Flowers in Midtown Sacramento
I’m planning on starting my own micro-business within the next year. Right now, I’m doing a lot of reading and working on a business plan and I need your help.
I’m trying to decide if I should put Google Ads on RowdyKittens. I’m conflicted about this idea. One one hand, it would be great to have additional income from ads. On the other hand, I don’t know if I want to place ads on the blog for products that I haven’t endorsed.
If I do place ads on the blog, they will be minimal. The most important thing to me is focusing on content and the readers.
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I also would be concerned about the types of ads that may appear. Ads don’t bother me as long as they don’t cover up the content I came here for or do pop-up windows. : )
I totally agree. I want the focus to be on the content and the readers. If I do place ads on the blog, they will be minimal. I HATE pop-up windows; they are evil.
I’m leaning toward promoting a few products that I believe in (like Thesis), versus incorporating Google Ads. I think they would be too distracting. Thoughts?
In my experience adsense does a nice job of delivering contextual ads. It’s not perfect but I also think most people get that. Sites that turn me off appear to be all about the ads. On my monetized sites I’ve been trying to reduce the number of ads because the truth is that there are only a few really good performing locations for ads, so placing ads in those spots returns revenue without cluttering the site too much.
I recently read a post on ZenHabits (http://zenhabits.net/2009/05/zen-habits-declutters-its-ads/) explaining why Leo recently chose to minimize his ads. Since then he’s totally simplified his sites visual design too. This was the post that spurred me to begin to do similarly. I actually plan to make some more UI downsizing changes soon. Just waiting for v.2 of the frugal theme to come out. Eric Hamm is busy with a new baby so I’m understanding and patient.
There are two other popular ways to go with advertising, sell banner space/impressions yourself or through an agency. Many top bloggers scoff at adsense because once you have the traffic you can get ‘real’ advertisers and real regular money.
The benefit of an agency is they handle the account; the downside is probably that you have less say over the ads and you get a cut of the actual ad fee. This is theoretically offset by the fact that a pro agency can get top dollar for your ad space.
The benefit of doing it yourself is that you get all the money; the downside is you must manage the accounts and negotiation.
There is no one right way to to it. I think adsense it great for getting started because you can see an immediate income stream from your blogging. Once you get up into real traffic numbers it probably makes sense to switch to selling ad impressions through an agency or directly.
My plan is to stay with adsense, drop all non-performing affiliates, and wait for the traffic to go up. Right now I’m at about 130K impressions a month. I’d like it closer to 500K before I think it makes sense to spend my time managing accounts but I think I might try seeking direct advertisers before experimenting with agencies.
Before I make any more drastic changes I’ll tap some of the bigger green bloggers I’m getting to know through twitter and see what they say. A few seem to have much more experience with it, and are making their living from it… seems like they would have some good suggestions.
-Michael
P.S… oh the other big way people make money blogging doesn’t require advertising. Instead they write books, ebooks, dvds, plans, etc. Publishing content in other forms and making them available seems to be a really good way to add a small steady revenue stream.
But like all of this… it’s not like any one thing replaces the day-job. It’s a combination of all these little things that eventually add up… or at least that’s how it looks to me.
Michael – thank you so much for all the thoughtful tips. I really appreciate the advice. I read the same article by Leo at Zen Habits and loved it. I keep going back and forth with adopting adsense. I’d like to implement a number of the strategies you talked about for my tiny business, like ads, e-books, classes, etc. An additional “small steady revenue stream” would be nice. Especially, with all the budget cutbacks in CA. I feel fairly secure in my day job, but it’s always nice to have a back-up plan.
Hey Tammy,
I think that you should put ads up because you should do whatever it takes to fund your life and your dream to downsize!
My two cents…
Lelly
Thanks Lelly – Like I was telling Michael, I have been going back and forth with Google Ads. After receiving feedback on the survey and in the comments, a majority of readers seem to be okay with putting a limited number of ads on the blog. So I’m going to try it out.
Thanks for leaving a comment. I had no idea Project Rolling Freedom existed. It’s such a cool idea! Totally awesome!
I’m a quiet follower/subscriber and I just came over to comment (normally just read in my reader). I wanted to say that your work on this blog is Work. You’re creative work is definitely appreciated by me and other readers and you should not feel shy about exploring methods to get some compensation for your production.
I’m not saying to bring on the pop-ups… but do what you need to do!
Hey Tammy! This is something I’ve been hearing a lot about lately, so pretty cool that you should bring it up. I would think it would be great to try it out and see what happens. People come for your great content…I don’t think they would be deterred by a few well placed ads.
Hi Tammy, I pondered this very same thing when I put my site up, should I put ads in. I would be nice if just the hosting could be paid for, but I doubt I have enough readers to warrant it. I’m leaning towards an affiliate account at Amazon or similar so I can recommend books I’ve read and liked, or found helpful. If I get more traffic I might consider google ads, but I don’t want to detract from the content or simple layout of the page.
I think, for you, it would probably be a good idea to try it for a little while and see whether you like the look of the page and what comments you receive as feedback from your readers.
J.
I have faith that you will only do tastefully minimal ads. Not that I would stop reading either way (I know I’m replying late and you’ve already figured things out, I am just adding to the thought process).
Google ads are everywhere. If you can make them work for you, I don’t think too many people would be turned off by them. Everyone is accustomed to them by now. I hope you are able to make money from promoting products you particularly like (I want Thesis real bad). I personally would rather buy things that people I like have tried and can recommend, but I am just one person.
No matter what decision you make about this or any other about your blog, you will always get pros and cons, just like anything in life. Hopefully the vampires will leave you alone, though
Thanks James – I appreciate the feedback and I really hope the vampires leave me alone.
P.S. Thesis rocks! If you have questions about the theme, let me know. I absolutely love the Thesis community. Every time I have a question, someone is there to help. It’s nice because I’m not a code ninja. LOL.
Hi Tammy,
I had Google ads on my blog for a couple years and amassed a grand fortune of $44.37 up until I removed the Ads. For me it didn’t make sense to continue muddying up my site with something that seemingly detracted from the user experience and “cost” more than it was worth. This is just my opinion – I don’t have zillions of visitors… The real money is in ad space sold pixel x pixel sized….
Thanks Katie. I appreciate your input.
If I don’t make any money, I’m going to take the ads down. More than anything, I was hoping to offset the expense of my domain name registration and server fees. We’ll see how it goes…