Comments on: Does Your Blog Look Like NASCAR?

By: Bert Hermanus

Bert Hermanus — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 08:16:30 +0000

Thanks for writing about this. There’s a bunch of good tech info on the internet. You’ve got a lot of that info here on your web site. I’m impressed – I try to keep a couple blogs reasonably ongoing, but it’s a struggle sometimes. You’ve done a great job with this one. How do you do it?

By: scott

scott — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 22:16:12 +0000

Thanks 4 posting, I found this very interesting and helpful.

Thanks,
Scott, CA

http://linksharedirect.blogspot.com

By: Lauren @ Hobo Mama

Lauren @ Hobo Mama — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 07:27:59 +0000

I’ve been trying out lots of different ad/affiliate networks, and now that I’ve figured out what works (and, more importantly, what doesn’t!), I’m ready to chop. Thanks for the reminder that it’s time!

By: film izle

film izle — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:59:26 +0000

I have been saying this same thing to my partners for YEARS. I will make them read this to see that a professional agrees with me. Thank you for posting this article, it will be useful.

By: emumbert1

emumbert1 — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:01:10 +0000

A very well done article. I’ve been in sales and marketing all my adult life, owning radio stations and a paper. The NASCAR analogy is great. I’ll add one about radio. In the early days of FM radio, we loaded up as many commercials as we could reasonably get on the air..three to five bewteen each song. Along came Arbitron and we all discovered that we could generate a much bigger audience with fewer commercials. Once we bit the bullet and cut way down on commercials, we had the number one stations in the area. That meant we could charge more per spot and run fewer spots…make more money and have the best stations!

Keep the great articles flowing!

By: Van Gelder Bus Lines

Van Gelder Bus Lines — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:38:36 +0000

Look at print media – full pages of only ads. Sometimes full sections. And that the New York Times. I think the challenge is to present ads as content. Then the sky is the limit. And avoid really annoying ones. My two cents. Here are some examples from the travel space –
http://www.tripcart.com/
frommers.com
http://www.tripadvisor.com

By: Culinary Cory

Culinary Cory — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:38:39 +0000

This was a really great post for me to read. I recently was considering beefing up my advertising to help further balance out the costs vs revenue ratio of my food blog. But, it was always nagging at me the thought of losing sight of my most valuable asset…the content. Now I’m going to focus on other ways to make money. Or even save money.

By: Blogbooze

Blogbooze — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:28:41 +0000

Well said, It is a talk to the point and I read the article non-stop just like a NASCAR :-) I have only placed 2 Adsense and I don’t think it is too big. Just take a look at it by clicking my name.

Also I want to know one thing, is image ads working better than text ads?

By: Zaheer

Zaheer — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:57:17 +0000

NASCAR analogy drove the point home! I think your percent number is to the mark but another aspect to consider is the placement. If the ads are out of most visitors way in a sidebar or footer then I don’t think they will look too bad. One or two Adsense block within the post are also OK. The thing I dislike the most is the pop up ads that slides across your screen. I have seen these annoying ads on major publication websites also.

By: Robert Bravery

Robert Bravery — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:29:05 +0000

100% correct. Many new and young bloggers seem to think that the more ads you have the more money you make. Where in fact it is actually not true. The more traffic you have the more money you can make.

A simple calculation will show, that if your blog has 500 pageviews a month and 5 ads, you could have a total of 30000 ad impressins per year. 500x5x12. Not a lot.
But if you have just three ads and increase your page views just 10% per month, then you can look at 56000 ad impressions in the first year, and over 175 000 ad impressions by year 2. It increases exponentially.

By: Soundtrack Maestro

Soundtrack Maestro — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:24:48 +0000

There’s nothing more off-putting than a site full of adverts. A few choice relevant ads will keep viewers coming back.

By: Dean Saliba

Dean Saliba — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:10:40 +0000

I’ve been a victim of this. I used to plaster ads all over the place but I’m learning to cut them down. I still have a few too many but at least it is a start.

By: Tomas Stonkus

Tomas Stonkus — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:49:35 +0000

I have absolutely no adds on my blog. Adds scare people away and distract them. I am selling content. I am offering real help to people and I want them to focus just exactly on that.

I don’t believe in adds. Maybe that’s an overstatement. But I am not going to put adds of things that I do not believe or do support.

The only adds you will ever see are going to be other products that I support and trust; it will be recommendations for other websites that I am a fan of; it will be my products that I put in a lot of work to develop that will sell.

