It has been quite a while since we posted an update here on the BellenPaws.com blog. The truth is, we have continued adding new article content on a regular basis, often publishing something nearly every day. At the same time, much of our attention has also been focused on creating and improving the online tools available to senior pet owners throughout the website.
We are web developers, and at any given time we usually have several website projects in progress, including ongoing work here at BellenPaws.com. That is not meant as an excuse for the lack of regular site updates, but it does help explain where much of our time has been going. Like most active websites, we have a full and constantly evolving to-do list.
Today, however, I wanted to take a little time to let our visitors know what has been happening both on the site and behind the scenes. BellenPaws receives a healthy amount of traffic. Some visitors arrive because they are genuinely curious about senior pet care, while others find us through a Google search, read the article or resource they were looking for, and then move on without much additional interaction.
Our online tools also receive a significant amount of traffic, especially the rope length calculator designed for people building their own cat scratching posts. Interestingly, when we review the search terms that sometimes lead visitors to that calculator, they are not always related to cats, pets, or scratching posts. In many cases, the visitor is simply searching for a reliable rope calculator for a construction, wrapping, or other practical project.
Traffic is still traffic, so there is a positive side to that. Google is connecting people with a tool that answers their question, and some visitors return whenever they need to use it again. That kind of useful interaction can help strengthen the site’s visibility and search ranking over time, even when the visitor’s original project has nothing to do with pets.
Pet Diabetes
We have updated the names and wording within our diabetes tools and printable forms, changing them from “Feline Diabetes” wording to “Pet Diabetes” wording. The change came after hearing from dog owners caring for pets with canine diabetes. Although our tools were originally created from our own experience managing diabetes in cats, the same forms, logs, and tracking features can be just as useful for diabetic dogs.
Our personal experience has been entirely with feline diabetes. Zipper, whom we called Zippy, received insulin injections for more than a year and a half before eventually going into remission. He remained in remission until he passed away three years later from an unrelated cancerous tumor in his mouth.
We are currently managing diabetes with Bentley, who still receives insulin injections twice each day. We follow a tight-regulation approach, which means checking his glucose levels twice daily and using those readings to help determine whether his insulin dose needs to be adjusted. There are also times when his reading indicates that a dose should be skipped, which gives us hope that remission may still be possible. Bentley is not there yet, but he remains stable, with his daily glucose average generally falling between 230 and 250.
Feedback from dog owners helped us realize that our diabetes tools are not limited to cats. The same glucose records, insulin logs, care forms, and tracking features can be used just as easily for canine diabetes. With that in mind, we have updated the wording throughout the site to use the broader term “Pet Diabetes.”
In hindsight, the change seems obvious. At the time the tools and forms were developed, however, feline diabetes was the only type we had personally managed, so that experience naturally shaped the original wording. That has now been corrected so the resources better reflect all of the pet owners who may benefit from them.
Financial Support for BellenPaws
Developing, maintaining, and supporting BellenPaws.com comes with ongoing expenses. Those costs include web hosting, server control panel licensing, domain and DNS services, email, security, and the time required to build new features, maintain the website, keep the content current, and protect the server.
One thing that has not changed over the years is how those expenses are covered. We continue to fund the website largely out of our own pockets. We are not complaining about that, because we chose to build BellenPaws around a mission we genuinely believe in.
If our primary goal were simply to generate revenue, we could place the tools behind a paywall or sell the blank forms as paid PDF downloads. That approach, however, would go against what we are trying to accomplish. Our goal is to help pet owners while advocating for senior and diabetic pets, and we want these resources to remain accessible.
For that reason, we currently rely on voluntary donations and merchandise sales. After the costs associated with each sale are covered, the remaining proceeds are used to help offset the expenses of operating and maintaining the website.
We will continue supporting BellenPaws because we still believe strongly in its purpose. We are here to inform pet owners, share what we have learned through years of caring for our own pets, and provide practical resources that may make senior and diabetic pet care a little easier.
