To Adsense, or not.
# 2003-06-26 09:26:33 -0400 | General | 13 CommentsSaw this post by Aaron Swartz, on Google’s Adsense program.
It is very tempting to put a google Adsense sidebar on my blog entry pages. Google does a very good of matching my page-content with relevent ads. But I’m not convinced that putting syndicated advertising on a blog is “good style”. It would be nice to earn a little $$$, but my hosting only costs me US$6 per month anyway.
Thoughts? Comments?
Gave some thought today about putting ads on http://cardboard.nu
Pros:
+ Google have a reputation for honesty and fair dealing.
+ The ads are tasteful, as these things go. At least they aren’t flashing, misleading pop-up windows.
+ The ads do a medium-good job at being targeted to their audience.
Cons:
- Would compromise the layout of my site (not that it’s anything special)
- Unbranded space is getting as rare on-line as it is in the CBD of any major city. It’s nice to be able to give back something to the world.
- Wouldn’t make much money at it anyway.
Overall, I’m giving it a miss.
Who are you hosted with?
I’m hosted with ServerPro http://www.serverpro.com/plans/
Most of my site is static (except for the comment system, which is a perl CGI). So I don’t have high requirements (ie; I don’t need a Servlet container, MySQL, etc.).
Alan,
I agree, I think the "cons" are winning out. Thanks for your input!
For those interested in increasing their revenue from AdSense, I’ve written an article on that - http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/search/adsense.shtml . It also examines the advantages and disadvantages. Sure, there are lots of disadvantages, but lots of advantages, too.
Cool. Thanks Allan, a very informitive article. I think for now, I’m going to avoid any advertising on madbean. It’s nice to be the owner of an ad-free space (even though the adsense box is fairly unobstrusive)
Do it! I did it on my website and found that the ads were useful and relevant and the site users liked them. I actually found interesting and useful websites when I clicked through.
At least give it a trial and let your users give you some more feedback. I’ll be your devils advocate today.
I don’t see that it would compromise the layout of this site. It’s a very unobtrusive ad.
Another site that might help you decide is
http://adsensibility.com which has pointers to some very interesting marketing pieces, especially the associatesprograms.com piece. Parts of that piece may be nauseating, but you’ll find some very useful stuff there.
Allan, I didn’t realize that you had already posted a comment above so I hope you’re not offended by my reference to "nauseating"; I meant it in a good way. Overall, I was impressed with your overview of the topic and I’m employing quite a few of your suggestions on http://spring.net and http://austinblogger.com. It’s been, to quote SNLs Garrett Morris, "berry, berry good to Paul". The results have been amazing.
I spent days debating the adsense issue. I decided to put them up not because I thought I would get rich (my keywords aren’t worth that much) but because I felt it enhanced the content on my site. I actively filter ads that don’t relate and I make sure the headings of my posts contain google friendly keywords.
Matt…what some blogs are doing is adding the google code to their archived posts and not their main page. This compromise seems good to me.
the site http://www.adsensibility.com isn’t working for me…
I’ve been getting good use out of them.
To my mind, it solves the whole micropayment problem.
For example, I’ve made a fair amount off this site since it got on slashdot :
http://www.deadharddrive.com