I have some ads in my sidebar. Just the basic Adsense ads, nothing I spent much time setting up. I’ve considered adding more, and it’s likely I will at some point, but I’m having trouble getting past my old ad-free mindset.
I had a family site on Geocities back in the day (I love talking like a crotchety old man) and it was fine, but at one point I decided to spend the money for a hosted site with my own domain. The main reason at the time was so that I could run an ad-free site. Of course, the Geocities ad profits were going to Geocities, not me. Ads on my sites now at least partially benefit me, and that’s a big change.
I still hesitate at times before I click on ads on blogs and such. though. I’m getting better about it, because I know it benefits the blogger, who is probably barely making enough income to cover hosting costs, if they’re lucky!
I know some people make good money with ads. They’re the ones who have ads placed all over the page, within the text, inside of each post… and some of them are really interesting blogs that I learn a lot from. I understand that they should have a way to profit from the advice they give out.
But I don’t see myself traveling down that road, at least not with my own sites (client sites, of course, are another matter, and I’d have no issue designing an ad-heavy site!) I like my blogs to be clean, and uncluttered. It’s a personal preference, but I hope my readers appreciate it as well. I often feel assaulted on ad-heavy blogs, it’s just too much visual information. When I get my business site up and running I don’t really want to be a platform for other businesses, so I’ll likely only be setting up affiliate links for services and products I actually use.
Any ads I place here in the future will remain as unobtrusive as possible. Some might say I’m throwing income away, but I don’t see it that way. Am I truly missing the boat here?
3 Comments
Hi, discovered you through Twittermap looking for more New Jersey bloggers …
Are you missing the boat? Possibly. With Google AdSense which targets ads based on content, sometimes the ads end up being almost valuable navigation for your readers.
I’d try putting your adsense block between the end of the blog post and your comment form. This would give your readers a “next link” to click through after they’re done reading your blog entry that could net you some small CPC income.
Of course, this all predicates on the fact that what you blog about is content that advertisers are trying to target. There could be useful ads or there might not be. I always keep an eye on what ads are being served (and which ones are being clicked through) on my blog, to ensure that there’s at least some chance that the ads are benefitting some of my audience.
It does sound simple. The ads I’ve been seeing here are pretty relevant (although now I’m seeing PSAs, I hope I didn’t anger the goog gods by posting this!) Neat that you found me via twittermap!
I read some pretty ad-heavy blogs myself, but have somehow trained myself over the years to not really see them. I guess all those ads in commercial sites served some purpose, though I do the same thing when I read the newspaper. I only wish I could train myself to tune out TV commercials without having to resort to the mute button!