I’ve been playing around with advertising on my site for the last few months. It used to be that you’d land here and see an advertisement on the header (that space where it’s got my name) and one or two more on the sidebar. They’ve provided a fairly good source of income during the last year but they also annoy me.
In fact ads annoy me so much that I’ve installed adblock to my browser, this prevents me from seeing ads on your site. I find them distracting and it makes your words less meaningful for me. Adblock is a terrible solution and when I use it I’m making the economy a little worse for many of you but it’s the only solution that’s worked for me.
For a few months I used Ad Injection and showed ads only to folks who came here from search engines. I figured you were less devoted to the site than other readers are so you’d get less of a welcome. It worked okay but it still didn’t feel right.
I’ve thought about sidebar ads like Jenny The Bloggess does. I’m not sure how I’d go about that or if there’d be much demand. I can be polarizing and that’s not good for a whole lot of people.
Currently the only way to make real money with my ad network is to run ads that include video. I’m pretty sure that you don’t want to have video screaming at you while you read this post (or any other) so I’ve elected to not accept those ads.
Blogging is not my hobby. It’s not something I’d do if there wasn’t a dollar value assigned to it so I’m in a weird space of trying to decide how best to proceed. I have brand partnerships and y’all have loved hearing about so many of them like Previlean and Tide that I’m wondering if display ads need to exist at all.
I love what I’ve built here and I’m aware that it’s not something I’ve built to suit me. It’s built for guests, for readers, for you. And right now I’m trying to figure out how to keep the lights on without taking away from your experience. I may put ads back up in twenty minutes. I haven’t really made any decisions but I do know that I’d like to be mindful.
I have to admit, when I came to your site today (after missing out and missing you on Momversation I finally searched your blog out) I was surprised at how calm it was. No crazy ads, nothing flashing at me or random videos kicking in, it’s nice. However, although I enjoy the Zen feel of it I understand that the advertisements make a financial difference.
I love your thought of being mindful and using partnerships you believe in. Now I’m going to go google Previlean because I’m curious as to what you were talking about in your last post.
Thank you for not putting on those video ads, or any video that starts automatically when the site comes up. I hate that!! I’ll often open mulitple windows at once and then have to click through three or four sites just to find where the verdamnt noise is coming from and it’s really bad if it’s below the fold. Argh!
I hear you on trying to make this whole thing pay – and I’m not convinced advertising is the way to go, so I’m working through that whole issue even now.