When to Introduce Ads
You have an idea for a site that you are certain will make you lots of money so you start it up and plaster it with ads? Is that the right move or should you not start with any ads at all? I wonder how many people ask themselves this question as it is apparent that too many of us out there are focused on the bottomline and not realizing that the bottomline is directly connected to the user’s experience.
I don’t think you should start a site without ads at all because even though initially you won’t make that much from them, it still adds up in the long run. More importantly though is that users will encounter ads immediately and will not be shocked if you were to ad them later. This doesn’t mean your pages should be billboards with two sentences of content though.
That’s why watching the growth of Performancing is interesting to me. You can find their ads all over Technorati and understand the purpose behind the site is to launch a new company yet there are no ads. If they are doing this to focus on the content then I applaud them, but wonder if readers will become too use to not having any ads on the site. I think Nick Wilson is smart enough not to change his site overnight to include 28 ads on the page, but I wonder if any ads will ever be introduced and when they are how they will go about it.
If you want to add more ads to your site make sure to do so in moderation. An ad here and there shouldn’t upset your users as long as the ads don’t start to take precedence over the content and I would think the best route to take would involve removing the low performing ads and replace them with others so you just aren’t adding more noise to cloud out the signal.
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POSTED IN: Online Money
6 opinions for When to Introduce Ads
misterchris
Dec 8, 2005 at 5:51 am
I’ve been pondering the same question. I have a new site idea that is likely to generate quite a bit of initial traffic. For this reason Im going to have a small set of ads on each page from the get-go. I know after two of three months my ‘viral traffic’ will have dipped and my hope is that my ‘orangic search traffic’ will have picked up. It’s at this stage that I intend to increase the amount of adveritising to capitalize on the different needs of this new audience.
redd
Dec 8, 2005 at 10:35 am
Ads?
I definetly like my adds in RSS. I also like skycraper ads that actually fit the site. Otherwise text based ads until you have featured sponsors or advertisers.
Main point, advertiser fits the site, otherwise the adsense and yahoo text ads on the page along with including them in the rss.
barry bell
Dec 9, 2005 at 4:25 am
I’m not so sure that they’re gonna run ads at all on Performancing. The kind of people who read that site are probably too ad-savvy to click on them, so taking the focus away from the content slightly by running ads for minimal revenue might not be a good idea.
I wonder if their new company is gonna be some kind of blog consultancy or agency - and their current blog is just to whet peoples’ appetites for the service and to bump up the credibility meter before they launch.
TrentC
Dec 9, 2005 at 8:07 pm
I too have just started a new blog, and I’m keeping it ad-free, while I build a solid viewership and get some ranking on the search engines. When they get to a point where I’m happy with it, I’ll start selling topic-related ads, but nothing too crazy.
Scrivs
Dec 9, 2005 at 8:10 pm
Good point Barry, but you also have to remember that with all the content they are generating that within 3-4 months they should be getting a good deal of SE traffic and that’s where the ad revenue would kick in.
Anthony
Dec 10, 2005 at 12:10 am
I agree with Barry. I doubt Performancing are ever going
run 3rd party ads. They’ll be earning their keep by organizing conferences, doing consulting, selling research results, publishing books and whatever other revenue source they can spin off from the Performancing brand once it is built up enough.
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