Ads on Blogs
byRecently, a local blogger was in the news because he’s able to rake in a comfortable sum via the ads he puts on his website [JohnChow.com]. Sometimes ads work on the site, you barely notice them or maybe they’re interesting enough and you click them. With that click, you are putting a couple cents into the pocket of the blog owner and that’s how the game is played.
I’ve often contemplated putting Google Ads on the site, for the purpose of making money, but I’m not sure how annoying that would be. I’d want them to be non-intrusive but then again, if people don’t notice them how are they supposed to click on them? It’s a vicious circle isn’t it.
There are various kinds of ads. The ones that fit snuggly between blog posts, the ones that float in front of your screen that force you to search for the “close” button but not until it’s thoroughly annoyed you, there are sidebar buttons, banner buttons etc. Or there’s the massive site-wide background commercial plastering that apparently showed up on Beyond MySpace Robson this morning (pictured above). Despite their look or feel, we all come to live with ads.
If I started putting them on my site, I’d probably want to support a local business or site. When Matt Good had his adverts up they were for Discollection and Workspace. That totally works for me and they were tastefully placed at the top of the page with an option to turn them on or off.
I’d love to be able to make money off my site but I don’t want to be annoying about it. I still want readers to be able to enjoy the site (erm, which I hope you already do) but have a little bit of income flowing. It’s not selling out, and I don’t want it to look gaudy, so I suppose I just need some help.
8 Comments — Comments Are Closed
Google ads are always a good choice, and you can customize them a little to match the look and feel of your site. Even better, you can pitch to a local business or service you want to support a very reasonable monthly price or a cost per thousand (CPM) performance model. Somewhere in the middle is Commission Junction where you get to pick and choose the ads from a ton of companies, large and small. Each has a variety of banners, buttons, text links, etc with a variety of payout models so you can find the least or most obtrusive ad you’d like or a payment plan that suits your site’s traffic best.
Seriously, do you have any idea what I do for a living? 😛
something to do with sheep?
i have made $23.03 off my stupid ads but most of the problem is my blogads aren’t connected right and my hits don’t count right and i don’t know how to fix it.
$23.03 since you first added them, ever? Eep. I’m really hesitant about the whole ordeal but I’ve been talking about it long enough I better do something about it. So Chris, what do you suggest? 😛
I sort of look at the whole ad thing like collecting pop bottles when I was a kid, just for the extra pennies.
My blog is nowhere near popular enough to even warrant the time for me to sign up for the damn things.
I’d rather try and concentrate on great content (which you have) with decent writing (check again) and a good base of folk that keep coming back…not for the ads…but for the blog. Once I have that, then I think about the ads.
Hey,
I was like you — I wanted to make a few bucks (enough to pay for hosting costs at least), but I also thought ads looked really tacky on a site. So I found a happy medium. If you go to my main page, I don’t show any ads. If you go to a certain posting, you’ll get ads only for that posting. The idea is basically if you come in from a search engine, you’ll get ads, but my main readers who frequent the main page mostly never see any.
I made $15 my first month. Let’s see what month two holds.
I suggest starting off with a Google Adsense account. It’s quick and painless to set up, has good reporting and is customizable enough that it won’t ruin the user experience of your site.
The ads shown are contextually relevant because Google spiders the page to determine what the theme is and serves up ads targeted to related keywords from their search advertisers’ accounts. The side benefit is that if it isn’t already, you get Google visiting your page frequently. Plus, you get somewhere in the area of 50% of the CPC anytime an ad is clicked.
If that goes well, you can try Commission Junction. There’s a little more work involved, but the payoff can be well worth it.
Funny enough, I’ve been considering the same thing for my blog over the past month or so. Again, not that I get a ton of traffic and would make millions, but it seemed like a logical step.
Personally, I like Duane’s suggestion about putting them on specific posts. Make AdSense do the work.
The other reason I considered it was simply to play with another Google app… its one of very few I haven’t tried yet. 😉