March 13, 2005
Ads and Disadvantages
Today I tweaked the sidebars on this weblog, including getting rid of the crappy border and inserting a couple of ads. That's correct, scrubbles is no longer ad-free -- but of course it won't affect the content here. I used companies for which I'm a happy customer anyway (Amazon, Netflix and iTunes), placed in a manner to be as unobtrusive as possible. Not that I expect to make much off 'em, but every little bit helps. Who knows, you might someday find a PayPal tip jar joining them.
What do you think about ads on weblogs? Personally I don't mind them too much as long as they aren't obnoxious or offensive. The hard truth is that, now that I'm no longer on a regular income, I need to look into as many ways of getting revenue as possible. One thing I did NOT want to do is Google ads - those benign but annoying columns of text that kinda sorta have something to do with the accompanying weblog's content, but they really don't and so spotting them constitutes some sort of weird game of wordy mix 'n match. Having so little control over what goes into them would personally drive me up a wall, but their popularity must mean Google is doing something right.
Posted by mhinrichs at March 13, 2005 04:27 PM
Not to fret, Matt--
In some twisted way, the presence of ads gives your site even MORE street cred.
They add color, let the eye rest between content, and are small and tasteful.
Since when is commerce bad? Since when is making some money off a labor of love a crime?
When editorial is affected, or the ads are more exciting than the content, that is when.
I don't think you'll EVER need to worry about that.
Your berth on the WWW is already legend, and paying bills is sexy.Thus endeth my sermon.
Thanks, Brad.
I'd like to know if the ads are lagging the load time on the page too much. And if the Google ads (or any ads) really work. Ideas? Successes? Failures?
The ads look fine to me -- if anything I'd put them up higher on the page -- and they don't seem to cause any lag. In my experience, Google ads do work better than the various affiliate programs from Amazon, Netflix and company. You're right that they don't exactly make for the most attractive option design-wise, but at least you can customize the colours. You can also filter out advertisers that show up but have no relevance to your site.
I took Google ads off my blog's index and category pages; there were too many topics to generate any meaningful ads. At the individual post level, though, the ads are usually pretty relevant. and get a decent clickthrough.
The real fun of GoogleAds is seeing the bizarro stuff that comes up. It's like playing some strange word-association game with desperate online retailers.