Random adds make people feel alienated and disconnected. Let us reconnect and rethink what we are after: money or helping people?

Best,

Tomas

By: B Becker

B Becker — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:26:33 +0000

The NASCAR racecar example is awesome. It took me twice to figure out what you meant, but the second time was a charm. The car with all of the decals was priceless.

I agree with many, there is no set ratio. QVC broadcasts only ads, and they are successful. Reiman Publishing has published successful magazines for decades with no ads at all. Different models.

Most blogs and web sites are advertising supported. With that in mind, we need to understand that advertising on a web site may be a ‘net sum game’. That is, if you have two ads, 50% may be attracted to one ad and 50% to another ad. If you add a third ad, you may discover that the clicks will now be divided between 3 ads, with each getting 33% of the clicks. Many studies have shown there is a point where there is a net sum game. The key is that you may be able to go from one ad position to two or three or more and see overall net advertising income increase. But, if you went from three ad positions to twenty, you may see no increase at all.

On our craft site, http://www.favecrafts.com we added an advertising supported video option. We tested the video with an imperfect A/B split. We saw that the video did not increase our total ad income, rather our income from other banners on the site actually decreased. We repeated the same test on our food site, http://www.recipelion.com and found similar results. I say the A/B test was imperfect because we were also changing site structure at the time and other variables were not constant, except during the test. We plan to repeat the video test again, but intuition says it will decrease other ad revenue.

Hence, we may have reached our equilibrium on these two sites. Results may vary for reach site. And, if the advertising is very closely associated with the topic, the ability to add ad positions is enhanced.

Fascinating case study. The exact answers still to be determined.

By: Lori Bjork

Lori Bjork — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:44:34 +0000

Please know my comment is sincerely from a place of respect. So much so that after I read your post, I immediately went to my main blog, californivacation.blogspot.com, to peruse what sort of percentage of content to adverts I broadcast.

That is until later while I was showering. The shower is where I do most of my “aha” thinking. It occurred to me that this may be how it is for you, but it is not how it is for me.

For instance, I desired to read your blog post ‘cuz I was interested in how you tied in NASCAR. As I had this desire, it made no difference to me how much advertising the blog included. I wanted to read what you had to say…period. Truth told, for me I feel I have a decent ad filter. I barely notice an ad if that is my desire.

To extend further, you could have the most awesome blog design with little to no advertising. Yet if I have no desire to read your content, my eyes will never adore it.

What am I saying? My opinion is pay some attention to your advertising. Yet what consistently pays off is focus on content. Content. Content. Content. When people desire and love your content, you’ll be able to get away with advertising similar to the sort of upchuck look of a NASCAR car with no risk. No one will care. They’ll be too busy anticipating what’s next.

By: Fence

Fence — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:40:21 +0000

I have used ads in blogs, I don’t currently because just started a new site after selling a few others. I think one needs to be very careful not to appear as though the ads are more important than the content, the content is #1.

Just my $.02
Keith

By: Reza Winandar

Reza Winandar — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 08:58:17 +0000

A blog WITH a community shouldn’t put and Adsense Ads on the main page, but if your blog is a full keyword blog, then you can put it as you like.

By: Jason

Jason — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 06:16:14 +0000

So, how do you rate the percentages? What counts as “ad space”? If the main is 680px and the side is 120px, then that should be fine right? I mean if the negative space also eats up site layout percentages, That would put mine at roughly 10%…

By: Rebecca Laffar-Smith

Rebecca Laffar-Smith — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 02:29:58 +0000

I was just telling a client yesterday that the sidebars were a little too flooded with information. It’s not just ‘ads’ that create the visual clutter and information overload for readers. Advertising is more effective when it’s highly targeted and eye drawing. Multiple ads stacked together don’t draw the eye as effectively as having just a handful on a page.

Thankfully, there are fantastic ways to set up ads these days, consider having your banners randomized for example, one page load presents this ad, another page load presents that one. You can run multiple campaigns over the same web real estate and avoid cluttering the visual appeal of your page.

I think you’ll agree that the advertising on the Nascars aren’t as effective these days as they were when it was just one or two sponsors instead of twenty. When technology advances a little more we’ll have electronic rotating advertising on the side so that each time you look at the car it’ll have a different ad. ;-) Much more effective!

By: free income

free income — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 02:27:21 +0000

Blogs that has many ads on it instead of putting up great contents are only there to earn money not to become helpful to their readers