When Should You Put Ads On Your Blog?
written by John Chow
This is one of the most asked questions I receive and there really isn’t a right or wrong answer for it. There are basically two schools of thought.
Don’t Put Up Ads Until You Have Traffic
The logic behind this is when you’re starting out you want to work on building traffic and not on ad sales. You need traffic to make money and when you have no traffic, there’s no need for ads because it won’t make anything. At first, this seems logical. However, ad sales doesn’t have to take up any of your time. Networks like Google AdSense, TTZ Media, Kontera, Text Link Ads, etc. do all the ad sales for you so you can concentrate on building traffic.
Put Up Ads From The Get Go
The logic behind this is if having ads on your blog doesn’t really require additional efforts, then why not just put them up at the beginning? One of the advantages of ads from the get go includes better control of the look and feel of your blog. If you create your blog without any ads and then add them later, it may look tacked on instead of an integrated part of the site. By designing the blog with advertising from the beginning, you could save yourself a redesign later.
The other advantage is your readers would already be use to seeing your blog with ads on it. This helps to prevent the negative comments that always seems to come up whenever a blog without any ads starts running them.
What Should You Do?
My personal preference is start a blog with ads from the get go. While it is true that this blog didn’t have any advertising on it until eight months later it wasn’t because I was trying to build traffic. It was never my intention to place any ads on this blog. This was my personal blog to ramble, it was never designed to be a make money online blog. It only became one because of the case study to show that money can be made by blogging.
Every commercial sites that I’ve started had advertising on it from the very beginning because advertising isn’t just about placing some banner ads here and there. Advertising should be part of the site design. Those “Recommended Moneymakers” icons at the top right are integrated with the look and feel of this blog by design and not by accident.
The question isn’t when to add advertising. The question is whether to add advertising or not. John Chow dot Com started as a personal blog and as a personal blog I felt there should be no ads on it. However, if my goals for the blog when it started was to create a commercial make money online blog, there would have been advertising on it from day one.
Don’t Be Afraid of Too Much Ads
The amount of ads you can place on your blog is directly proportionate to the amount of traffic you have - the more traffic, the more ads. It is a myth that readers leave blogs because of too much advertising. If you were to list the top reasons for readers to leave, too many ads wouldn’t be in the top 10.
Look at a blog like Engadget. There are 21 ads on the front page. If it’s true that readers leave because of too many ads, Engadget wouldn’t be getting over 50 million page views per month. However, you have to keep in mind that Engadget didn’t start with 21 ads. They started with three and added more as their traffic increased.
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I read a similar post about this topic on another blog this week. It’s an interesting debate. I personally displayed ads from the beginning so I could get a feel for what my design would look like when I added more content and widgets.
Would that be Shoemony? hehe… this IS an interesting debate, “To advertise or not to advertise”
To be or not to be, i agree with John Chow, let it be since the very beginning. And I have to agree with Mr Chow even for the fact that visitors don’t leave a website because of ads, usually people that don’t like ads will simply ignore them.
Great post John, and thanks for the great read.
Well…. I am really in the middle of everyone and i think it’s great that the two best guys in money making are fightin’ for some traffic and readership. Whether one guy wins over the other is not the case here, it’s really that they are working off each other…. which is evil of all…
There’s no debate. Just put the ads on your website. There’s absolutely nothing to lose
I believe it was on Shoemoney’s site…
It’s definintly a good idea to integrate ads on your site from the get go if that is your plan for the long run, otherwise people start accusing you of beinga sell out.
yeh, i was afraid of that but i started with affiliate ads to start off. now i am adding direct sales so it shouldnt be that much different to readers.
Definitely not too many from the start though
Yep, I agree. It is important to get more readers at first.
definitely but if you have really really good content, i don’t think bombing your site with ads are not a bad idea.
For example, your site got digged or stumbled with some really idiotic video….
… people would go there to watch the idiotic video, but if they see an interesting ad they will click
What if it’s not a blog but a content site? Most of my websites have visitors, not readers. Return readers very very rarely click on ads anyway.
I very much agree.
So I guest you added ads on your special project blog from the start
I don’t mind seeing ads on new blogs anyway. I even find it weird when I don’t see them.
When will we actually get a chance to see this new special project blog. If not the actual site how about giving us an update on whats going on?
This is a very interesting post. I will be launching a new blog in a few
weeks, and I will start you with ad. Most of the ad will be for Clickbank products directly related to my blog.
I guess you must input all the affiliate banners later on after your pre-sales article though.
Putting up a affiliate banner without introducing it to your visitors will not bring buyers to it though.
I’m just finishing up a response on my blog to Neil’s article at ShoeMoney.com too.
I think it’s easier to accept a blog plastered with ads, once the site has proven its worth.
Another argument not to add ads in the beginning is that they won’t make you any money before you have at least a decent level of traffic.
But when you start to get traffic your core readers wont have a pronblem recomending your site or calling you a sel out.
If the blog is worth (i.e. if the blog has quality content) they won’t mind recommending your blog before and after you place ads.