We will continue exploring responsible ways to support the website financially, but those plans will not include paywalls or requiring visitors to pay for the tools and services we provide.
Merchandise
A few visitors have noticed that the BellenPaws store is currently unavailable. We temporarily took the store offline and added a notice explaining that we were experiencing problems with our merchandise supplier. The issue stems from the supplier’s requirement that products maintain a certain level of consistent sales in order to remain active. Although we have made some sales, the volume has not been steady enough for the supplier to continue supporting every product listed in our store.
Under normal circumstances, we would expect to receive advance notice before products were removed. In this case, however, we were not notified that the listings were being deactivated. The supplier had not previously enforced this type of policy so aggressively, but beginning after 2025, it appears they began removing inactive or slower-selling merchandise much more frequently. We were not informed of the policy change, and we were also not notified when our products were delisted. Because of that, we decided it would be better to take the store down temporarily rather than leave visitors with incomplete or unavailable product listings.
We are now actively looking for a new merchandise supplier and have already started setting up a few test stores so we can compare quality, reliability, pricing, fulfillment, and overall ease of use. Once that testing is complete and we find the option that works best for BellenPaws, the store section will return to the website. We also hope to bring back many of the same products our visitors have enjoyed in the past.
Google Ads
One revenue option we have continued to pursue is Google AdSense. We have applied several times, and although we have not yet been approved, we plan to keep trying. Each denial has pointed to a different issue, so we have continued reviewing the site and making the requested improvements. Along the way, we have strengthened our content structure, improved navigation, and added schema markup to many of the custom tools and page templates throughout BellenPaws.com.
Those changes help with search engine optimization, but they also give Google a clearer understanding of what the website offers and how its resources are organized for visitors. We understand that a traditional pet blog may not always be viewed as an ideal candidate for advertising approval. However, BellenPaws has grown beyond a standard blog. We continue to publish fresh content while also developing practical tools, calculators, trackers, printable forms, and other resources designed to help senior-pet and diabetic-pet owners.
We believe those additions make the website more useful, more interactive, and more valuable to visitors. We will continue improving the site and addressing any concerns that may affect future applications. Perhaps one day BellenPaws will be approved for Google AdSense, but that day has not arrived yet.
Amazon & Affiliate Marketing
Another revenue option we have explored is affiliate marketing, including participation in the Amazon Associates program. Some of our older articles may still reflect those efforts. The difficulty is that Amazon requires associates to generate a certain level of clicks and qualifying sales within a limited period of time. The exact requirements can vary depending on the program structure, but we have not been able to meet them. During our most recent attempt, we received only one affiliate click over a three-month period, which was far below the level Amazon expected.
We also place limits on ourselves when it comes to affiliate recommendations. We only want to mention or review products that we have personally used and can honestly speak about. That standard is important to us, but it also creates several complications. One example involved an ultraviolet flashlight we purchased for locating pet accidents. The flashlight worked extremely well, and we still use it today. Unfortunately, the original model was eventually discontinued and could no longer be purchased from the supplier or found elsewhere.
The company released a replacement model, but it was not truly comparable. A friend purchased the newer version, and we were able to see firsthand that it had roughly half the power and about half the number of LEDs. We could not honestly recommend the replacement simply because an affiliate link was available.
That experience highlights another problem with affiliate marketing. Products, sellers, and links can change frequently. An article may recommend something useful today, only for the item to disappear, be replaced by an inferior version, or move to a different vendor later. Without consistent referral traffic and sales, Amazon has little reason to keep an associate in the program. At the same time, if products and links are constantly changing, the program becomes less appealing to us as well.
Other affiliate programs tend to operate in much the same way. They may require a certain amount of website traffic, a minimum number of referrals, or a specific number of sales within a set period. In our experience, the basic challenge has remained the same.
