“When should you put advertising on your blog?”
Funnily enough I’ve been asked this question four times in the last 24 hours so it’s probably a good time to answer it.
Before I answer the question though – let me say that there are numerous approaches to this question and if you ask a variety of ‘pros’ you’ll get a similar variety of responses. Here’s how I do it:
I put ads on my blog from the day it launches (actually they go in before it launches). My reasons for doing this largely come down to two reasons:
It’ll earn you a little bit from day 1 – even if it’s a dollar or two a day that does add up to a few hundred dollars a year and I don’t know about you but I don’t mind a few extra hundred in my mortgage at the end of the year.
It gets readers used to ads – most people who don’t put ads on their blog early on tell me that they make this decision because they want to build readership and community first and add ads later.
I understand this on some levels, they don’t want to put off new readers with advertising, however I’m a little skeptical how many people are put off by websites with advertising and wonder if there could actually be more problems when you change the rules later on and introduce ads onto a site that people have become used to being ad free.
Further Reading:
I expand upon this topic a little in a previous post – How Quickly After Starting a Blog Should I put Ads On it?
