Blog Advertising
Each month this year, I've seen a steady increase in the number of visits to this site. January through May, traffic grew from twenty to twenty two thousand visits each month. Then the numbers exploded into thirty three thousand in June, and sixty thousand in July! August saw just under sixty thousand visits. July was something of a ringer for my stats, because July had the WordPress Backup Week, for which I released the WP-DB Backup plugin (thanks again to Owen for his phenomenal contributions to that!).
I know a lot of people spend a lot of time and energy trying to drive traffic to their sites. These people are almost all trying to get eyeballs to the advertisements adorning their pages, and are not always strictly interested in giving the visitors meaningful content. And still other people spend a lot of time and energy trying to put advertisements on their sites to begin with.
I've been thinking a lot about ads, lately. I imagine (though don't know for sure) that I could earn some modest spending cash from ads on this site, given the volume of traffic. The money would be useful. But I worry that I'd then begin to focus on ensuring that eyeballs come back to see the ads on my site. I'd switch from full-text feeds to summary feeds, to force readers to click through to read my posts. I'd sprinkle ads between the posts, to ensure that you, the reader, would see them, instead of just ignoring everything in the sidebar as I so often do. I'd labour over writing posts that earn traffic, as opposed to posts that are indpendently meaningful. In short, things would change for the worse.
I didn't start this blog, or this website, to make money. I started it to share my thoughts; and then to contribute to the collective body of knowledge about a variety of subjects. I enjoy the interactions I've had with people from all over the world. I enjoy not worrying about how many visitors I've had in any given month; and I enjoy being surprised when a post I make receives a lot of traffic.
I've earned a few bucks, and a few luxury items, from my WordPress plugins. Some folks have donated cash; others have purchased items from my Amazon wishlist. These are so much more meaningful -- and genuine -- to me than any advertising revenue.
I'm not saying that advertisements are necessarily bad; though I do think that they are increasingly diminishing the usability of many websites.
What do you think?
I think that unless you're moving to Britain, you should learn to spell 'labor.' I also think ads are a necessary evil. For my own site, I have store at Cafe Press that has earned me like $2.00 to date. Like you, my site is for my own gratification and is an attempt to contribute intellectually to the world, so I'm not too concerned with the financial aspects of things. That being said, a few quid in your pocket aren't all bad.
I've been debating the exact issue. I've had google ads on my site before. I kept them in the footer. I think one month I made 32 cents. I decided that it just wasn't worth it.
On the same note, small ads do not bother me. As long as they don't blink, flash, pop up and I can still read what I need to, I've become blind to them...
This is more of a "What does Skippy think" than a "What do we think" question.
If I were to ever use adverts, it would only be to support the website they are displayed on. I am in the blog community for the same reasons: to interact with other people and to have my ideas and opinions heard and to contribute to the information on certain subjects...not to make a profit.
Due to this mentality of mine, there is a 99% chance that I will never put an ad on my site, unless if I decide to host a internet forum on my server space in which I would need help from members to curb the cost of keeping the forum up in the first place...not to line my pockets.
But this is different than offering goods and services. I have done webpage and software setup commisions for other people and the money either went to the cost of keeping my blog up or to keep me alive by buying my month's supply of ramen!
There are ads and then there are too many intrusive ads. I can't believe the horror that the new Onion site design has become, mainly to support more ads. www.theonion.com. Conversely, the New York Times has successfully provided meaningful content with ads for the larger part of American history, so I think you can find a way to do it too.
I think I have made about $20 on advertising over four months. That's not much, really.
You have a little more traffic to your site and might make more. You could consider having the one small text ad, and see how that goes. For an example, see http://www.silfverduk.us.
Go for it, Skip! You know you want to be a corporate whore deep down. ;)
Honestly, though - if the extra traffic doesn't equal increased costs for you (bandwidth charges, etc.), and you're not nuts about the idea of advertising I say don't bother. On the other hand, however, (essentially) free money isn't bad. I'd plaster pop-up ads all over my site if I had more than three hits a month. :)
Since I'm all about the BLOGLINES Rss feed, I don't really notice ads on many sites. ALthough some bloggers do code them into their atom or rss feeds.
The question which prings to mind, is who actually clicks the horrid things? I sure don't.
Ever thought about a paypal Donate button? Maybe that would be a less intrustive, albeit more cheeky method of gaining revenue.
As long as you can control (1) the kind of ad and (2) the placement of the ad, they don't have to be that distracting.
I hate banner ads, but text ads are okay. I tend to gloss over them, anyway. I think most people do. Since they're ubiquitous anyway, the only people you'll drive away are the anti-everything crowd.
And I think you should use the word blogvertising.
I debated this exact same issue recently. I noticed from my stats that I was getting highly placed in search engines for a number of topics and getting a lot of new visitors who didn't ever return.
I figured that these are the sort of people who are more likely to click on a relevant ad than my more tech savy reader so I added some Adsense text ads to see how things would work out.
I resolved from the start to not change my feeds from full-text to summary just to drive more ad clicks and to not write about specific topics just to get ad revenue.
The most important thing for me about adverts is that they should fit in with the site and should not be over the top - think of it as providing your readers with related resources that might interest them.
A couple of subtle ads on a high traffic site can be unobtrusive to the flavour of the site and still generate a nice little income stream. It's all about balance and what makes you feel comfortable.
You seem to have already weighed up the pros and cons for yourself. You are right in that a site created to make money and with money as it's motivation will take on a different aspect. But if you keep service as your motivation a balance can be achieved.
I have a few sites that I have over optimised to death for the sake of money and I honestly don't think it's raised the bottom line at all.
P.S
Don't worry about money my friend with this amount of traffic you are already sitting on a goldmine. Write for your pleasure and for others and more good things will come. Now I've just got to learn to take my own advice.
advertising is the backbone of the internet. people come online to find things and by association therefore need advertisers to point them on their way. the only drawback is when people throw advertisng in your face with pop-ups and ... slide in....wait for it....ads !!
the only thing i find worse is people blogging about stupid things like what shoes they are wearing and what their new skateboard looks like....
which reminds me..i have this great new skateboard if you wanna come see it ? ;-)
take it easy..interesting blog btw :-)
James