This is the question I get the most from bloggers. Notice that I currently don’t (not that I haven’t ever had them in past iterations of this blog, mind you) and I plan to add some again in the days ahead. But that’s because I’ve decided it’s worth it to my business model to have them.
Here are some questions you should be asking about ads:
1. Who is my target audience? If they are in business, they’ll understand. If they do not understand why you have ads up and will pester you with questions about them, you’ll need to prepare a FAQ. I think there are cases in which ads are not appropriate: legal-related material or medical-based material. If you have ads, the information is more likely to be disdained as slick advertising and a conflict of interest. Because my day job is for a medical publishing company, I feel like I can’t run ads in that arena (yes, my blog is nothing about medical publishing) but because of my obligations to my employer, running ads on a blog that contradict or go against their business interests just isn’t right.
2. Does it bother me more than folks don’t like the ads or that the ads are on my site? This is a valid question. Most bloggers who balk at having ads on their site say their readers or customers don’t like ads. Who does really? However, this Internet thing is now more a commerce engine than ever, and yes, customers have the right to stop visiting your site because of the ads, just like I have the right to fast forward through commercials on my TiVo. Doesn’t mean having ads is a bad thing. Think about it.
3. There are better ad providers than others. Google Adsense can work, but ideally, you want the control over what ads appear on your site. Do you accept advertising? Do you have a price sheet? Do you know your target audience and can you provide a breakdown of your audience metrics? This is something that advertisers do look at, so be prepared if you’re interested in using something other than Google Adsense.
In a future post (and in an upcoming ebook that will go into even greater detail), I’ll outline how to build that PR kit for advertisers and where to go looking for them to run ads on your blog.
Have a great week!
