blogger.com the most popular blog site used to push ads themselves, They then changed their approach and removed their advertisements to enable their users to be able to run their own ads and earn a income. Matthew Haughey wrote about his experience in an essay called Blogging for Dollars in which he included four of his own hints.
Putting ads on your blog is pretty much the same routine as adding a hit counter, a quiz, a guestbook or any other blog add-on.
I run Targeted Google Ads on MY blog, and I dont see anything wrong with it. I dont get paid for blogging my thoughts, I do it because I like to share the thought and hope it helps someone; but in the process if I generate a wee bit of revenue from it, Why Not ?
On the Same subject: Biz Stone a fellow blogger who works on Blogger at Google wrote a review on the book Who Let the Blogs Out; which makes some pretty good reading too..
The Revolution Is Being Bloggerized !!
Brice Dunwoodie the co-founder of CMS wire writes "Not that there's anything wrong with this. In fact its all positive from what I see. "
All in all Blogs + AdSense = BlogSense
All said and done, I would have to disagree on Daniels comment on "ads as an indication of a lack of respect for the readers and medium".
I didn't say there are no revenues to be made from open source software. I just think that having no value add other than claiming to know how it works seems like a shadey way to earn a living.
The point that I was dancing around and never quite got to is that I'm against the commericalization of blogs. One of the charms of blogs is that they have a sense of intimacy about them; you're getting a direct feed into someone's head. Pasting adds for super cheap refinancing and OS optimizers all over a blog goes a long way towards making me question whether the blogger is even remotely sincere.
The targeted ads from google that you and Tim Bray are using are actually not that bad. First off, they're text only, so the bologna loads quickly and doesn't dance. Second, they blend pretty well into the background. I can't say I endorse them, but I am certainly not offended by them.
Posted by Daniel Templeton on May 12, 2005 at 11:01 AM EDT #
I would have to gree with you on the part where super cheap refinancing ads or OS optimiser ads sitting smack in between content that has no relevance to it may be disturbing for the user... But having said that, I would tend to believe that it would apply to the non-bloggers too. Here's an example:
- A yahoo News Report on Iraqui violence has ads on Yahoo Music sitting right in the smack center of the report!!
- A Article on writing java applications with swing has a microsoft visual studio ad sitting in the smack center
- cNET.com has ads splashed all over it
likewise... so do most of the content websites out there...Howerver most of these ads that generate revenues are served through providers like DoubleClick, Overture etc.. Googles adsense is more subject/content oriented and does not have unrelated ads<em> they are not perfect either.. it sometimes does show un related ads and public service ads when content changes from page to page.
Posted by Rohan Pinto on May 12, 2005 at 11:23 AM EDT #
How do you spell ADVICE ?? Advise ??
Posted by Jeffrey Hill on May 12, 2005 at 01:02 PM EDT #
advice is a noun with a C; advise is a verb with an S. C comes before S.
Noun starts with an N; verb starts with a V. N comes before V.
Noun --- advice
---------------
Verb --- advise
N comes before V.
C comes before S.
It took me a little while to tell them apart <em>(I still get confused sometimes)</em>. But this post by Kelli Turangle did help..
Posted by Rohan Pinto on May 12, 2005 at 01:31 PM EDT #