I began my blog with a lot of experimentation, both with the design AND ad programs, while I had very little readership.

Continue the good work with bravery and commitment.

L-Jay – I think your points were very valid and had no problem with you sharing them. I guess I wasn’t 100% sure where you were coming from with some of it. Thanks for clarifying.

Darren – thanks so much for sharing a tiny piece of your webspace with me. :)

I think that so long as ads aren’t all over the place and in your face, why not. Like other advertising I can choose to ignore them if I want. You’re right though, it doesn’t matter who you ask, you’ll always get loads of differing opinions.

But your true readers, the ones who love your writing and information will not be turned off by a little monetizing so I just started slowly adding recommendations.

After 3 months, that became the norm and I added a section on the sidebar with a few select (Related) Solutions to problems.

Worked great.

What I learnt through this process was that while what my readers think and say is definitely VALUABLE, it’s important not to rate that value HIGHER than my own thoughts and opinions. I feel there is a very fine line there between a blog owner valuing the opinions of it’s readers and giving them the balance of power.

I am sure many of your readers will be interested in following your progress – me for one who has partly held off advertising because I don’t think I will earn anything from it.

Your honesty in other aspects including asking about advertising will make you far more believable if you do talk of how it is progressing.

You have written an excellent article here too.

Easing new readers into your world builds trust. (I guess I’m the type of person who gets put off when you just meet someone and they tell you their whole life story.) You are obviously interested in making money from your blog which means that you need to develop a new plan to keep your regular readers engaged but also be approachable to new readers. (Side note: You mentioned posting for the ‘right readers’ for your blog – can you be that choosy when you want to make money?) Coming in on a story half way through can be hard – (especially when your Problogger article says you’re a stay-at-home country mum but your bog says you are depressed and you’re choosing not take the advice of your doctor) – so at least a ‘filling-you-in’ welcome post could benefit new readers.

However, I guess it would have been nice to be notified beforehand that your article was going to be posted on Problogger so you could have prepared for your new readers.

On a site like Problogger I try to be analytical and ‘logical’ – but on a personal note: I’m a mum of three and suffer from post natal depression. It runs in my family and in fact my mother never got over it and became an alcoholic because of it. She died of alcoholism before she turned 50. So you can see that my comments here are definitely not personal, or intended for you to have to defend yourself – they are intended to help, maybe even inspire, Problogger readers.

People can have opinions, vehement or otherwise (which cracks me up) , but at the end of the day, you answer only to you. They can choose to stay or choose to go, and vote their approval or disapproval in that way.

But if you’re deeply concerned about the opinion and response of *every* person that visits your website, you are going to have a painful time of surviving any open forum.

All you can do is be respectful to people in how you interact with them, establish your own rules, and then focus on what you’re actually supposed to be doing there: blogging.

If they don’t like the choices you make, it’s a HUGE interweb. They can find someone else to shape into their perfect blogger. :)

And no… I don’t have ads. But I don’t care if anyone else does, and I certainly don’t judge the quality of their content by their advertising.

(Well, only if their ads are for “Girls Gone Wild”.)

Oh yes, I have to say that the quality of your posts are very good. Keep it up & best of luck.

I am obviously coming from the P.O.V. of a personal blogger who has ads on her site and went through a similar thought process as you, Lightening, when putting ads on my blog. I didn’t ask my readers, but I almost felt the need to apologise for putting them there. But I knew I wanted to see if I could bring in a little money from the blog – it may only be a hobby, but it is one I spend a fair bit of time on, so why not see if it can be profitable? I absolutely agree that it needs to be tasteful and not intrusive, but the same goes for ads on all blogs – I will quickly leave a blog where I have to wade through ads to find the content.

The interesting thing, though, is in many of the ad studies done it seems that most regular internet users (those considered “computer savvy” I guess) don’t click on ads and often don’t even notice them, so I think it is probably only the minority who feel strongly about internet advertising who really notice and take offence. (Of course, this also begs the question of whether the ads are worth it, if you’re doing your best to make them unobtrusive and most of your readers don’t even notice them).

Personally I think ads should be targetted at search engine visitors – those visiting you for information on a particular subject. I think this is why niche blogs do much better in advertising because their visitors are looking for something specific and are more likely to click through an ad related to their search.

Personally, I am adamantly against them and posted here in detail as to why. The reasoning behind it is really a very simple although philosophical debate, how much do you value your life? You have to ask that question because ultimately that is what a personal blog is about, and the amount of money that the corporations or advertising networks such as AdSense may be willing to pay does not usually come close to that value.

Since personal blogs are mostly about opinions, using contextual advertising offers the distinct possibility that you may unintentionally be advertising for something that you opinionated against. This damages your credibility and may label you as a hypocrite, damaging your reputation to current and potential readers.

In the end though, it ultimately is your blog and your decision to make. The question is, can you live with that decision if the money you make from those ads are not from your writing or a “unicorns and rainbows” post… but from something personal that is in no uncertain terms, priceless?