Tuesday, August 29, 2006

My Philosophy on Blog Advertising

Some of my friends think that it cheapens the blog to have advertising on it. And I respect their decisions. I guess I look at it as a way to justify the amount of time I spend making blogs that are interesting to people, that are updated regularly and that are helpful.

Blogs are supposed to be free, and that is why I would never put a tip jar on or ask for donations. I am doing this as a labor of love. But if I can put a few ads on and people can click on them once and a while and I can make 20 or 30 a month, why not? It’s not like it’s costing anyone anything to click.

In fact, when I am going to a blog now that has advertising, I’m clicking once and a while. Just because I want to say thanks to the person who is putting the blog together. Not because I’m even necessarily interested in the product, but because I know that the blog writer will benefit.

Well, when I asked people to click, they clicked and I was making $3.00 or $4.00 a day for less than 20 clicks. And now nobody is remembering to click, which is OK, except those accidentally who are interested in something they see advertised, and I’m making 25 cents a day.

I will have my blog out there, as I have for a year, and I will update it regularly and I will keep it as relevant and interesting and colorful and helpful as possible. I will also attempt to build the other blogs that I have created like the Adoption Think Tank and Adoption Blog Central. And if I can make $20 a month through ads, that will be great, and if not, that’s OK too. I really don’t think I’m going to get rich doing this with the limited amount of time I have to invest in it.

I don’t know if anyone cares about any of this, but I’m looking at blog advertising differently now and thought I’d share it. For me, a click is a thank you, and I“m trying to do more of it. But please don’t feel like you have to click. You can visit and never click forever and I’ll not hold it personally.

Of course, I’ll never know who clicks and who doesn’t, so I couldn’t really feel bad or good about you based on your clicking anyway, could I?

1 comment:

Susan said...

Thanks for the explanation. Honestly, I'm so far removed from the internet world that I would never have known you could benefit from clicking on the ads. I'll definitely try to remember to do it when I read.