» September 22, 2007 in
The name of the game for 98% of the blogs I'm reading is to sell advertising on your blog. This sends people AWAY from your blog.Doesn't it seem a bit counter intuitive to salivate about your rss count all day long, and traffic numbers, and the time visitors spend on your blog, etc, when at the same time you are sending your readers to other people's blogs for a few dollars?
With the current redesign of 45n5.com I removed all paid advertising and replaced it with 45n5 advertising, or ads that point you deeper into the site or highlight posts/functions of the site you might otherwise miss.
Are You Building A Walled Garden?
Heck NO! I
love
linking out to people. I love having good linking karma and I think the more traffic you send out the more you get back in. Linking out to as many people like you as possible is a very good thing.I hope the MoneyLinks gets so popular it sends you boatloads of traffic if you are on the list.
However, for the most part, I don't believe in the good link karma for paid links/advertisements. In general, paid outbound links serve the only purpose of sending people away from your blog.
But What About The Money?
That is why I'm removing the ads, because of the money. I think keeping as many visitors at 45n5.com, showing as many people the great content here, the great features, getting people subscribed, etc. instead of sending them away will pay off much larger dividends in the long run than earning some chump change now.
Also, did you ever stop and think why somebody would pay money for that ad spot on your blog? Certainly somebody must see the value in having your readers on their site, why can't you?
How Will We Ever Make Money From Our Site Then?
The most obvious is to sell something of your own. Take as much of the profit as you like instead of being dictated your percentage cut. I might try this route.I might also try a pro version of 45n5.com for a monthly subscription fee.
Certainly selling ads is a respectable business model but you can see that it is foolish to do so if you have any inclination of selling products, services, or subscriptions from your site at any point. You want the biggest crowd possible.
Thank You
Thanks to the previous advertisers for your support and anybody else that emails to purchase ads. I'm flattered, but at least for now, I'm only sending traffic to non paid destinations.
What about affiliate links in posts?
I think as long as you were going to mention the product anyway and link out, monetizing the link is ok. (ps. I don't use (aff) after my affiliate links, but I don't use many affiliate links either). However I wouldn't make a post just to drop an affiliate link.
Are you removing ads from all your sites?
No way. 45n5.com and one other blog for the moment and I'll see how it goes.
We Get IT, Maybe We Should Think Before Rushing To Sell Ads
Yep. I certainly didn't always think this, I'm still learning this. In fact not selling ads might not be the best advice for your blog (think for yourself), but it is good for 45n5.com at the moment, and that is my long winded post on why I replaced paid ads with links to my own content.
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Case says on September 22, 2007
Nice post. I would have never thought of having a pro-version of a blog, yet I really like the idea.
michaelmartine () says on September 22, 2007:
I dig the new design, Mark. I also happen to agree with you on the ads thing, but for slightly different reasons. I removed all ads from my flagship blog because I make money selling professional services for blog consulting, coaching, and theme design. Any ad revenue would be pretty pitiful compared to what I make selling my services, but the main point is that I don't want to present a conflicting message: why would someone who's making money selling something have ads on their site? Especially if those ads are contextual, because you will see your competition showing up in those ads -- not a good thing. So for me it's not about sending people away vs. keeping them. It's about the overall message I'm giving.
Keep rockin'
45n5 () says on September 22, 2007:
@case - I haven't tried the "pro" version yet but the idea kinda excites me also.@micheal - cool angle, and thanks for the compliment on the layout
unrelated, I just subbed to http://caramelcortex.blogspot.com/, interesting blog, interesting clips and tunes.
Carl Zetterlund says on September 22, 2007
I've had the same thoughts as well. My blog isn't really up to par yet, but I will keep ads off. I'd rather build a readership as well.
Btw, I can tell you are really promoting MoneyLinks and Subscribing to your blog. That strange bright blue really stands out.
WarriorBlog says on September 22, 2007
Dang man, what you have going here is sweet and fantastic! Congrat! I hate to see ads on my first impression of visiting a blog as well but I don't think it have much of an affect on the masses.
Just to be safe, I try not to put ads on the front page and capture as many readers as I can. Currently working on it :-)
Take care,
Sean
Mark says on September 22, 2007
Mark,
I have been thinking about removing most of the ads from my blog for a long time and I think your post finally tipped me over the edge. I always figured that since I had a blog about making money online, I ought to be trying out different ways to do so. However, I think it would be more appropriate to build other niche blogs for this purpose, keeping Pajama Professional ad-free.
