volume to earn significant revenue, but sites that work to develop their audience can now earn good income from advertising. MyNintendoNews.com is focused on doing the right things to build their audience: publishing every day with well thought-out posts and attention to publicizing to social media. What started as a labor of love has become a budding business.

Can you tell us a bit about yourself including when and why you launched MyNintendoNews.com?

I was studying Web Design and Internet Management at my university and participated in a module entitled Writing for the Web. One of the aims of this course was to create a blog on a subject we were passionate about. For me, this was Nintendo. Since then I’ve concentrated on building the site up and have made it my number one priority to provide the users with the news that they want to read.

Your traffic has grown from around 100,000 pages per month a year ago to over 1 million pages per month now with lots of comments. What would you say accounts for that growth?

I was fortunate enough to jump onto the social networks at just the right time. Due to this I have built up a substantial following on Twitter, Facebook and Google+. I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to take advantage of the free social networks that are at your disposal. Another factor is that the news I publish is clear and concise, and I believe that’s important when you take into account the audience and the demographic that the blog is aimed at.

You were one of the few WordAds bloggers to launch in its first month. What has been your experience thus far?

There were initially a few teething issues with WordAds when it was deployed on the site, as it was still in its infancy. I’m pleased to say that the adverts that are currently being displayed are of an extremely high quality and are also appealing to the users. The adverts aren’t intrusive and ultimately they don’t get in the way, or detract from the blog’s content – which for me is the most important thing.

You have the option to go self-hosted on WordPress.org. What are the reasons that you publish on WordPress.com?

I strongly believe that WordPress.com remains the number one blogging platform for anyone considering starting up their own blog. The great thing about WordPress.com is it’s simple to use and yet there’s so much depth. I love the fact that you guys are continuously improving the service and adding new features. The support you can get is phenomenal considering the service is absolutely free. I’m extremely happy to be a WordPress.com user.