Custom Menu Troubleshooting – My pages are in the wrong order
Check the sub-pages themselves to see if you have established a Parent page and child page “hierarchical structure” in the page attributes module. Remove if required. Also remove any “order” numbers you have assigned that may conflict with the order you are creating by dropping and dragging. Or simply change them so they are the same order as you establish in the menu. Establish consistency – problem solved.

Changing the Order of Menu Items and Creating Sub-Menus
At any time, you can change the order and placement of menu items. Drag and drop the items up and down to change the order of menu items. Drag and drop the items left and right (as shown below) to create sub-menu items. http://en.support.wordpress.com/menus/#changing-the-order-of-menu-items-and-creating-sub-menus

I want the categories to appear hierarchically on the page.

Would a menu support a hierarchical appearance as opposed to the sidebar? In other words, do menus support multiple sub-levels?

Yes.

Pages bloggers create are static and are for content that rarely changes. They sit outside of the blog structure and you cannot post to multiple pages in any blog. There is only one main page for posts in a blog and all posts will display on the main blog page. There is no way to exclude posts from the main posts (blog) page. The front page of the blog by default will display your posts (not pages) in reverse chronological order, with the most recently published post on top.

Though there is only one dynamic page in a blog for posts and we cannot post to more than that one page, we can create the appearance that we have posted to more than one page. We organize posts by assigning categories to them. We can also create a hierachy of categories and sub-categories. When we publish posts, not pages the software automatically adds them to the dynamic Categories and sub-categories pages.

You can create a custom menu and add the dynamic Categories pages and sub-categories pages, which are automatically created by the software when we publish posts, into the custom menu.
create custom menu http://en.support.wordpress.com/menus/
add dynamic category and sub-catgory pages created by the software to it
http://en.support.wordpress.com/menus/#adding-category-pages-to-your-menu
order the dynamic categories and sub-categories pages
http://en.support.wordpress.com/menus/#changing-the-order-of-menu-items-and-creating-sub-menus

Here’s a link to a custom menu walkthrough > http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2011/08/11/wordpress-com-custom-menu-walk-through/

There are many common errors, misunderstanding and misconceptions when creating custom menus and you can read about them here > http://wpbtips.wordpress.com/2011/12/19/custom-menus/

This appraoch is for those who have created a custom menu and have added pages to that custom menu.
create a custom menu http://en.support.wordpress.com/menus/
add the pages and sub-pages http://en.support.wordpress.com/menus/#adding-pages
order them http://en.support.wordpress.com/menus/#changing-the-order-of-menu-items-and-creating-sub-menus

If you have a custom menu then you must establish consistency. Check the Pages sub-pages themselves to see if you have established a Parent page and child page “hierarchical structure” in the page attributes module. Remove if required.

Also remove any “order” numbers you have assigned that may conflict with the order you are creating by dropping and dragging. Or simply change them so they are the same order as you establish in the menu. Establish consistency – problem solved

Thank you.

User advertising is, except for a couple very narrow exceptions, not allowed on wordpress.COM and doing so will get your site suspended or deleted. For the exceptions, see the last sentence under "Affiliate marketing blogs" in the bottom set of bullet points in the "types of blogs" link below.

http://en.support.wordpress.com/advertising/
http://en.wordpress.com/types-of-blogs/
http://en.support.wordpress.com/affiliate-links/

There is a new WordAd feature here at wordpress.com for sites that qualify. It does not allow you to pick or place your own ads though.

http://en.support.wordpress.com/menus/