Thanks for helping me make a decision.
Sara
koen () says on September 22, 2007:
In my new layout I will be placing way less ads then I did. I first had ads on the left of an article, and between articles on the front page, and in the sidebar, and on the top. You know, much different positions have I had. And now I'll try to take a different route :)And congrats with the new design, love it, as I told you!
Courtney says on September 22, 2007
I love the new layout! I had been thinking of adding advertising to my blog, but this well thought out argument has convinced me otherwise!
WarriorBlog () says on September 22, 2007:
I can honestly say that your theme and Problogger theme are the best I seen, many of the other one have way too much ads and they use the space for promotion.Valentin says on September 22, 2007
Hey, Mark, you`ll stop selling ad space, then maybe you`ll start buying some :-)) on others`s places ... make me an offer I can`t refuse :-P
ps : can you please email me again the address of your town`s official site and eventually of your (beta ?) about ?
CashQuests says on September 23, 2007
I think the ad thing comes down to an "Everybody has their price" philosophy. Many can talk about removing ads, but if they were making around $10k per month selling ad space like JohnChow, I doubt there would be many who would still keep ads off.
I see it as there being a breaking point - you keep ads off until they're worth so much that you can't say no anymore.
45n5 () says on September 23, 2007:
@carl - yeah, moneylinks to send traffic to YOU, subscribe to bring traffic back to me ;-)@warrior blog - no ads on homepage but on rest of site is an interesting alternative.
@sara - good luck, tell us how you make the money without the ads ;-)
@koen - thanks for the compliment and good luck with the new layout
@valentin - thanks, also I just sent the email you requested
@CashQuests - my point is john could make more by removing the ads and advertising for himself. if he had a monthly subscription service at $100 per month and got only 200 subscribers that would be $20,000 per month. If he got 500 subscribers that would be $50,000 per month.
Mike Panic says on September 23, 2007
I think this is something that most bloggers fail to realize and I'm glad you are pointing it out. So many are caught up with making money on a site or promoting an affiliate or a paid review or trying to get affiliate sales up that they forget about actually making quality content that keeps readers on the site.
I'm very proud of the fact that some of my more popular articles have an average time spent on site (according to analytics) of more than 2 minutes. With an average reader time on a site of only about 7 seconds, this is HUGE.
Bloggers also forget what it's like to be an average reader, a customer if you will. If you screw with the customer value and interaction, you will loose their readership. 98% of what is on my blog is for the reader, I link to Wikipedia often for items that the reader might not be familiar with so they can learn more and I've kept ads to a minimum, while increasing content. One of my biggest annoyances is with main stream blogs / newspapers. Your average mainstream news website might have an 800 word article that is on 4 separate pages, while the article itself is only about 400 pixels wide in a website designed to be 1000 pixels wide so that the most amount of ads can be shown. Forcing the reader to continue onto several other pages to only read 2 minutes worth of content is only to aid in the advertisers, not the readers. The news website is trying to serve as many page views as possible, since thats how most sell their ad packages. They don't give a crap about the end user who is reading the article and must be pained by clicking NEXT PAGE to only read 200 more words before repeating the process.
Put some time into what you think of your site as a real life reader, not a reader who also blogs, not a blogger who reads, but your average joe. Ask one of your non-tech friends to sit down at a computer with you and look at your site and ask what they think of the layout, ads and content placement, along with site navigation. If you need to explain anything to him, or where anything is,take that as a note to fix the problem.
/end rant.
patbdoyle () says on September 23, 2007:
Congrats, Mark. I think you're going in the right direction by removing the ads! I don't have ads on my moneymaking blog either. I am going to be selling my own products, so I don't want to have any ads to compete with that. I do have ads on my niche blogs, but that's different.45n5 () says on September 23, 2007:
@mike - enjoyable rant ;-) Very true.@pat - thanks pat, also note that I've got openads tracking each one of the 45n5 ads now ;-)
mcrilf () says on September 23, 2007:
Interesting post Mark - I like th idea of taking the intellectual high ground. You've certainly made me think about the ads on my blog. Who knows...maybe I'll take a chunk of them downCool blog & love the new layout.
Kevin says on September 23, 2007
Hi Mark
I love the new design. I have to admit though I'm very disappointed you did not let me know about this. The decision to remove ads from the blog is 100% yours however being an advertiser here, at the very least I would have expected an email about it. To logon and simply find that my ad has been removed without any notice is very bad business in my opinion. Not getting at you but I'm sure you can relate to why I feel this way.
