Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Ads and Amazon

How do people feel about Ads, Ad Sense, and putting those little Amazon "What I'm reading" imgaes up on their blogs? Pros? Cons?


This Post was written by Garrett from Vanilla Garlic

13 comments:

Guy said...

No like ads, clutter things up.

Cybele said...

I'm not really keen on ads and I steer clear of blogs that I think have TOO much advertising on their pages (more than a quarter of their real estate).

I also don't like animated thingies.

That said, I do have some advertising on my pages - two never-full BlogAds strips (though I'm not sure if I'm going to stay with them) and one little AdSense ad on each page.

I think that affiliate links are cool, if they're seamless. I don't care much for them when they're not integrated into the look of the page. The "what I'm reading" is kind of interesting because it's actual content in addition to being an ad.

Each blogger should figure out their own balance of how their going to support their blogging habit - will it be ads, donations, syndication?

You also might want to ask your readers - they're the ones who are going to have to look at them.

Amy Sherman said...

I don't like them. I find them distracting and annoying but if I really love a site I will go there anyway. I also never, ever click on them.

I also wish Google was more up-front about what the revenue model is for AdSense ads, until they can show me numbers I am unconvinced that they are worthwhile.

nika said...

Amy: you could always just try it out for a while and get a sense for the model for yourself. If you dont like it, remove it all from your site, no lasting harm.

William I. Lengeman III said...

I use Google, Amazon and affiliate programs at my site and try to strike a balance between making them visible and unobtrusive. I don't have a problem with other sites doing the same. The sites that make the ads too intrusive and annoying are a bit wearying.

Ellen said...

I make good money (in the neighborhood of a NICE car payment shall we say?) off my main cooking site. Very very little of it comes from the blog pages however, which I've never worked at integrating. I personally read blogs via RSS and suspect blog readers are different than regular "web site visitors." I have played with the ads quite a bit to get them up to that income level however. It's not just "put them up and make some money." A year ago I was lucky to hit a $100 month. I put a lot of effort into the site and the blog. Most magazines make their real income off advertising, not subscriptions. I see ads on sites as being about the same. I think of myself as a "one woman publisher" I guess rather than just a blogger. I'm providing useful content and enjoy getting paid for it. Probably in the minority here though... I also have affiliate links to Amazon and a few others and make peanuts off them but have not put the effort into leveraging them well at this point. I suspect with some effort, I could greatly improve the income.

Ed said...

On Affiliates I made $130 on two clicks with Bluehost Affiliate. I've made a bit from Google and it would take over 500 clicks to make the same. For me it's to cover hosting costs more than anything. Oh, an click through isn't too much more than 1 per cent so you need a lot of traffic to make a decent amount

Julie said...

I have not put any ads on my blog, but I don't mind them. If you can make a little money, by all means try it. Most food bloggers make them unobtrusive enough for me. I do have thumbnails and links to amazon for cookbooks that I own and love and cook from in my posts occasionally. I think it's an enhancement to your content. There is loads of info about the books on amazon, so you're actually linking to useful material for readers. I will probably experiment with Ad Sense eventually.

Cybele said...

culinary bookworm - email me if you want more info about blogads and adsense - I've been using both since the beginning of the year.

(The Adsense agreement is that I'm not supposed to post about it.)

typetive [at] gmail dot [com].

Tery Spataro said...

Daily Eats has had poor success with Google Ads. We use text ads from Adbright which give better performance. You probably know Weblogs (Jason Calacanis) was successful with Google Ads because of the volume of blogs they owned (80) all being connected. Naturally it paid out.

You might want to consider getting a sponsor. You'll make out much better.

I've never had any complaints from my visitors about the ads. Some visitors even find some of the relative ads to be beneficial and click.

Catherine said...

I have to say, I appreciate an Amazon (or other) link for a featured cookbook or particular cooking tool so its easy for me to check it out. I always try to put a link in for a book I mention, many of which are (sadly) only available used. I don't make many dollars on Amazon's associates program, but I'm always happy to see someone purchased a great book I've recommended.

I also really like looking at peoples fav. cookbooks or what they're reading now or fav. cooking tools.

Flashing or distracting ads are annoying.

Unknown said...

Thanks for asking and for answering. I am really new at this and I've been wondering about ads. I guess I'm not ready to make a decision.

Anonymous said...

I don't like ads. As far as amazon books are concerned, if you're highlighting only the ones that you have or have read, for the purpose of your own recommendations and they sit nicely and integrated within the look of your site then that's fine.

The reason i don't like ads is they look like clutter. Sites that have ads take longer to load up and i give up easily and hit the back button. Some blogger sites even come up with pop ups. I tend to not visit sites with pop-ups. I normally stop visiting sites that have way too much ads altogether.