molly.com
Tuesday 28 March 2006
Ad or Subtract
Someone mentioned I should reconsider having ads on my site. This is something I’ve not done, ever, with the exception of the paid blogging experience for Marquis sometime back.
I’m interested: Are you for, against or don’t care regarding ads here?
Filed under: policies, professional
Posted by: Molly | 02:22 | Comments (82)
On one more note to add to my previous comment. Remember the “Crap Filter” people put on. They’ll know where your ads are and will continually ignore them for the rest of their existence. I’d rather drop in 20 bucks every so often via paypal donation.
Molly, ADS – a total NO NO!
You have an outstanding viewership. You can select the ads that you publish. Why settle for adsense. Make your own Ad Scheme and your own rates. Ads suck if you dont endorse and believe in them yourself. /points at The Deck. Eh girlfriend, if you’re endorsing ‘em… I’m buying it.
I’ll echo what many here have already said: properly used, ads are non-intrusive and possibly very lucrative. I would prefer text ads to images or (God forbid) Flash, and most of what I’ve read indicates contextual text ads are more effective anyway. I trust you to integrate them into the layout in a way that catches the eye, but doesn’t annoy.
I say go for it, and best of luck getting in on some of the AdSense payola everyone keeps talking about.
You might also consider Amazon’s affiliate program if you aren’t already using it. Hasn’t made a dime for me, but I seriously doubt that my site attracts the kind of traffic yours does either.
Do it! Earn a few bucks, you deserve some income from this.
Molly, please do not use Google/Yahoo/etc. contextual ads. Use the kind that 9rules and Whitespace have. Good, serious advertisers offering good products. With the amount of readership you get, they’ll be excited to advertise here.
Go for it
You’ve put a lot of heart and soul into this blog and you aren’t going to lose your readers if you put up ads. If you can, be selective and target us and market with ads about the things you write about. Either way, I think we’d all rather see a few ads on the site, than see a ‘page not found’ one day because you couldn’t pay the bills. I’ll keep reading, either way.
you should try – it allows you at least cover hosting cost (good hobby should cost you $0
)
I say do it if you want to. Ads don’t bother me as long as they don’t pop up, blink or otherwise annoy, and I’d click through to something that interested me. Can you work a deal with Amazon or other affiliates for more than just the pittance AdSense pays? Go for it!
I’m sure we’re not talking about interstitials and half-page ads here. Do what you need to do. Maybe even sell sponsorships. There’s a nice groovy patch of white space just above your “Upcoming Events” content that would be a great spot for a “Sponsored by” logo.
Go for it. You’ve worked hard to become a credible voice; you deserve a little payback. I don’t think you’d lose or offend your readership (at least, those who are not married to their agendas). Also, there are some ad programs out there that are fairly unobtrusive, are vaguely relevant based on your content, and whose visual appearance you can control.
No pop-ups!! (although I’m using FF so they get blocked). But Google-like text-only ads are ok
Nope, no ads. Don’t sell your soul to the devil.
Don’t listen to John. Ads are fine…
But seriously,
I think there’s a place for ads. For instance, the program running on ALA, Daring Fireball and a few others is relevant, discreet, and actually worth clicking.
That’d be what I’d like to see here.
You’ve got bills to pay and I trust you not to use intrusive popup flash-tastic horrors
I also think you could get away with some discreet ‘cover shot/link to purchase’ promos for your books and other recommended titles.
Ultimately, I’d say go with your gut feeling – are you comfortable with the idea?
OK, as the guy who suggested Adsense in my comments about your last post I’ve got to throw my rant in here. People can like or dislike ads all they want, but they have NO standing to tell you it is wrong to advertise. You need money. You have a popular site. Magazines have ads. Newspapers have ads. TV shows have ads.
As for annoyances, You KNOW how to design tastefully. You are not going to ruin anyone’s life with an ad. Check out my poewar.com site. The ads are NOT obtrusive. There are no pop-ups and the ads are the same color as the rest of my site. My site is less popular than yours but about many similar subjects. In my worst months I make $500 off the ads and I’ve had months that made $1500. Use Adsense! They pay well and you never have to worry about satisfying the needs of a particular advertiser because you don’t decide who advertises, they bid based on your content, whatever it may be. If you find an advertiser offensive or get a complaint, you can BLOCK them.
Ads can help you, and anyone who thinks your site doesn’t deserve to make money should be downright ashamed of themselves. The revenue-free era of the Internet ended the day the first company charged a customer for dial-up. This is a capitalist country and ads can keep food on your table without costing these objectors a single cent.