Kevin
45n5 () says on September 23, 2007:
@mcrilf - thanks much, good luck with whatever decision you make@kevin - Your ad wasn't sold through me, but a third party. Your business relationship was with that third party and not me. Therefore it is up to the third party to notify you not me (which they did I assume).
"To logon and simply find that my ad has been removed without any notice is very bad business in my opinion."
In hindsight I reckon I could have sent a handwritten email to everybody that purchased a $15 link through tla, but I don't personally think it was necessary.
I have never received a note from an advertiser saying they were removing their link from my sites (and there have been many), I was simply following what I perceived to be protocol. If somehow I stepped outside of what is customary I apologize, however note that it wasn't intentional.
Kevin says on September 23, 2007
As I said in my email
1) The fact it was through a third party is irrelevant in my opinion. I wanted to advertise on 45n5 and was directed to the third party. You chose to do send potential advertisers to TLA instead of selling ads directly. Also, they did not let me know my ad was removed. I only found out when I dropped by the blog.
2) I dont think it matters if I paid $15 or $100. The fact remains I paid
for one months advertising and did not get it and was not informed about it (For the record your ads were being sold way below value:) ).
As I said, it's your blog and what you do with it etc is 100% up to you however I strongly believe doing this kind of thing is a bad business practice and can lose you a lot of partners in the long run.
no hard feelings.
:)
45n5 () says on September 23, 2007:
If there is any bad business practice here it's venting your frustration in my comments thread instead of email and making a fuss over a single $15 dollar text link. (for the record, I didn't know kevin was upset over this until I saw his first comment and I emailed him. Also for the record tla should refund Kevin for any remaining days he paid for)
If any partners in the long run want to talk down to me over a $15 text link or make a fuss about it on my blog, then they aren't business partners I'm looking to have.
davestarr () says on September 24, 2007:
This is an excellent post and excellent discussion, Mark. A point that has been made by several and deserves further thought is, there is no one single answer ... ads/no ads. On many blogs where you want your readers to stay and read then ads that "link away" are likely detrimental. I'm doing this in a couple blogs now and I really think I am being dumb in doing so. OTOH, this type blog is a very likely candidate for carefully selected and well thought through affiliate referrals .. probably multi-step, i.e., you whet the readers appetitive for an affiliate you really believe in, send them to a separate sales/testimonial page on your own site and wind up with the "call to action" that causes them to click on your aff link. A couple $47 affiliate commissions per week will make up for a heck of a lot of TLA monthly pittances and will improve your own stature as an authority site .. plus your ad value doesn't depend upon Google's PR whims.
On a site that wants people to come and research something technical ... likely never coming back if they find the answer to a question that got them there in the first place may be served rather well by such as AdSense. I have a blog in a techie business niche where the AdSense ads tend to be good paying and the readers didn't come there to become "my" readers anyway, they came to gather information ... and the ads may provide that.
So, that's my rambling thoughts, anyway.
Kevin says on September 24, 2007
I didnt email you about it because you did not offer me the same courtesy. Why should I have emailed about it if you didnt email me about the ad being removed?
'If any partners in the long run want to talk down to me over a $15 text link or make a fuss about it on my blog, then they aren't business partners I'm looking to have.'
I dont know how you can say this Mark. I emailed you about your theme and wished you the best of luck and said that you should contact me first about ads on the new design because I wanted to advertise here. I spend hundreds a month advertising Blogging Tips so to suggest you wont lose any advertisers is a huge assumption. I'm sure the other advertisers spend more than $15 a month also.
The price of $15 is irrelevant - I would have paid much more but that is what you were charging. Also, as I said before. I did not want to go through Text Link Ads, I would have been happy just sending payment directly via PayPal. I am not looking for a refund, it's the principle of the thing however to simply pass the buck onto TLA and say they will refund me and they will let me know the ad is down is very bad business.
Im sorry Mark but I really think your wrong on this one. You had the choice of rejecting my bid for a text link here but you chose to accept it and by doing so you agreed to place my link on here for 1 month. Again, its not about the money. I make thousands a month and $15 is nothing in my advertising budget but my point remains, this was a really bad way to treat people who were supporting you and your blog.
45n5 () says on September 24, 2007:
@davestarr - for sure I've got some blogs that do brilliantly with adsense and search traffic, plus it's almost entirely hands off. However I think if I had time to work with each site like that I would have a good run at making more by doing my own thing there. Also, I don't like relying on adsense for my checks.@kevin - touting how much you make or how much you spend isn't impressing me and I'm not assuming I won't lose any advertisers, I'm saying i don't want to work with advertisers that make a fuss on my blog about a $15 text link purchased through a third party.
