Ads inappropriate on blogs marketing professional service or product
Running ads is inappropriate when your blog is being used to further enhance your reputation or that of your product. The adds are not going to generate enough money to make it worthwhile anyway. And in some cases, an attempt to pick up a few bucks a month from your blog can damage your reputation.
Look at how little money is generated. Mike Davidson just reported on the test results of running Google Adsense ads on his blog.
Well it’s been a week since I threw a Google ad into the header region of this site and the results are in. With just under 50,000 page views, my earnings were just under $100.
It was sort of a low traffic week with not a lot of posting, linkage, or commenting activity, but even so, $400 a month isn’t enough for me show that huge ad to everyone who comes to this site.
Mike, CEO of Newsvine, has a long standing national reputation for his design & development work. His well read blog with incoming links from thousands of websites and blogs ranks in the top thousand at Technorati. And Mike can generate $100 per week in ad money.
Look at your blog popularity compared to his. I’ll bet it’s not 25% of the traffic or ranking. Even with high pay per click rates and decent traffic, you’re unlikely to hit $50 per month.
Many of you are blogging to enhance your reputation as an authority. Some of you may be blogging to market a product by garnering good will and word of mouth support through the blogosphere.
Assuming you’re doing a nice job, you’re reaching a small, but for you, powerful marketing base. Your traffic is growing. Your search engine performance is improving. Your network is growing. You’re being cited online and offline. And you’re generating more business.
The next step is to explore how you can get even better at marketing through your blog. The next step is not selling ads on your blog.
I know you see Google AdSense ads being run at blogs all over. And you’re thinking I’ve got this audience whose interests are perfect for certain advertisers.
But think about it for a second. Do you sell ads on your firm or company website? Do you run ads on place settings when you take potential clients or customers out to eat? Do you run ads in the conference room where you meet with potential clients and customers?
Think of your reputation. If you’re a law firm or other professional service firm charging hundred’s of dollars an hour for your time, do you want to be viewed as so hard up you need to sell ads on a blog?
If you need another $50 or $100 a week to survive, take a hard look at what you’re doing. If you have a good product or service, improve your marketing or sales efforts. If sound marketing and sales isn’t working, start looking for a new service or product to sell.