An advertising information page is essential to any website. You don’t want potential advertisers to have to search high and low on your website to find how they can advertise on your blog. The page should be clearly displayed in your main navigation links.
More and more bloggers are placing ‘Advertise here’ links underneath their google adsense and other ad areas before their blog is even established. I am not referring to these links – i am referrings to blogs who have dedicated advertising info pages before they have anything to give to the advertiser.
I believe this to be bad practice.
Should blogs even have advertisements if they are not established
Should blogs even have advertisements if they are not established? That is a very good question and one which many bloggers have differing opinions on.
Here is my view on the subject.
Pros :
- There is the potential to make extra money. It won’t be that much though and you need to remember that. If traffic is very low then blog income will be too but again, its still money!
- The main reason i added advertisements to BloggingTips so soon is because i was customising the design. I designed the current theme from scratch and had to have the advertising areas in mind or i would have to keep going back to the design later on to modify it (which i have been doing anyways but thats besides the point).
- To recoup some advertising expenses. I spent money on advertising after the blog was a few weeks old. I knew that any return wouldn’t be amazing however i was still keen on making some sort of return. In retrospect, i should perhaps have waited a while longer before adding sponsors.
- I believe that there is a % of blog readers who will get annoyed if one day a blog they read regularly which has no ads all of a sudden has 3 adsense blocks and 4 banners. Though i do believe that if advertisements fit well with the blog design and they aren’t overkill, most blog readers wont mind.
Cons :
- I believe that bloggers should concentrate on content. content and more content. Particularly at the start of a blogs life.
- Too many advertisements can put off blog readers
- Any income at the start of a blogs life will be very small. Is it worth it?
Why is it bad practice?
You could argue a good case that if you made the decision to add advertising banners to your blog then you should add an advertising information page as well. I disagree. As i mentioned before, i think that a simple ‘Advertise Here’ or ‘Contact Me’ email link is sufficient.
I do not believe you should add an advertising information page to your blog until you have something to back up the rates you are charging.
An advertising page should have :
- Traffic stats and screen prints and other evidence to back it up
- Page rank details
- If possible, demographics of your readers
- Number of subscribers to your blog
- Technorati ratings
- Clear evidence your blog is popular with numerous comments to every post
When you start broadcasting how much you charge to advertise on your blog, you need to back it up with hard evidence.
Do you think that an advertiser wants to see that you have no readers, no comments to your posts and very low ratings on technorati and google? Obviously they dont.
So when should i add an advertising page?
The answer is different for every blog though i believe reader coments is a great indication of how popular a blog is. If your blog is constantly getting several replies to every post you make, its a clear indication to advertisers that there is a lot of people reading your blog. Its definately the first thing i look at when deciding whether to advertise on a blog.