Launching moneylinks, launching a new design, fixing the broken stuff, working on other blogs just as hard, things were quite hectic here the past few days. As a fellow webmaster I think you might understand how contacting people about non-existent advertising opportunities was maybe not at the top of the priority list.
rubicon () says on September 24, 2007:
I like new design, especially money icon, its cute :) i dont like less line between posts and could you possibly put more posts in front page? I think 5 is low, i like 10 or 20 at least. MoneyLinks also very good idea, but it needs more tuning (i guess in right sidebar and also more than 5...To current topic: are you really thinking that too many visitors was actually clicking on that tla text links? :) I dont think so and in my opinion they are purchasing those links as optimalisation mostly. I am also skeptical about your PRO version of this blog. Even The New your times ends this kind of subscription for free access and advertising... You can always try new things, but delete tla was in my point of view good decision.
Tariq Bamadhaj says on September 24, 2007
Hi Mark
I love the new blog design and hopefully I can do something about my blog in the next couple of months. Just started out so I am still working out the basics for mine.
With regards to Kevin's comments, he did valid points which I think should not be overlooked. Even though he bought it through a third-party, at the end of the day, he was indirectly in partnership with you. It may be $15 but there is more to it than money.
I understand how caught up in the whirlwind you were when you went for this new design. I too have been guilty of it when I am so into something. But the bottom line is, while it may not be your top priority, you should have emailed all your advertisers. Even if it's a cookie-cutter email, it would have made a huge impact. It's all about business which is all about relationships.
I sure hope you and Kevin can work this out amicably. Keep up the great work and I will definitely remain a loyal reader.
Cheers
45n5 () says on September 24, 2007:
rubicon - thanks for the compliments, to your other points- tla - I don't know how many people clicked on the text link ads, but it was too many
- posts per page is five to cut down on load time, I use pictures in most my posts so going to 10 or 20 per page would add considerably to the load time for many, I'm not doing it for reasons to increase pageviews, etc. rather to improve load time
-the post footer is a test, If people use it then it stays if not then it's gone. I'm not the biggest fan of it but it was worth a shot ;-)
thanks for the feedback
@Tariq Bamadhaj - thanks for the kind words and also for reading 45n5. Yes in the perspective of relationship building emailing might be best. The situation was new to me and I'm sure doesn't happen often for many people. I'm confident Kevin and I will be fine :) Everybody gets heated sometimes when they talk shop.
davestarr () says on September 24, 2007:
Maybe enough has been said about the TLA issue, or maybe not ... but in the interest of learning rather than arguing I feel there is a point being glossed over here. This is a snippet from a comment I just left on Kevin's blog:... the more I re-read Mark's uncalled for dismissive comment re: not wanting partners who only spend $15 the nastier it sounds. I have a couple hundred dollars earmarked for advertising a blog I want to build up and have been building a list of potential "spends". I am a "small-timer" and my individual ad buys wil be "small-time". Can anyone guess which blogger or bloggers I probably won't "burden" with any of these "nickel-dime" ad spends? ....
It seems to me that a lot of people treat the web and the "blogosphere" as if politeness and personal relationships mean even less than $15 a month ... a weakness, in my view only, of course
45n5 () says on September 24, 2007:
"It seems to me that a lot of people treat the web and the "blogosphere" as if politeness and personal relationships mean even less than $15 a month"@davestarr - I believe you misinterpreted my comment. The reason I don't want business relationships with people making a public fuss over a $15 text link is BECAUSE I value relationships so much more than a $15 text link.
My "dismissive" comment was from my point of view, that a stink was being made over a $15 text link, that somebody wasn't valuing a relationship more than a $15 text link by publicly calling me out over bad business practices because of a measly $15 text link!
Of course from their point of view it was so much more than a $15 text link, but whatever, water under the bridge.
I just wanted to point out I am dismissive towards people that want to make a public stink over a $15 text link because a relationship IS worth so much more.
Vlad says on September 25, 2007
I sad to see the TLA gone- you gave me the best referrals. But I guess you have to do what you have to do.
Kiltak says on September 25, 2007
There's a philosophy out there that says: Send them away so that they can come back later.
This philosophy work extremely well.. and I apply it to on my blog daily. Sure, I do write articles each week, but about half of my content sends people away.
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