We also began working with Partnerize, the company that manages affiliate partnerships for Chewy. Unfortunately, the offer available to us only paid commissions for purchases made by first-time Chewy customers. That is not an especially practical match for a website focused on senior cats and dogs. Common sense suggests that many of the pet owners visiting BellenPaws have already purchased from Chewy at some point, which means most of the people we might refer would not qualify for a commission.
Visitors may still see some affiliate links on BellenPaws in the future, but we remain cautious and somewhat skeptical. We have not yet found an affiliate program that fits our audience, our standards, and the way we want to recommend products. Our past experiences have not been especially positive, so any future partnership will need to be a genuinely good match for both BellenPaws and our visitors.
Donations
We continue to accept donations from visitors who feel that BellenPaws has helped them or their pet in some meaningful way. Donations are never required to use our tools, read our articles, or access our printable resources. They are simply an optional way to say thank you and show support for the work we are doing.
BellenPaws is not a nonprofit organization, so contributions are not tax-deductible. Any money we receive is used to help offset the ongoing costs of maintaining the website and developing free resources for senior-pet and diabetic-pet owners.
Those resources include our online Pet Diabetes Glucose Tracker, printable glucose-tracking forms, cat and dog age calculators, rope-length calculator for DIY cat scratching posts, and our new senior-pet finder feature. Donations can also help support future tools, improvements, maintenance, security, and new educational content.
We will continue building and maintaining BellenPaws because we believe in its purpose and in advocating for senior and diabetic pets. A donation is not what determines whether that work continues. It is simply a welcome sign that our time, experience, and resources have been useful to someone.
In that sense, every contribution feels a little like a pat on the back and a thoughtful way of letting us know that something we created made pet care easier, answered a question, or helped a senior pet and the person who loves them.
New Senior Pet Finder Widget
One of the newest features on BellenPaws is our Senior Petfinder search tool. Most of our visitors are probably already familiar with Petfinder.com, but fewer may know that Petfinder previously offered an API that allowed outside websites to retrieve and display listings for adoptable pets. That API was discontinued in December 2025, reportedly because of concerns over how some websites were using access to the service.
Petfinder later introduced its own widget for rescue organizations. That widget allows shelters and rescues to display their available animals on other websites, helping more people discover pets in need of homes. While that is a useful feature for rescue organizations, it did not quite fit what we wanted to offer here at BellenPaws. Petfinder does, however, provide search filters that make it possible to look for adoptable animals by age, type, and location. Using those filters, we created our own simple tool that sends visitors directly to Petfinder with the search already narrowed to senior pets.
The tool attempts to determine your approximate location through your internet connection and uses that information to prepare a localized search. Location detection is not always exact, especially when an internet provider routes traffic through a nearby city or regional hub. If the detected location is incorrect or too broad, you can enter your ZIP code directly on Petfinder and adjust the search radius to find pets closer to your home.
We initially explored the possibility of displaying Petfinder search results directly on BellenPaws. However, linking visitors to Petfinder with the appropriate filters already applied proved to be the better option. It allows Petfinder to remain the source of the listings without copying its content, embedding its website in a frame, or presenting its results as though they belong to us.
Our Senior Petfinder tool is a simple panel containing two location-based buttons: one for senior cats and one for senior dogs. Selecting either button opens Petfinder.com with the senior age filter, animal type, and approximate location already included, making it easier to begin searching for older pets available for adoption nearby.
In Conclusion
We’re still working behind the scenes.. the site is still growing and there’s still more to come. We still have senior pets in our own home. Bentley is our 11 year senior diabetic feline and his last vet appointment went very well. His glucose numbers are in a stable range. We still have our dog Jack, our 15 year young little Jack Russell Terrier who is starting to show signs of arthritis but still has enough pep to keep up with Bella, our senior 12 year young Maltese.
Stay tuned and always remember our reason for being here… Senior Pets Still Have Love to Give. Peace.