The only difference is that when you add ads since the beginning your core readers (most probably) will become ad blind and won’t mind those ads (if they are the same). Personally I am almost ad blind on the ads that John Chow has on the top right sidebar, but every month I am curious (and do click them) on the new ads, there always might be something that could be useful for me and I will NOT know if I don’t click those ads.
I agree for the most part. The most important thing is to NOT crowd your content with advertisements. Then it becomes annoying to readers.
yes, just stick with regular ads, not one of those cnet ads where you have to see the ad before going to the content, THAT is annoying and that is why I only goto CNET for downloads or whenever I want to download something there. But I do totally hate the ads on CNET…
[...] blogs will be able to make any type of recommendation and they will see a return. Just look at JohnChow for example. He can make a recommendation on ANYTHING and he will make money off of it. Five [...]
I agree, excellent read John. I usually start monetizating my blogs, when they reach the 1000 uniques a day milestone, sometimes i wait even more.
Wow, if this is so, I won’t get any chance of monetising my blog.
Don’t wait to reach 1000 uniques. Sometimes people find the ads more interesting than your content
Why? I can make more than $1000 a month without trying too hard from a webiste with less than 1,000 uniques a day. What do you gain by waiting?
Why wait that long? 1000 visitors is more than enough to monetize.
I would agree, putting ads on at the beginning seems to be the best way to go. Even a blog with only 150 page views like mine still makes $150 a month. Thats even better rates than you!
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Maybe its because your drop you link in the sig of your comment??!?! Hey john when you gonna approve my comments?
Now that we are talking about starting weblogs… what happened to that “secret weblog” you started sometime ago, the one you were not going to say the name as you wanted it completely anonymous? I haven’t read again about it! Are you still up with it?
It’s still going. Right now it’s building content.
Give us an update!
I’ll be waiting for the launch. Are you just trying to see if you can build another one naturally?
Very intrigued to see what this is.
yeah, where IS the secret site? Maybe you could google it????
i agree that ads should be part of the design
i think that just putting a few ads doesnt really hurt for personal or commercial blogs/sites as long as it dont intrude readers.
sometimes it is the ads that makes your site looks like a site. personally i dont mind looking at ads (especially creative ones) but i prefer ads to rotate else i will be sick of looking the same ads over and over again.
I’ve done both. You’re right, no ads from the start usually means a redesign or a hacked up look. With my new blog I went with ads from the start.
Same thing here, I preferred ads at the startup so that the whines are not that loud when I start with no ads but add it in later.
There is no problem with placing ads on any content site, as long as the ads are relevant to users. Every quality publication from Forbes to the NYTimes has ads and these sites are beacons of the online publishing industry.
I’m try to decide whether I should put up ads on my new site. I think tho that visitors appreciate clean and ad less sites.
*another micro-investment site at http://www.wikillionaire.com, feel free to visit it. With the success of MillionDollarWiki, I just had to create my own.
Your advertiser: “Incomes from $200,000 to $400,000 or more are realistic results from ordinary people!”
What a joke
Since the redesign of John Chow, 125×125 blog ads have popped up a ton more sites. I’ve received a decent amount of emails asking me to advertise on these blogs. It’s funny to see the comparisons in price when you compare them to JohnChow.com rates/rss/traffic.
LOL, can’t believe it your getting cold called on the internet.
John I agree with you about putting ads from the start. Otherwise as you gain readers, they may leave after seeing tons of ads added all at once. Another thing of note is some of the advertising programs want you to have a decent Alexa traffic rank before even allowing you to run their ads, so those can wait.
I agree. The earlier you start, the earlier you get to test and see what works and what doesn’t.
For instance, I started with a big google image ad in the middle of every post. But it wasn’t performing well so I took it off, and my blog is better for it. I can make up for it and begin planning where I’ll add additional ad space in the meantime before I get too popular.
I think its perfectly acceptable to over monetize your blog if you have GREAT contents from the start.
By ads, John means private ads right? AdSense shouldn’t count… the program itself is a joke.
Very interesting article. A great topic that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. I started my blog with no monetization, but definitely am going to be placing them on there after reading this.
Thanks!
This sounds like a case of “do as I say, not as I do”.
I fundamentally disagree with monetizing a blog in any way before it gets any traffic.
The idea that somehow people will STOP reading because you monetize in the future is ridiculous. After all, you followed the
“no ads in the beginning, monetize later”, with this blog and it worked extremely well.
From a reciprocity, social proof, viral word of mouth perspective - NON blog monetization is FAR more efficient in promoting a new blog.
Certainly other blog owners, directory owners, and anyone with an interest in LINKING or DISCUSSING a blog is going to be far more likely to link/discuss YOUR blog if it has no ads on it.
The only exception to this rule is if you are already a perceived authority in the market.
Monetizing from the get go is like dragging a 400 pound bag up a mountain - sure you may eventually get there - but why not climb up first and send for the helicopter once your on top?
I agree with including ads as well, just think your readers will like the blog better if its well placed. Not just slapped everywhere. As long as the blog is neat it will be a good thing.