It just ticks me off when people get on a high horse about running ads, as if it is some violation of artistic purity. Total BS. Nobody pays to visit your site and nobody has to click on the unobtrusive ads you will choose to run. You are too smart to ever run some flashing animation or other unpleasant ad. My only fear is that you’ll give up on the idea just to please these people, most of which have steady jobs and reasonable incomes and would never give up a cent of their paycheck for you.
Rant Over. Go about your business.
J.C.
Ads don’t bother me. I never click on them, and I subscribe to your RSS anyway. As long as you can earn extra revenue, and the majority of your readers are okay with ads I say go ahead.
Keep up the good work by the way… I’ve had one of your books for years and never realised until I bought Zen of CSS design.
Don’t waste your money doing it. No one pays attention to those things anyway.
I think you should advertise, like they all say just to pay your hosting if for nothing else. And there again you are imparting useful knowledge for free so why not have a little revenue from it, especially if it allows you to go to more conferences and feed back more useful info to us your avid readers.
You could go adsense, and that way its easy and mostly relavent. If you wanted to go the manual route you could use others that allow you to host the data / images yourself, so more accessible, quicker to load and these often generate more per clickthough, but then you do have to manually update. My other half had a competitions website that did that.
I’d deffinately put some paid for links to your own books whatever you do, just because it where people want to go next.
all the best
Nick
I use an adblocker to remove advertising on sites, but if I read a website regularly I always whitelist it because I figure that if I enjoy it I should help, in some small way, to pay for it.
Though that depends on whether the site owner puts advertising right in the middle of the content — like you see on so many news sites. I find it amazing that people do that! I don’t mind adverts on the side, or on the top, or between content and footer, but right in the middle of the content is going a little too far in my opinion.
Powell’s Books has a easy generous affiliate program. I checked a couple of days ago, they listed maybe 35 of your books. They carry new and used. They help you develop the link from your site to theirs. Maybe put the links on your site instead of the blog.
BTW, the state of Arizona has an health insurance program for small businesses. A friend recently signed up and is saving several hundred dollars a month. I think you call the Insurance Commission.
Most people who make a financial success as a singlepreneur hire a success coach. I think you would find Philip Humbert compatible with your philosophy. You can get his newsletter and check him out.
The e-zine queen (www.ezinequeen.com) has an highly thought of program for bringing in good bucks with a newsletter. She has two newsletters. Right now she seems all impressed with how much money she is making, but people who use her program are impressed with THAT.
Steve Denning has a solid site regarding corporate story telling. There are others with fluff. He is solid. I think you could make profitable use of his ideas.
There is The Funnel – with various adjectives. You have pieces that you give away that draw in a lot of people; pieces that you charge a small amount for that draw in fewer people who get more interested in your work; etc. until you have a service or product that you charge BIG bucks for and only a few people buy. You meet your needs to share AND your need to have money and recognition.
Middleton, the Info Guru, good info about doing business on the web in a gracious, polite, dignified manner.
Coachville.com has a wide range of free teleclasses (well, except for the phone charge, which is reasonable) from which to choose to find out lots of info about how to generate adequate cash from what you do with varying degrees of grace and dignity.
There are some interesting niches in your field.
Oh, and Women In Technology International (WITI) as a place to discover niches.
Am I rich? No. Am I gonna be? I don’t know. Have I studied this in case I find a focus? For about 6 years.
Do I wish there were a way for me to access your expertise besides your books and articles. Yes. Right now I’d be high in your funnel, out there in the cheap seats, but….
I think you should go for it. It’s your site and you have a right to get some compensation for all of your work in keeping it up. Your readers benefit from having access to a well done and interesting site, ads or not. That said, no Flash please!
My vote is No to ads, but yes to a “Support Molly” link to something like PayPal. Good luck with everything Molly.
I would like to place a free no cost ad for a business opps.
Investor/partner wanted for profitable New Model(Start-up) Bus. needed ($210k complete) George 1-866-566-4237 vm/fax National chain potential.Or E-mail tothepres@yahoo.com (subject line start-up)
Molly
It’s all about choice and no one can make it for tou follow wht feels right and success is yours whatever you decide this is clearly a poplular site
I think I would first echo all of those who have suggested that ads done appropriately, as I have no doubt yours would be, would not only not disturb your content but might actually benefit your site in more ways than merely those financial. Several have suggested ads that fit in with your particular style and point of view, and choosing an ad format that would minimize distraction. I would add to these comments, though, that – at least in one sense – adding ads might actually help you to increase traffic and gain exposure. Whether or not this is a good thing, I think it is true that we as a society tend to see “commercial” ventures as more “serious.” That doesn’t mean that some of us who are more enlightened don’t understand the value of a commercial-free enterprise, but commercials for some reason or other do seem to confer a level of importance to a venture. So your numbers might actually increase.
I’ve created some blogs and baby web sites for some people and most of them hate ads on their site. They think it’s messy and make their site look cheap.